Wet Wet Wet!

Here we are in the middle of May already – usually a month when us poor blighters here in the UK get to see a little bit of warmer weather and get to enjoy the lighter evenings just for a bit. May is the month of birthdays in our house with 5 members of the clan celebrating the passing of another year and, although the weather cannot always be entrusted to be dry and hot, we can at least plan parties in the garden and the odd picnic. It is Summer’s 14^th birthday and my Dad will be 70 something on Thursday so usually there would be some kind of plan for festivities that involve the great out doors – the wide blue yonder – God’s green acre – the pub garden at the very least!

BUT - Not this year!

As I sit here looking out onto my little lovely garden, usually busy in May with birds and bees and blossom, I am instead faced with lashing rain, wind, mud and puddles! Oh yes, I nearly forgot – and pellet sized pieces of ice which fall from the sky like little bullets with the sole intention of leaving you covered in a mass of tiny bruises! I kid you not!

My lovely daughter, who got her name because the mid wife said she was born on the first day of summer, has just curled up in front of the TV with her crochet blanket and a cup of hot chocolate and I have had to go and dig out a cotton scarf to keep the chill of the back of my neck as I sit and type whilst trying to resist the temptation to turn the heating on. Get the impression I’m a bit fed up with water, rain and chilliness? Too right I am!

All that said there is thankfully just the one plus side to all this awful weather - less distractions to lure me away from my crochet and my ever piling amount of things that need to be done – apologies for the rant, it’s off my chest now - perhaps tomorrow will be nicer weather!

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Sorry Chaps!

OK, so it appears that I might have upset my ‘old man’ just a tad by implying that he spends his ‘days off’ laying on the sofa, watching the TV and drinking cider! I watched his face as he read my last blog post (Spring Cleaning) on Sunday morning over breakfast and I could see as he read it that he was not too impressed at my description of what I believed to be his relaxed attitude to things that need doing on days ‘off’. It appears that like me he thinks the only way to truly be ‘off’ is to take a trip away from home, be it to the beach, the park or the pub, and that this is the only time that we can distract our brains enough to not be thinking of just what jobs need to be done next. I agreed with him that he is a hard worker and that he does spend a lot of his free time doing stuff and it’s true, he does work hard and is always busy, but just to be sure that his belief really did hold up I decided to keep my eye on him for the rest of the day!

Alright, so TV did feature in there somewhere and a few bottles of cider were consumed, but these activities where intermingled with grass mowing, washing up, vacuuming and quite a long period of time that involved various pieces of wood, a tape measure, pencil, paper and what appeared to be detailed calculations - which hopefully means that he was busy plotting the summer time garden project which this year may involve the building of a new patio and gazebo which of course meant that he was busy planning something else to do and therefore add to his list!

After a day of (rather guiltily) spying on the lovely Mr C, I realise that I need to be a bit more careful about making assumptions about poor old men (such as mine) and that it was naughty of me to portray their sex as a group of stereotypical 1950s shirkers! The drive to be constantly doing ‘stuff’ and always having things to cross off the list is not determined by our gender, but simply by our way of life. If we lead a busy life and have loads of interests then there will always be more ‘stuff’ for us to do. What is the saying? If you need something doing – ask a busy person to do it for you. 

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Spring Cleaning

Things have been really busy here at JANIE CROW lately, what with the crochet club, workshops and some other new ventures which I will tell you about soon, so with all the activity of the past few months I decided it was time I took a couple of days off to give myself a chance to recharge my batteries and get my head in a good place ready to start again with all the things that need to be done next week. It was a spur of the moment decision yesterday morning to add an extra day to my weekend and put all things work related to the back of my mind and spend the day officially ‘off’!

tidy shelves

Usually when I have some time off, over the weekend for example, I plan what I am going to do. I make plans for haircuts, cleaning, shopping, visiting, decorating – all those things that don’t fit into my working week. I will invariably have a lie in on a Saturday morning and go for a swim session on a Sunday morning. I will always try to schedule in a family meal – where we all sit down and eat at the table TOGETHER and AT THE SAME TIME, usually polishing off Sunday evening with a movie on the TV and a few glasses of wine. Weekends are busy and filled with things to do, its not that I don’t enjoy them, but they are never particularly restful, not really what I would class as ‘me time’ or ‘time off’.

