Must Love Lists

As human beings, we have a natural compulsion to fill empty spaces.

Will Shortz

I have proven on an occasion that I am not the most interesting person. At least, not while being flushed with alcohol. I make lists. Lots of lists. I have notebooks, filled with lists. I view it as an art piece in progress, the actual making of the list, documenting and presentation of the final collection. Mind, there is no finality in list making. To reach for real sympathy, I will admit to reading back over my notebooks while sitting in bed with a cup of tea. It’s a safer environment as a night out usually leads to starting the following day with deleting messages sent the night before, grasping to the idea this will somehow, unsend them. Being daft after a few glasses is something I excel at. I’m the fun one out. That’s why list making is good…it tends to align and keep focus on my wandering mind.

My favourite notebooks are Paperblanks. It was the good nature of an ex boyfriend who bought my first piece. A little book bound in Arabian Mosaic Tiling artwork. Each book is part of a collection, depicting art from all over the world and from various eras. There is also a little pocket in the back where one can keep cinema tickets, phone numbers scribbled on used cinema tickets, photos of those scribbling their numbers, thus, leading to the idea one can recreate a perfect image of time. Once I finish my listing and the book is full,  I have forgotten what it was I was trying to hold onto and a new book is bought. So the cycle begins.

Paperblanks as a business interest me as much as the notebooks. They excel at high standards, create beautiful, practical and useful books that are in essence, keepsakes, in their own right. I manage to keep mine even after the tedious enumerations. Paperblanks will always be on my Christmas lists. I love list making and with the art of Paperblanks, my drivel is well and truly under the blanket of obscure art.

Paperblanks

Jam!

The Law of Raspberry Jam:

the wider any culture is spread, the thinner it gets.

Alvin Toffler

During an afternoon of work, knitting and tea drinking, I was passing the time listening to one of my favourite radio programmes. There was a slot about Jam. Soft, sweet, sticky Jam loved and loathed the world over. It tastes great but gets everywhere. If your jammied toast falls to the ground, be sure, it will fall Jam side down. If it drips onto your top or clean white shirt, Jam will make its mark. Not to mention, it will also rot your teeth! For all its badness, Jam is delicious, versatile and practical. It’s a form of preservation of fruits and vegetables, thus allowing you to enjoy strawberries in winter, blackberries in Spring and anything you like in Summer. I went through a teenage phase of hating the stuff. Like the knitting, I gave up a lot during the wasted years. I suppose, it’s all about trying new things until you reach the stage of adulthood when you know which things you like and which you like to keep. It was the taste of a locally made rhubarb & vanilla jam, that woke up my taste buds and helped me understand all. I almost felt a pop inside. I thus went on a nationwide jam tasting trail in conjuntion with a scone tasting trail, while on my usual travels. My girth didn’t thank my but my taste buds, gladly, shook my hands.

This radio programme however, also covering jams in the more lateral sense. The presenter met with Music Jam sessions, Maths Jams where mathemiticans and people with more brain cells than the average, work out difficult conundrums. Like countdown in the pub. There were probably even Jam Jam Sessions where jam makers, eaters and general nutters meet to jam…..I even helped create a Knitting Jam Circle who meet in a café twice weekly and knit while eating jam on scones!

I remember Mum’s jam making at home. Topping and tailing the gooseberries, torn alive while out blackberry picking, falling into thorny dikes in order to grab the allusive berry which turned out to be a warm bed for a fat maggot.. collecting fallen apples and pears from the orchards….and shaking the trees to knock off the plums only to find them already half eaten by birds. 

Jam is wonderful, lovely on everything and comforting to the nose. But as always, I find perspective ..... ta dah!

knittingontrains.com

Choose Your Own Adventure...if only!

The farther you go...the harder it is to return. The world has many edges and it's easy to fall off.

