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Momently

I have finished my jaywalker socks. Hurrah!

on foot above

I was showing them off to Secondspawn this morning. “Will they shrink if you put them in the washing machine?” was his first and rather unexpected reaction, but probably prompted by the recent deliberate shrinkage of the so-called rasta hat to more beret-like dimensions. Having been assured that they were made of special non-shrinking sock wool he then advised me to wear them today. “Oh no”, I replied, shocked at the suggestion, “they’re far too special for walking to school in”.

WRONG.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

This is something I’ve been doing all my life. Saving things up for the “special occasion” which very seldom, if ever, manifests itself. Is this the right occasion? is it really, truly going to be special enough? am I sure? This results in cupboards and drawers and boxes full of things waiting, gathering dust, decaying gently, utterly unused.

There is, as my father still says with annoying frequency, no time like the present. He generally employs the term to persuade me to do something I’d rather not. But it’s just as applicable to other circumstances. Why is why I’m wriggling my toes inside my lovely socks right now, as I type.

Next project onto the needles is a pair of thick hiking socks for J who also sent me this, which I feel is appropriate.

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Infinite incommensurability

Word pouches clutched the heart of earth as the lead-lark plummeted. Schrödinger’s quantum addressivity exploded in its firework multiplicity. Ambiguously undulating pigeons frighted chaos and old night.

There was also liquid quintessence of christmas pudding with emperor’s ice cream.

sherry with a spot of ice cream

And mushrooms.

mushrooms

But not necessarily in that order.

travis

A damn fine, unboxed, cat.

cannibal jaywalker

And I knat.

UPDATE: And if you want some depth and sense and beauty on the matter, go here.

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Highly suggestible with great frontal lobes

That is going to be my strap-line should I ever decide to advertise for Mr Darcy. Not only is it pithy it also has the benefit of being a conclusion arrived at by rigourous (I presume) scientific testing.

Yes, I went over to the Maudsley again today for more guinea-piggery for Dr Bell and his hypnotism research. Today was great fun, a bit like an extended puzzle page from the paper. I have no idea what it’s got to do with hypnotism but apparently it was to test frontal lobe function. And I’ve got a pretty whizzy pair, it would seem.

I like this research business. Not only is it entertaining and gets me out of the house, it also tells me I’m very. Very suggestible. Very frontal lobal. But the pleasure from veryness is bizarre. I don’t want to be very. I want to be normal, average, in the middle, cozy, surrounded. I used to aspire to very as a solace, a justification. Further work required.

This morning the misty light was not sufficiently bright to be pearlescent. It was more moonstoneish. “Look up!” said Secondspawn on the way to school, pointing to the black silhouette of jagged branches against a grey sky. “It looks like we’re in a black and white film”. Colour was, indeed, mostly absent. But there was enough of it about for these pictures to work better without the colour entirely drained from them, I think.

tree drip

Is it not amazing, the physical property of water when a liquid?

bud drips

On large things the drips are large. On small they are small.

stem drips

The mist was directional – the hairs on that stem were moist to the south, dry to the north.

hip drips

I loved the way this web was slung around that hip. And I’ve always longed to take a decent picture of the moss that grows out of wall-mortar. This tiny clump was particularly bejewelled.

moss drips

And finally, as they say on the news, what the hell is this? The outline of a glove, certainly, but how did it get on the top of a bus shelter in such a way? The last signs of a disintegrated fabric having rotted away over a period of years? Or some prank, perhaps, by a student at the art college outside which it is situated. Puzzling and rather lovely.

glove? top of a bus shelter

Very little knitting done though.

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Words fail me

I take a short break from the housework to report the following.

Earlier, in another part of the woods.

Firstspawn: “I can’t hoover my room because it won’t suck up the bits.”
Harassed mother (distractedly): “Maybe it’s full. Have you tried emptying it?”
Fs: “Yes, but it still doesn’t suck properly.”
Hm (concentrating mostly on cooking / cleaning / knitting / washing / helping with homework / blogging / feeding creatures) casts half an eye over hoover, sees it is indeed empty: “But does it still turn on? make a noise?”
Fs: “Oh yes. It makes a noise.”
Hm: “What do you mean, it won’t suck up the bits?”
Fs: “Well all those staples that got spread across the floor. It won’t get them off the carpet.”
Hm: “Ok, I’ll look at it later.”
Fs: “So can I play my wii / DS / go on the computer now?”
Hm (sighing): “I suppose so.”

It is now later. The children are away for the weekend.

I have examined the hoover. The problem was not hard to discern. Lodged at the end of the hose was a sock. An entire black school sock. I removed it and reassembled the machine.

It still didn’t suck. Disassembled it again. And there was another one. An entire navy blue and red striped sock.

So. Rather than expend the energy on actually bending down and picking them up this slack-jawed knuckle-grazing lazy drooling lump had actually hoovered up his socks. Sucked them up. Into the machine. Hoovered up his socks.

*thump* *thump* *thump*

(Sound of head making contact with wall. Repeatedly.)

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Conclusive evidence

conclusive evidence

…that one skein is not enough.

A kitchen balance is useful in so many ways. On this occasion it is showing me that the first of the pair has already used more than half the available yarn, as I had feared might be the case. On other occasions it demonstrates things like Little  Blue Teddy being heavier than Baby Bear despite the latter having larger dimensions.

Oh bother.

I have a choice. Unravel the item and make a pair shorter than instructed so one skein will be sufficient or get another skein and have 3/4 of it left over.

Common sense and fiscal prudence dictate the former. Love of yarn and an excuse to go back to the shop tug in the other direction.