So there I was yesterday morning, feeling a bit like a naughty child who had bunked off school. I spent the morning feeling a bit smug – I went back to bed for a bit, caught up with the Sunday supplements which had been piling up for a while, even reading the reviews of TV programmes I had missed, cursing myself for not setting Sky to record them even though I rarely get time to watch them (I have the whole 3^rdseries of 6 feet under taking up a stupid amount of space on the hard drive because one day I might watch it). I took a rather long leisurely shower, had breakfast/lunch then sat and contemplated the day ahead of me – all 12 hours of it - what to do, what to do, what to do….?

Having an unexpected day off meant that I had no plans to fall back on and had to come up with something that was going to fill my day. I made a decision that the ‘thing’ that I was going to do should not involve the computer (Facebook, Pinterest, surfing etc.), was not to involve yarn, a crochet hook or a knitting needle, was not to involve cooking or washing and was not to involve spending money! Easy! Dressed and ready for my day, I wondered about my little house thinking about what to do, absent mindedly picking up bits of dirty washing from bedroom floors, clearing up coffee cups and empty crisp packets (why cant kids put packaging of any description in the bin?), running the duster along the picture rails, bleaching the sink, I ran the vacuum cleaner over the carpets, cleaned the mirrors and did the recycling; all this whilst still thinking about what I was going to do for the day.

no piles of paper here

I came up with a few ideas; I could go into town and see an exhibition, I could take the dog for an extra long walk, I could ring a friend and go for a coffee, I could start a new painting. All these options appealed to me and just as I had made the decision to take myself into town for a few hours (after all there is only so long that a girl can keep herself away from the lure of John Lewis Oxford Street and Anthropologie on Regent Street even if the trip was bound to involve spending money) the key turned in the front door and Summer was home from school! How could this have happened? How could doing silly little jobs like dusting, bleaching and sweeping have frittered the day that had stretched ahead of me away? 4pm! Blooming 4pm!

‘Crestfallen’, ‘disappointed’ and ‘cheated’ are all words that spring to mind and so very ‘annoyed’ at myself for letting the chance of a day ‘off’ slip through my fingers. There I was – 4pm in the afternoon, certainly not in a cheery frame of mind, snappy and irritable with yet another dilemma - it was now too late to do any of the things I had considered, the galleries would be shutting, the tubes would be full of people coming home from work, the friends who might have gone for coffee where probably beginning to think about Friday night dips and glasses of white wine and it was definitely not an option to start a painting as the light was beginning to dip from the back of the house. By 5pm my daughter Summer had left the house once more for a sleep over and since I was now alone again I still had a few hours of time ‘off’ to decide what to do with.

everything all put away

By 5.30 I had made my decision at long last. I would spend what few hours I had left of my ‘off’ time finishing off the jobs I had kind of started whilst contemplating my day earlier on, but instead of fiddling about with a little bit of dusting and titivating I would do my full blown spring clean – how exciting! What a marvellous decision!I moved beds and scrubbed down the walls, cleaned the architraves and paintwork and even managed to move the chest of drawers in our bedroom and re-organise the drawers. I washed the windows and rearranged my shelves; I packed away some yarn and changed the duvets. By 8pm I’d had enough so I made some soup, watched the movie ‘Captain America’ (absolutely awful by the way) and got myself ready for bed.