Anderson Cooper

Weetabix! Ah the memories. Not just a dry, wheaty biscuit used in childhood cooking experiments but also delicious with hot milk. There was a time when one would collect 8 tokens from a Weetabix box, send them off with an application form to postal heaven and wait for it, you would receive a free gift! For a child (of the country), this was magic. You knew what you sent for but the excitement of receiving that brown, sealed parcel, ripping it open to reveal ..... surprise! Apart from the odd letter from my closet friend who lived up the road and apparently enjoyed writing, life at the other side of the post-box was pretty hopeless. That was, unless you sent away for freebies!

Besides colouring pencils, club memberships and Flash Gordon collector cards, the lads and myself collected for a shelf full of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books with titles such as ‘The Horror of High Ridge’ and ‘Mountain Survival’.

By definition, Choose Your Own Adventure books “.… are written in the second person. The protagonist—that is, the reader—takes on a role relevant to the adventure; for example, private investigator, mountain climber, race car driver, doctor or spy….

….The stories are formatted so that, after a couple of pages of reading, the protagonist faces two or three options, each of which leads to more options, and then to one of many endings….”

Life changed temporarily, while our fates lay in the hands of obscure questions and page numbers. Once your decision was made, your course was set and there was no going back. You turned to page 52 eagerly awaiting the outcome. Aaaggghh! You’re dead. The comic book graphics of a blood spattered, screaming face of your character was enough to acquaint you with your fate.

If only life could be like a ‘choose your own adventure’ book. Well, in a way it is, the only difference is you can’t jump to a page, half open, squinting a look inside, seeking some indication the ending isn’t all bad. No, unfortunately, decisions made in the real life are made blindly. Even when you think, “this is a sure thing”, how do you really know?

If you choose to dine on a slice or Rye Bread, undressed salad, and a glass of water, turn to page 25.

or

Do you order a Milano, Florentine Pizza, side order of fries (for one) and pick up a bottle of Shiraz on the way home, turn to page 49

Comic book graphics or not….I know that outcome. That’s life. The unmarked parcels flooding in the door of fate are full of surprises. When one story ends, another starts. At least with knitting, I know the ..….Aaaggghh!

The Prince

"What's the good in living if you don't try a few things?"

Charles M. Schulz

Maybe it’s the copious cups of tea I have already consumed but I'm thinking, men who cut their own shapes, send me in a flurry. Jack White for one. I always thought of him as Johnny Depp’s less good-looking brother. Now I do dig Johnny’s talents beyond the obscene good looks but he probably doesn’t really exist. Ooohh, I feel better already. I like the way ‘rock star celebrities’ can make the outmoded look so nippy. Like when during an interview, Johnny crossing his legs, revealed his socked toes sticking out atop his torn boots. Ah bless! Not to forget Jack’s unmistakable mix of second skin, two-tone trousers or 50’s style Texan oil baron suits topped with a mass of mangled black hair. It takes all sorts!

So these, two angels of ethos have given me some confidence in stepping into the unknown. Taking a leap of faith. Climbing the tree and looking out from the top.

I like men’s clothing. Not so much wearing them but browsing them while out shopping. It’s interesting to see how far you can push men’s style without actively infringing on one’s integrity. While growing up through the grunge years of the 90’s, I would be known to break into my Dad’s wardrobe taking stripey tops and torn thermals on music festival outings. The craic was good, the mud was sticky and I looked a mess! Thankfully, my style has somewhat improved, however, I still harp after creating the ‘perfect’ men’s wardrobe. Meanwhile, Sibling London are doing they damn best at taking Men’s Knitwear to extreme and beautiful heights. 

www.londoncollections.co.uk/sibling 

Oblique Strategies anyone?

Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.

Richard P. Feynman

Radio rocks! For us radiophiles at least, this little invention has not been fossilized just yet. I find nothing more satisfying than spending a good working day, at the knitting with a large mug of tea and some Radio play in the background. Just this week, I learned about the allusive Oblique Strategy Cards. Now, I put it down to my birth era….I had never heard of Oblique Strategy Cards before until I fell upon a great presentation, on Radio 4 by Simon Armitage (whose voice would soothe you to sleep), discussing the origin and validity of these curiosities. The peculiar cards apparently have shaped how music was made. They helped in the creation of great poems. They were partly responsible for the birth of earnest literary characters. What are they? I scrambled to Google seeking the answers.

