Alternative Knitting

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Knitting Bookstore
to browse and drool

Anne's
s*t*a*s*h!
(blush)

52 or 79 things I have discovered about me, life and knitting. Or fewer. Or more. Currently 77

What Anne does for a living

Work on needles

New for 2006

Rachel's lime green cashcotton sweater

Unexpected knitting in greens

Anne's finished projects 2006
Amethyst cashcotton sweater
Lacy hemp shawl

2005 2004 2003 2002

Online yarn stores and resources

Knitty
Threadbear
Ozeyarn
Martina for sock yarn
Kangaroo
House of Hemp
Ford Barton
Laughing Hens
Hip Knits

SECRET

I've gone blank

Bodywork and other training
I've done a shed-load of training in the last few years, some in new areas, some pretty advanced. These are the training establishments I recommend for outstanding integrity, professionalism and allround excellence:

Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking

Jean-Pierre Barral Visceral Osteopathy

John F Barnes
Myofascial Release

Upledger Institute Craniosacral Therapy

Jing Advanced Massage
(I also teach with these guys)

Pilates Training Solutions

April 29th

After the break
Hoping everyone has had a good break. Yarn break? Comfort break? Tea break? It's too long ago to remember, isn't it. I've taught a couple of courses and have been to a conference in London over a four-day weekend. Back to clinic on the Tuesday - harsh! the more I train, the more interesting it gets. I always know there was something significant - synchronicity at work - when I return from a course and wonder how I did before without that approach in clinic. Thus it was for Peter Levine's work.

Plain old magic
There was an Upledger symposium this weekend, John Upledger lecturing and demonstrating (he was also at the conference I went to). My colleague Rachel and several of our students were there. That's real magic; he talks about releasing fascial adhesions subatomically. I've not seen a medical approach which is at the same time so technically refined and dependent on sublime touch and perception. It seems that the more you have the academic stuff in the hands, the more you can leave it behind. It's called 'beyond technique' and a lot of therapists and especially trainers promise it, but very few actually live up to it :)

I've remembered what the break was: Bunny Break. Plenty of bunnies rescued. Daffodils, narcissi, WW III amongst the birds, frog tenors battling it out in the ponds, cats testing the garden benches for sun-roasting, the first bottle of wine down by the ponds, the gunnera has started. Phoebe went skating on water again, probably after the ducklings, and returned to the house soaked up to the armpits and trailing pondweed, yelling her head off. I was seeing my client out who happened to be a cat-besotted animal physio and she got most of the story from Phoebe first hand.

Knitting news
I have been knitting... a little here, a little there. Rachie's sweater, front is done, back is started. A client of mine is just about to adopt a sprog, after years of enduring endless and fruitless nhs fertility rites and then adoption vetting procedures... baby blanket / jacket is due, I think. Never mind the baby, my client needs something to help her re-entry to the human race.

April 17th

The Hat Pin
They erected a reputation on her hat pin. The hat pin was 6 inches long, bright sharpened stainless steel, disguised as a symbol, guardian of morality; validated through pierced lilac silk, an emblem of modesty, covering her head, holding down the spring in her curl and in her step. Established men marvelled at the steel's violence. It offered bedrock with menace. To be threatened with bedrock is a dreadful thing. Sixty years' duty, she lived out her persona, wearing her angel of vengeance, a warning to those who dared draw back the mantle. As soon as she was deemed to be of retirement age, redundant, she took the pin and inserted it forcefully but accurately into her retired stockbroker husband's brain, through the eye, as he regarded the plummeting of her portfolio. On a Scottish isle the hat pin served as an impromptu drop spindle for the wool her lover teased from the fences and hedges as she tended their property.

April 16th

Norah Jones
Remember Norah Jones? Of course you do. So do I now. I've just rediscovered her on the iPod. Don't know how she got lost, or why I ignored her for so long, but she's lovely. For some reason I'd filed her with the Foo Fighters. I also found some Miles Davis in with Never The Bride.

Crochet Unravelled
Claire Bojczuk, who is a fine woman indeed, has sent me a little crochet booklet to review: Crochet Unravelled. I say she's a fine woman, because she has produced an amazingly clear and simple guide to learning how to crochet - with right and left handers treated with the same respect. The diagrams and drawings are real, that is you can recognize what's going on in them - and she never assumes that as a left-hander you'll just 'work it out for yourself'. All the instructions are 'step by step' and she not only gives written instructions but introduces symbol charts once you've got the hang of the basic techniques. You'll find all the different stitches and techniques on their own pages for easy reference, starting with how to hold the hook and how to make the initial slipknot through to increasing and decreasing and working in the round; nothing is assumed or left to chance.

Claire also explains UK and USA terminology (same words - different stitches!), yarn thicknesses and hook sizes, tension, ball bands and how to read the information on them, finishing, joining work, right and wrong sides and keeping track of your work and the pattern. This is truly a booklet for the complete beginner - you don't need any kind of prior experience, or, indeed, to be a knitter to understand what to do.

There are 11 projects which are described clearly and take you through the basics and beyond. You will find baby bootees and blanket, hair scrunchies, bracelets, bags, pillows, washcloths, a scarf and lace edgings, with and without beads. You can get the book from Pottage Publishing or from amazon.co.uk.