I am not the world’s greatest sleeper; I tend to over think things and spend lots of time wakeful in the night. This used to worry me, but over the past few years I have learnt to accept it. I have periods where I feel really tired and have to do a ‘long haul’ sleep, but mostly I use my wakeful time in the night to good advantage and often think about design work, planning and logistics. So, as I lay there last night thinking about my day, I recalled a conversation I had with a few of the ladies at last week’s crochet club workshop where the guilt factor of our knitting and crochet habits was discussed. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard people say that they only sit down and crochet or knit once all their other chores are done, others that have said they allocate a certain allotted time of the day to work on their projects, and even those who don’t do it whilst their partners are around due to the ‘guilt’ factor. I looked back on the last 10 hours and realised that the decisions I had made (or not made) about my day were also subconsciously based not only on the guilt factor, but on the necessity of me completing a job which at some point, be it sooner or later, would have to be done (because of course the world would stop turning if we didn’t all do our spring cleaning).

This made me think - WHY do we do this to ourselves? Why do we constantly feel the need to do stuff? Bet your bottom dollar that if a man had a day ‘off’ he wouldn’t spend most of it agonizing over what to do. He wouldn’t find himself categorising ‘things to do’ by necessity or have a guilt trip about following his hobby. I know that if Andy (the lovely Mr C) was planning a day off he wouldn’t think twice about doing what he would call ‘nothing’ – this surmounts to watching TV, reading his book and drinking a few bottles of cider. So why do I beat myself up about always having something to tick off the mental (in my case also physical) list of ‘things to do’?

new bunting

I don’t have an answer. I am resigned to the fact that I will live my life according to lists and timetables and that there will always be something that needs to be done. That time ‘off’ is in fact a figment of my imagination and that next time I even contemplate ‘bunking off’ I should think long and hard about the decision. Whether this is a common trait in females or just a personality thing is not the point, I have to accept that I am unlikely to change - there will always for me be this conflict over the fact that I believe ‘time off’ only exists if we physically take ourselves away from home. For now I have a clean house and perhaps the therapeutic benefits that went along with doing a really good cleaning session. I have a sparkling sink and neat shelves, clean duvets and less dust, my domestic efforts of yesterday have physical proof – the family can see what I did with my day ‘off’ and I can sit back a bit today and enjoy the fact that we can see through the windows properly and there aren’t wafts of dust when the dog wags her tail enthusiastically against the rug!

Now I’m off to get on with the rest of today. What to do, what to do, what to do…? 

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Back By Popular Demand

Almost 9 years on from it's first edition and following ridiculous shenanigans regarding prices on ebay and Amazon - Finishing Techniques For Hand Knitters is once again in print!

Most patterns readily available to hand knitters give instructions on how to knit the item, but not necessarily how to finish it, but the techniques involved in finishing a garment successfully, from choosing the appropriate methods of casting off to adding in a zipper, take a bit of time to master and achieve instinctively. In awareness of this, this book provides practical advice and step-by-step instructions for every sort of finishing technique. The reader can thus build up a store of effective methods with which to personalize and add flair to their work, whether it's embellishing a child's hat or inserting the right size button holes for a chunky cardigan.

Finishing Techniques For Hand Knitters has step by step instructions for over 50 techniques and has an 'unmatched' variety of design ideas and includes a unique directory of edgings with close up photography capturing every stage of the techniques.

The book will be republished this month in the UK and in September in the US. ISBN: 9781903975848

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Facebook Group

We have set up a company Facebook group and are in need of some friends and followers!

The group offers Facebook users the chance to keep up to date with what is going on here at JANIE CROW and of course post your own comments and suggestions. We have some exciting plans in the pipeline - we are sworn to secrecy on a few of them for now - but be assured that we will update the blog and the Facebook group as soon as we can!

I had great fun crocheting the 'f' Facebook logo for the web site and enjoyed myself so much that I even did an 'r' for Ravelry!

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Planning your holidays?