“Oblique Strategies (subtitled Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas) is a deck of 7 by 9 centimetres (2.8 in × 3.5 in) printed cards in a black container box, created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt  and first published in 1975. Each card offers an aphorism intended to help artists (particularly musicians) break creative blocks  by encouraging lateral thinking.”

I look sympathetically at my well worn ‘yes, no’ maybe’ die and check out where I can buy this deck. It all sounds so underground. Even the box looks sexy. There are limited editions, special artwork, gimme, gimme, gimme….it’s like Needful Things.

To be continued....

...Continued

Not sure this is what Eno/ Schmidt were hoping for when developing their concept. Never mind, it was the cards at play. 

Riders....as if?

Laugh all you want and cry all you want and whistle at pretty men in the street and to hell with anybody who thinks you're a damned fool!

Armistead Maupin

How many knitters would admit to spending the best part of their lives, struggling through a complex patterned, over-sized sweater for the ‘One I loved’ that another may well be wearing now? It is literally, wearing your heart on your sleeve. Don’t worry. We have all drank too deep at the foundation of emotional depth and despair and lived through the hangover. God knows, my knits may be well worn around the block.  Speaking of hangovers, the sun is shining bright in Ireland, so officially it’s okay to drink during the day. All is well with the world again. Brace yourselfs; these mutterings are a crude attempt at correlating early evening boozing for something meaningful.

I have fallen in love...again. Okay, he is a bit older, a bit of an 80’s icon, a mecca for women of the literary world and he is fictional. Rupert Campbell-Black, literally fell out of my sisters book shelf (upper wardrobe space, hopelessly overfilled with bags, rubbish and some old books), onto my head. I had been watching Jilly Cooper on the Saturday Night Show with Brendan and thought, she seemed a bit of fun. And god knows, I am in need of a bit of fun. As usual, I am a good two decades behind everyone else. I remember two of the elders squealing about Riders/ Raiders/ Ropey Lovers or whatever it was called back then. I thought it looked all a bit grown up and stuffy, like reading Naomi Wolf’s ‘Vagina’: a hopeful, adult approach to my womanhood and spiritual view on my nether regions. In reality, it turns out to be a good head romp in the summer shade. I am ever hopeful.

It comes to light, I had something in common with those girls, I grew up, with after all and they never much appreciated my knits either. Sorry, excuse me, but its time for a glass of wine and some, erm, reading.

That Steve Jobs Speech!

“…you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

-Steve Jobs, Standford University Speech

While sitting in a carpark, on a rainy Sunday morning, I contemplate my future. Its dark, cold, the rain is hitting hard. I’m waiting for my latest Fair outlet to open. For an hour, I drove around, lost, before finally finding the place. I start on my Spar sandwich I had bought, earlier, for lunch. I’m an anxious eater.

“You are crazy. What are you doing here? Why are you doing this to yourself? You are crazy. Crazy, you hear!”

My demons are working their magic as the pasty, ‘dip dyed’ brown bread lodges itself in my throat. I look out at the rain.  While flicking through some radio stations, I here that familiar voice of entrepreneurial master, speak from the grave. It’s Steve Jobs. He is giving one of his famous speeches citing why you have to be crazy to try to run after your dreams and do what you love doing. No sane person would consider it never mind staying the distance. It’s true. Working for yourself is a huge risk. I have forgotten what weekends are. I can’t differentiate between evening and day.  My home looks like a mini warehouse. So why do I love it all so much?

“I’m crazy, I’m crazy… and ... it’s wonderful!”

I toss the half eaten sandwich onto the back seat. A lone passengered car pulls up beside me. It’s time to start unpacking.

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish"
Steve Jobs