April 9th

What is it with books and knitting?
Isn't it odd how one month one can whizz through several books and another time one becomes stuck, dry, nowt in, nowt out. Last month I staggered through some technical stuff, this April it's flowing again. The same goes for knitting. Usually during the same month. So how do I get to both knit and read large amounts during one period and not during another? My schedule hardly changes, I'm always fully booked and sometimes overbooked. Huh? Maybe it has something to do with my pulled-togetherness or otherwise. I have to say I refuse to pull myself together in any other way than that which is really me. Fed up with that. Been there, not a happy place, I don't seem to be able to do what 99% of women do unquestioningly. That's probably why I became un-pulled-together in the first place :)

Unspeak
One little gem of a book I'm reading at the moment is Steven Poole's Unspeak - "mode of speech that persuades by stealth. E.g. 'climate change', 'war on terror', 'ethnic cleansing', 'road map'." Read it in conjunction with Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant for interesting angles on (re-)framing to persuade and deceive.

To balance up philosophy with fantasy, I've ordered a whole raft of books by Melissa Scott, and I've got Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog still to enjoy.

Cat flap too small
Ten minutes ago we spotted two young fallow deer in the field opposite the house. That's DS1 Chris, me, Phoebe and Cleo. The felines were riveted. Lunch? After a short moment of concern Chris and I concluded they wouldn't get them through the catflap, so not to worry. Wouldn't put it past them to give it a go, though. This morning Cleo brought in a partridge which we rescued, in one piece but missing a couple of feathers. I know there's a size difference between partiridge and fallow deer, you know there's a size difference, the cats seem oblivious to size differences.

April 4th

How to explore one's very own brain from within. My rollercoaster morning...
...started with putting in my contact lenses at the breakfast table, staring at a cup of tea and a bowl of Waitrose best apricot and orange crunchy. Usually it takes a couple of minutes for the wearing solution to disperse and for my watery vision to become beautifully clear. This morning, however, only in one eye. The right eye remained blurry. Lense lost! Client arriving in 10 minutes, I searched everywhere. DH joined in with maglight, absolutely nothing. The only alternative was that I had lost it behind the eye, where it can occasionally slip if one blinks with gusto when there is still vast amounts of lubrication on the eyeball. Uuurrgghh! I mean literally behind the eye. Anyone who wears contact lenses will know that this is a distinct possibility, the lense can slip over the top and down the other side, then it's the devil's own task to coax it back out again. I had two minutes to try to spot it behind the eyeball, which involves pulling the lid up as far as possible whilst rolling the eye down, hoping that the rim of the lense will pop up over the back of the eyeball. See what I mean? Despite my best occulo-athletic attempts, no luck.

Client arrived and I treated him with one lense in, the other awol. During this hour I managed to persuade myself that the odd feeling I had behind the right eye was not just muscle tension as that eye tried desperately to keep up with the other, but the feeling of a hidden lense pushing forwards from behind.

15 minutes inbetween clients, had another go at delving behind the eyeball. No luck.

Next client, tension growing, realisation dawning on me that not only did I have a lense lost, probably trekking half way accross my brain by now, but that I was going to have to get an appointment for an eye and lense test and buy some more lenses, as well as hike up to the eye hospital...

Next break, DH Mike all set to drive me to eye hospital after last client today and phone optometrist for appointment. Can't feel anything behind my eye. One more lid-stretching attempt. I've never viewed so much of my own eyeball at once. Feel slightly queezy.

Third client slips by like a dream. Neck problems, migraines and stuck shoulder. No thinking required, just unstick her and do lots of soothing stuff. Can move both eyes without any sensation behind either of them. Maybe the lense has really wandered off into the grey jungle where it's hacking its way through millions of braincells with no sensory perception - that's why they are not screaming!

DH Mike all geared up now. Did I want to go to the hospital now? Should I phone first? In a moment of sanity I remember that the space behind the eye is closed and there is no easy way in to the brain, certainly not one that a lense could navigate, unless it was a very desperate lense. All they need to do at the hospital is pop the eye out, have a look behind, rescue the lense, and put the eye back in. Easy. Panic rises, I swallow it. Mike has wide-eyed fixed glare as he contemplates holding my hand as we gaze (well he does, I don't) at the back of my eyeball in case the lense is still stuck to it...

Chris DD1 shouts down from upstairs: "Mum, there's a contact lense in the bottom of the contact lense box". Phew. All of a sudden the sun is shining, the birds are tweeting and I love all my clients and colleagues and students and everyone else, including everyone who has ever wound me up or let me down. The world is a beautiful place.

April 2nd

Another month - another start
And finally it looks as if spring is on the way! As I type, the sun is coming through. Yesterday Mike DH and I drove up to Manchester (5 hours each way if there are no delays) to pick up DD Toria from uni. Apart from a couple of cloudbursts it was fine all the way. Drving up the west side of England is lovely. The land feels so old.

I drive up and Mike drives back, and on the return leg I started the lime cashcotton sweater for Rachel. Got to the end of the body shaping decreases on the front, then ground to a halt as I had forgotten how many rows to knit straight before I start increasing again.

So, to the point: it's April, there is sun, I'll pull myself together, then :) Thanks to Suski for the image.

Hemp yarn
I still don't know what to do with it. I've discovered that a tension of 24st / 10cm produces a very nice stocking stitch, glossy and smooth, so I could write a pattern for a 3/4 sleeved wide-neck top. With some kind of texture that doesn't disturb the tension too much. Or maybe some colour. I'm just not inspired at the moment, but I want to knit the hemp :( Maybe an assymetrical top. Or one with removable sleeves and extra-long funnel neck in case I don't manage to pull myself together :)