Sat here at the back of the house looking out onto the garden full of snow I am beginning to think about the warmer days of spring. If like me you are beginning to think about your holidays then you might be interested in the range of knitting holidays that are on offer these days. Debbie Abrahams and I have been lucky enough to be invited to tutor a range of workshops run by Arena travel and we are really excited about what's in store for the next year. In May we will be accompanying groups of knitters to the Shetland Islands and then in November the Northern Lights Cruise - which was such a fantastic success in 2011 - will run again.
We are especially excited about the prospect of a trip to New York in January 2012 - a trip that includes not only sightseeing tours and shopping opportunities, but also admission to the Vogue Exhibition - the US equivalent to our Knitting & Stitching Show.
If you are interested in any of these workshops then take a look at the Arena web site.

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Yarny New Year

Celebrations for a New Year take place all over the world in every culture, but this doesn’t mean that it is celebrated on the same date the world over as different cultures have chosen to celebrate it on various days and mark the occasion in different ways. Chinese New Year falls on a different date each year and can begin any time between late January and mid February. The Chinese follow their own calendar which is written according to both the Gregorian and Lunar Solar calendar systems – in 2012 Chinese New Year falls on January 23rd and it will be the year of the Dragon. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, falls on the Hebrew Calendar dates of 1 and 2 Tishrei, which is the first month of the Civil year – in 2012 Jewish New year will fall on September 16th.

In Western Europe most countries celebrate New Year’s day on January 1st and have officially done so since 1752 when the Gregorian Calendar was adopted, however for hundreds of years before this date New Year had been traditionally celebrated by Christians on March 25th with the Feast of Annunciation which is the celebration of the date when the Angel Gabriel is believed to have visited the Virgin Mary to tell her of the impending birth of Jesus – a day which falls 9 months prior to Christmas Day on December 25th. It was Julius Caesar who developed a calendar, which would more accurately reflect the seasons of the year and worked on a cycle of 365 days. The ‘Julian Calendar’ worked well enough for hundreds of years, but it was later modified by Pope Gregory 13th who recognised a slight error in calculations and reconfigured the calendar which was officially named as the Gregorian Calendar in 1582.

The tradition of New Year’s Resolutions dates back to 153 BC when Janus – a mythical King of early Rome – had the first month of the year named after him. In ancient Roman religion and mythology Janus is the god of beginnings and transitions and thus gates, doorways, endings and time. Janus had 2 faces, one on either side of his head - one face looked behind him and the other looked forwards. With 2 faces Janus could see in two directions, looking forward to the future and reflecting on past events, so it is not surprising that he became the symbol for resolutions. At midnight on December 31st Romans imagined their god looking back at the old year and simultaneously looking forward to the new one. In order to appease their God, the Romans recognised the need to reflect on the good and bad things they had done in the past year and make decisions about how they intended to behave in the forthcoming year. They began a tradition of exchanging gifts in the form of branches taken from sacred trees for good fortune. Gifts later became nuts or gold coins imprinted with a depiction of Janus.

The concept of a New Year’s resolution based on looking forwards in time and reflecting upon the past is not confined to Christianity – The Jewish have a tradition of reflecting upon wrongdoings and both seeking and offering forgiveness over the period of time known as the High Holidays which start with their New year celebrations and culminate with the Day of Atonement – Yom Kippur and the Chinese have a tradition of sweeping and cleaning their houses in the lead up to the New Year in an effort to sweep away traces of bad luck and prepare their homes for a brighter, wealthier and happier new year.

Many of us make resolutions regardless of when our New Year falls and whether or not we follow a religion. Resolutions are a commitment that we make to one or more personal goals, whether they be work, home, health or habit related. Many of us make resolutions to improve ourselves in some way so as a rule a resolution is interpreted as advantageous and it would be considered odd to make a resolution to smoke more cigarettes, eat more fatty food and do less exercise for example. The most popular goals include losing weight, quitting smoking, improve finances and education as well as making other life style changes such as reducing stress, getting more organised and perhaps even being less grumpy!

