Central Heating for Jenny

Mirasol PaquPura Wrap (100% alpaca)

This began life as a comparatively small scarf, but the alpaca was such a joy to work with that restrictions seemed a shame. So I kept adding new panels until it became the almost-poncho you now see, and then got thinking -

“Now, who do I know in this world who needs to stay really, really warm?”

and at once thought of Jenny, who hated being cold so much that she moved to Spain.

And then I recalled a night many years ago when we - including Jenny - all went to a party with every intention of leaving at a respectable hour as there was work to go to next day. But during the party a heavy snowfall occurred - so heavy that for years afterwards people spoke about the year of the bad snow - and nobody could leave, which meant it became a very late night indeed.  

Next morning, Jenny, a few other friends and myself, feeling we should at least try to get to work, set out for the bus stop.  Jenny is now a quietly stylish woman with the same porcelain-pale translucent skin as she had back then. As a younger woman, though, her dress sense was a lot more flamboyant, especially at parties. Which is why, en route to the bus stop and up to her elevated knees in rapidly rising snow, she still had on a daringly slashed black-and-white super-light cat suit, sky high stilletto heeled boots, light jacket and little else.  We all slipped, slid and toiled through a biting wind as well as the tranches of snow, hanging on to each other for support, but in the end the only solution to Jenny's plight was to have one of the boys hawk her along on his back.  

When we eventually made the bus stop, someone said, "Look!"  and pointed at Jenny in wonder, and with the fascination of the exhausted we observed that she was literally turning blue from head to toe before our eyes... real true blue.... with her lips a slightly darker, more navy hue... as with shaking hands and chattering teeth she gamely tried to light a bright pink cigarette with a gold filter....  One of the boys gallantly offered his jacket, but happily for the survival chances of both, a bus arrived miraculously quickly.  

And as this is probably the closest to a central heating system as I’m ever likely to knit, I’m now absolutely certain Jenny should have it.  

!Olé Jenny!

Productiveness

I always dabbled but there've been three intense knitting outbreaks in my life so far  – one in childhood - very short and to the point when I was sick, but spectacularly prolific in multicoloured acryllic tea cosies with pompoms; this current middle+ years one - fairly voluminous and still on-going.  Another took place back in the ‘eighties.... 

When I was a student, I'd worked part-time for a charity.  And a few years later down the line I heard that one of its main movers was making a total career change and setting up a yarn shop. As she'd been so established where she was, this was a courageous and unexpected step.  And so the first time I called in, it was to offer moral support and congratulations, and with no serious intention of knitting. Which is why in the ensuing weeks nobody was more surprised than me when I actually started to knit .. and kept on knitting.... through what seemed like everlasting skeins of butter coloured cotton which started out pristine, but ended up very grubby by the time I was done (winding, knitting; cursing) (ripping; rewinding, re-effing-knitting) x umpteen...

And in spite of all the pain, I finished the sweater and wore it for many years afterwards.  

Looking back now, it also seems as if I accelerated from the butter sweater very quickly indeed to a point of being on personal terms with every stitch and strand of most of the knitwear in all the old photo albums from that era in my home - and I remember each one very well - this was a great pattern; this was murder to work with; the one she had on was dreamy, but I was violently allergic to that wool... and so on

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On the photographic evidence too, many of us were knitting at the same pace at that time, and due in no small part to the shop owner's enthusiasm for her craft and also her new lifestyle. It was incredibly infectious: the shop became a hub in a way that was ahead of its time, and she was eternally supportive in taking time to unravel and explain our mistakes. 

A beginner should aim high, was her theory – absolutely no point in starting on something unchallenging – take on something amazing to motivate you to keep going through the rough patches and to stop you from becoming bored - Great advice on a lot of scores, actually, but which I've always been happy to pass on to anyone who ever asks - in the knitting sphere at least. 

So thanks for a lot more than the memories, Barbara! 

In The Old Style

Moss Stitch Cardigan in Paloma - Debbie Bliss

My mother wasn’t just a Latin and Irish teacher in her heyday: for many years she was also vice principal and acting principal of a Dublin second level school for girls, which ran like clockwork despite the fact that they were down a woman through the head nun’s illness.  The order wouldn’t formalize the situation and give the job of principal to a non-nun, but because a job needed to be done, my mother filled the gap and neither sought nor expected acknowledgment or payment for a monumental workload. 

This included an annual manual drawing up of a timetable to cater to 600 pupils, a teaching staff of umpteen hues of training, entitlement, seniority or sanity; and also had to take in myriad subject choices, room changes, departmental requirements and last minute fallings out of line from every category.  Her main tools were her own ingenuity, pencils, erasers and a ruler…  She absolutely never wasted paper, so throughout the year, she’d scavenge out-of-date diaries or office ledgers from anywhere she could, and somewhere around May the pencil draft listing of names and class numbers would kick off, running right through the summer holidays, and culminating in a series of enormous handwritten-in-ink charts at the beginning of August.  At the eleventh hour, someone invariably changed job, moved to another school or dropped out and her joy at the discovery of Tippex left a permanent mark in my memory!  

No more than waste of paper, she doesn’t go in much for lavish emotional displays:  she just has a knack of always being there when she's really needed. She knows how she likes to dress too, and I made this Paloma cardigan for her 85th birthday.   It's a bit big, and she handed it back with a few other general corrections, but she wears it a lot, the other bridge players like it, so on balance she'd probably give it a B+