Well, that was fast, wasn’t it? February is over and my temperature blanket has grown by one more month, twenty nine hexagons, two blank hexagons, and one and a bit rows. I ended my January update with an earworm that had really started to bug me (‘January‘, by Pilot), happily thinking that that was it, month over and therefore earworm over. But of course that’s ridiculous. After parking ‘January’, my brain idly wondered if there were songs about February, and … boom … just like that, another earworm entered my brain. I haven’t been able to dislodge it since. This …
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My beloved aunt died last week. I have said the most important things I want to say about her – thoughts I knew would be shared, understood, and similarly articulated by every single person who knew her – at her funeral. And these words were heard by everyone who knew her personally because her service was live-streamed around the world. So I won’t write about her beautiful soul specifically here, but instead reflect on how her sudden absence has upturned my thoughts now. I went to bed late on the night of Monday 19th with my head organising my tasks …
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Playing ‘yarn chicken’ is the subject of memes and online jokes. We’ve all been there: one eye on our work and the other on the tail end of our yarn getting shorter and shorter. It is soooo frustrating when the game is lost, and the tail end slips into our work half a row short of the end of the pattern. Or perhaps you’ve settled down to start a new project, only to find your stash doesn’t have everything you need. No yarn, no new project. It’s a variation on the yarn chicken game, but one where you run out …
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January is over, which means I’ve completed approximately one twelfth of my temperature blanket, excluding the final border. I plan to note highlights from my temperature blanket each month so I have details to look back on in future years. The weather, temperatures and a massive ear-worm of a song have been ever present in my mind throughout the month. I thought checking temperatures every day would be a chore, but I’ve found one of the unexpected side-effects of making a temperature blanket is a deeper connection to my natural world. Something I am really enjoying and appreciating. I am …
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I am cursed; I know enough about colour to know I don’t know enough about colour. I lack the easy confidence and freedom of the happy-go-lucky which says, ‘Oh cool, those are nice colours,’ and then clusters them happily and irreverently together. I am instead plagued by the indecisiveness of, ‘Those are nice colours, but will they really be right together?’ The rules of colour escape me, and I lack colour intuition. It’s torture. I’ll give you an example: my temperature blanket. Critical to a temperature blanket is the choice of colours representing the temperature scale. I know enough to …
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My sister and I live in two vastly different countries. I live in Scotland, in Europe, in the Northern hemisphere; my sister lives in Zimbabwe, in Africa, in the Southern hemisphere. When it is winter in Scotland, it is summer in Zimbabwe. I grew up with hot, sometimes humid, Christmases. Because it is warm for a lot of the year, houses in Zimbabwe are built to be kept cool, while our homes in the UK are insulated in anticipation of cold winters. It’s difficult to explain, but I’ve long suspected that this makes our perception of ‘temperature’ a bit skewed. …
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Dun Rig is the name given to the highest summit in the Tweedsmuir Hills in the Scottish Borders region. Dun means ‘fort’ in Gaelic, and ‘Rig’ means ridge in Scots. This pattern was designed and made in autumn, my favourite season. The views from Dun Rig at this time of the year are of lush green fields and forests and autumnal golds and russets. With the sun at a low golden setting, casting long desaturated shadows across the land, it really feels like the opulence of Christmas is just around the corner. The Dun Rig Placemat The Dun Rig Placemat …
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