It is probably pretty easy to predict the resolutions made by Knitters and Crocheters – they usually involve using or buying either less or more yarn and learning new techniques. I have to admit that I have made the resolution to clear my yarn stash (or at least reduce it a little) over the forthcoming year many more times than once, only to end up with more yarn a year later than I had started with and so no longer make resolutions involving yarn! However Juliet Bernard – editor of The Knitter magazine – made a public announcement at the beginning of 2011 that she would not be purchasing any yarn in that year, but instead would be working through her mammoth stash. Juliet was staggered by the mountain of yarn she had accumulated over the years, a little like those poor people on diet programmes on the TV who are made to face up to the amount of chocolate or sugar they consume, but on the whole she felt that working through her stash has been a cathartic and rewarding experience. Towards the end of her year Juliet told me that, like with any addiction, giving up buying yarn was hardest in the first four months and many times she had to pulled back from the brink of breaking her resolution when tempted by new and ‘delicious’ yarns. Juliet believes that working through her stash has made her really look at the type of projects she knits and the techniques she has used. Juliet gave much of her yarn collection away and swapped a lot with other stash busters on Ravelry and she admitted that letting go of some of the yarn was really hard (especially her remaining balls of black ‘Rowan Kid Silk Night’ which had been in her collection for quite some time) but that knowing that the yarn would go to good use made the separation anxiety less acute.

Designer Debbie Abrahams told me that her New Year resolution is along a similar line to Juliet’s and is ‘to not start another knitting project until I have completed everything that I already have on the needles. I have so many things that are partly knitted - and even some completed panels that only need sewing together! My problem is that I see a new pattern or a new yarn and think, "I want that!" So I get the yarn together, start knitting...and then I see another pattern and think, "I want that as well!” And so it goes on and on and on! If I can get everything completed and in my wardrobe before I begin something new then I will be very happy!’ Alison Crowther-Smith – author of Shibori Knitted Felt, Little Luxury Knits and Lacy Knits - is also keen to keep her yarn related NY resolution: ‘In 2012 I will be working a new book which is a collaboration with another designer. This will force me to knit with some lovely Rowan yarns other than my usual 'comfort zone': Kidsilk Haze and Fine Lace! So, I resolve to work with many other qualities.’ Alison thinks this shouldn’t be too hard a resolution to keep, but does admit to being more worried about her other (non yarn related) resolution which is to run another half marathon!

Recent research suggests that many of us do not manage to stick to our resolutions and a study in 2007 showed that 78% of those who set New Year’s resolutions fail to realize their goal, but whilst this suggests a poor success rate for resolutions, the same study by Richard Wiseman at the University of Bristol also suggests that people who voiced their resolutions and set themselves reasonable goals were more likely to achieve them than those who kept them to themselves and set themselves unattainable achievements. It’s logical isn’t it – set yourself a ridiculous feat and you are setting yourself up to fail! For example, knitting 100 sweaters in 10 days is totally impossible, where as knitting 10 sweaters in 100 days might be do-able (so long as they were knitted for babies) and telling all your friends that you are going to do it means that you have to face them with an explanation as to why at the end of a year you have only in fact knitted 1000 stitches, something which in turn should mean that you will crack on and knit like crazy!

There are lots of things I would like to do in 2012 and with all the new Rowan publications hot off the press there will definitely a lot of inspiration around for me to tap into when looking for things to push and inspire me, but as yet I have not decided what my resolutions will be. There are many things that I have lined up as ‘wishes’, rather than resolutions for the year, such as knitting a sock (just the one) and using Rowan’s new lace weight yarn, but I have to admit to being a little guarded about how loudly I will admit to making a definite resolution about something as terrifying as cutting back on my yarn hoarding! Please accept my apologies - but I am going to stick within my comfort zone and keep to the resolutions I make every year – eat less, drink less, exercise more, knit more, earn more & spend more – safe in the knowledge that none of the above will materialize and thus not affect my karma! If, unlike me, however, you would like to act on your resolution or discuss it with others then perhaps you would like to voice your NY resolution in your knitting group, on the Rowan International Forum, or perhaps write about it on your blog. Just be sure to say it to as many people as possible and loud enough so that everyone can hear it! Good Luck and Happy New Year!

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