Warmth Under A Wandering Star

Fleet by Martin Storey

in Rowan Brushed Fleece

 65% merino wool; 30% alpaca; 5% polyamide

for Tom

This yarn twists and bends any way you like into a warm and deceptively lightweight fabric… The colour is a thin felted patina over a white foam-like wool base which shows  through occasionally in very small gaps - I'm sure Rowan have thought about this, but I'm hoping that it will only blend and not fray after washing. I absolutely loved the pattern – it’s constantly interesting and because it’s worked mostly on 6mm needles, moves along at an encouragingly brisk clip.

Sandymount strand this morning...

I made this for my son, the natural camouflageur…  I just coined that word especially to describe him  and its definition is “harbouring strong penchant for visually blending”.  He picked both colour and style himself.

.....  haven in the centre of Dublin city..

He’s wasting his time there of course, because no matter how much he attempts to merge, he’ll always stand out on account of his lateral-thinking, huge sense of fun and generous nature.  Auburn hair, too, has a tendency to catch the sun.  As his mother I’m bound to say such things, but it's also worth noting that many others unrelated do too - Tom has the gift of charisma as well as brains.

This is as good a location as any to point out that I’m particularly seriously proud that the free spirited, healthily subversive teenager of ten years ago, who was not always appreciated or encouraged in every forum, had the patience and tenacity to hone his intelligence into so many practical skills, ideals, qualifications, positive enterprises and adventures in countries ranging from the US, Mongolia, Haiti, India, Ecuador to all over Europe and back.  He's probably tired of hearing me say that the longest way round is often the shortest way home, but now he's actually lived it and lived it well.  And in fact, he’s living abroad at present, which suits him as he was definitely born under a wandering star.            

Thank you again, Milla of  The Stitch Shop for covering over my many slip ups in the sew-up... it makes all the difference.   

Grey

...knitting rather a lot in grey at the moment and I keep making mistakes.  As a diversion, I went out in this weather to a movie everyone had raved about but I wasn't so keen... .

Sometimes you do better in terms of entertainment on the street. For instance, I got chatting with an old style Dubliner at the table next to me over lunch, who was very wound up about a banner headline proclaiming that eight people had been tested for ebola in Ireland...

"Worser even than AIDS - at least they have a cure for that".

"Well in the beginning they didn't", I felt I had to say. "Which is not to say that what's happening in West Africa isn't scandalous, of course..."

"Look!" he said,  brandishing his newspaper - he had a blue swallow tattoo on his hand.   "In black-and-white", he said - "here in this country..", 

"But the tests were clear !", I said  "That's just a headline! When you read further, you see the people were tested, and didn't have it.  Fortunately!".

"Is that so?", he said, clearly not wholly convinced.

To mollify him, I said, "Mind you,  people will probably have to start dying in serious numbers at this end of the world before they really go to work on a cure".

"They never tell you the truth", he muttered "The authorities. Can't believe the gospel out any of their mouths".

"Hard to know who or what to believe alright these days".

A lull followed: food arrived for me... He didn't seem to be eating himself.

He spoke again - "I hope I'm not interrupting", he said.  "But I can talk about sickness. You see, two year ago I beat the rheumatoid arthuritis". 

"Rheumatoid arthritis - that's really terrible..." I said, and meant it.

"I stopped it in its tracks be stopping the wheat. Pure poison, the wheat.  I read a book be a man, and went and seen him give a talk.  Never looked back since.  I'm living proof and a medical mystery to the doctors.   The wheat can be held accountable for a lot over and beyond my own personal health complaints, I can tell you...  many cancers too. It's all down there in black-and-white in that man's book. If only people knew, they'd be shocked", he said.   

An adjacent group of students from the nearby College of Surgeons were beginning to glance over.

"Well you look great to me considering.  I've heard rheumatoid arthritis is tough", I said.

"I hope I'm not spoiling your lunch" (which was on wheat bread), he said politely.  

"Not at all, go on", I said, and he did.  

"The natural way is the only way", he pronounced.  "That and the supplements you can buy through the man as wrote the book - Stick with the natural - that's  what saved me where no hospital could. Hospitals and doctors know nothing - they're all brainwashed and murdering people with their side effects" 

At this point, some of the College of Surgeons students were beginning to show signs of chipping in.

 "Have you ever heard about a man who says there's no god?" I asked so there wouldn't be a fight.  "He says we're just carriers of intelligent ideas that keep coming back and back again in different ways. Don't know what I think about it, but it's an interesting way of looking at ..." 

"Has he written a book?" he asked definitively.  

"Yes,"

"What's his name?"

So I told him and he took out a bookie's biro and wrote it down laboriously on my food receipt.

When he was finished, "I'm not what you'd call a classically religious man", he said, "But I read in black- and-white in the bible that god sent his only forgotten son to earth to save mankind".  

"His only...Well I suppose we'll be alright so", I said.

Theatre Of Moths, Men... and Women

...still on a theatre wave and, if you can, for story telling prowess alone, see Book Burning ... Also see it for the intricate and beautiful installation that unfolds from a huge trunk along with the story, and which itself can be viewed on stage afterwards.  This is a utopian, dystopian narrative:  a fable fashioned out of the past decade and told in wonderfully circuitous and quirky form by Pieter De Buysser.  It is about Sebastian, a friend of the  narrator  who, having been injured in a factory accident, is emitting an escalating dazzling light that causes him to be shrouded in moths and develop particular skills.  

Although this is an unmistakably continental European production, and is performed tirelessly as well as told, the underlying narrative reflects a distinct current prevailing thought system linking bravery of the ancients (Alexander the Great, Ulysses) with contemporary politics of Wikileaks, Bradley (sic) Manning and Edward Snowden.  "Nobody"'s victory over Polyphemus, the cyclops, is  linked with the Occupy movement, and additionally, with today's so-called nobodies disaffected with the political and economic mainstream.  The innovation of technology and the might of its structural algorithms are a direct expression of the human brain's ability to confound presumptions:  the wild card at the core of life.

These heroic inherited DNA forces are presented as both inspiration and justification for a call to overthrow blind acceptance of "corporativ-ism" - Pieter De Buysser's own word - meaning a way of life which he likens to fascism.    It culminates in a book burning, but in this case the burning is of the presumptions of those -whether well disposed or not - who seek to write our future according to their own intrinsically limited predictions. 

In the fable, the agent of change is Thilde, daughter of Sebastian, whose mother died tragically young, leaving her to be almost exclusively influenced by her doting if controlling father, and then, crucially,  by a young goat herd lover - a creature of the mountains, forest and nature, who acts as an inadvertent enabler to her following her own code which includes inspiring others to do likewise.