A Small and [Un]orthodox Mess

This week - C being away - the house is uncharacteristically tidy so I have had to create some mess for Messy Tuesday. However, fortunately I had the perfect excuse having just received an Easter card from my cousin. Orthodox Easter is on Sunday, and once again, despite my best intentions, I failed to buy any Easter cards when it was Easter here. I even went into a shop and looked at them thinking "I really must go back and buy those before Easter is over and they take them all away", and I still didn't get round to it.


Needless to say I didn't have enough time to create anything to compete with Dina's meticulously cross-stitched Easter egg, so instead I spent a happy evening cutting up little bits of brightly coloured paper, sticking them to cards (and myself, and the table), and leaving trails of Uhu around the place like some sort of weird solvent-based snail.


Still this was a fairly cheerful occupation and greatly improved by the fact that, for the first time this year, it was actually light enough, and warm enough, when I got home from work for me to sit at the kitchen table with the back door open. Thank goodness for a bit of sunshine at last. Things in the garden are beginning to wake up. Lazarus* the fuchsia is getting his first few tentative leaves and the fern, which three weeks ago I was on the point of digging up because I was sure it was dead, has turned out not to be.


I also finally plucked up the courage to plant my sweet peas out into their new willow basket-cum-obelisk. I bought it months ago, but it's been so cold I haven't dared try it out for fear of frost. It's not the easiest thing to plant access-wise and I got myself tangled in it on a few occasions and found myself contemplating a week spent on my hands and knees in the garden waiting, either for someone at work to remark upon my non-appearance, or for C to come back and find me kneeling like some demented dog with its head trapped in the railings. However I did manage to extricate myself eventually and was mercifully spared the indignity of having to go round to the neighbours with an overgrown lobster pot on my head and plead for help. I think it should look quite pretty if they grow, and it means I can have sweet peas on the patio, thus saving valuable border space for something else.



*So called because despite severe (if unintentional) maltreatment every winter [i.e. being left out in the frost, being put in the greenhouse because its warmer and then forgotten about and left to die of drought, being confined to the same pot and the same (by this time) nutriant-free compost for the best part of five years...] so that I am always convinced that this time I must have killed it, it always comes back to life in the spring.

Playing catch-up.

I have been somewhat remiss in writing Messy Tuesday posts recently. Needless to say this has nothing to do with any lack of mess and much more to do with lack of time and opportunity to photograph mess. Indeed, the tide of mess has been gradually engulfing us despite our best efforts to keep it at bay.

The original plan for last Tuesday was to post the tremendous mess which is our loft, full of abandoned boxes, badly stacked suitcases and the previous owner's enormous collection of early 80s DIY magazines (they explain a lot), and then to follow it with the impressively tidy space which would replace it once we had sorted through all the clutter, re-lagged and boarded the usable part, and converted it into a sensible, useful storage space.

Unfortunately this didn't quite happen. The first step in the plan was to buy the "dissipation units" for the downlighters set into the hall ceiling. I know that a dissipation unit sounds like an small but organized body dedicated to encouraging hitherto upstanding people to get pissed and hang about with bad company, but actually its a thing to dissipate the heat from the light so that you can put insulation over the top without running the risk of the whole lot going up in flames. We saw them in B&Q in Manchester and so assumed they'd be readily available, but no. After several days trying every hardware and electric store in the district we drew a complete blank so the loft continues to be unboarded and full of junk. And having abandoned all hope of sorting it out I couldn't in fact be bothered to go up there to photograph it for Messy Tuesday.


Anyway, this week we decided to tackle the mess which is the hollow wall at the bottom of the garden. This is designed to be a planter, but it has always had one end missing and we've always said that one day we'll rebuild it while, for the past two years, simply living with a plant-pot wedged into the end in a forlorn attempt to camouflage the crumbly bit.

Once again things didn't go according to plan. For a start, when we started to dig the contents out to make some room it turned out that only the top 5 inches actually contained soil. The rest was made up of bits of old carpet, a large quantity of electrical cable, some rubble, a plastic water pistol, a shelf bracket... We didn't look any further than that.


Secondly, removing the three broken bricks from the end of the wall resulted in the rest of it coming away in large chunks - not the intended result. So, we gave up with this too, stacked the bits back up, replaced the pot, and continue to live with the mess. Still, at least it gives me a messy Tuesday post.

Pin Money

This week I have spent a grand total of £4.40 on sewing pins, and this is the reason for it.


I finally got round to finishing the incredibly frilly Greek doily last Sunday when this happened.


The snow was very pretty and we spent a cheerful morning wandering the fields behind the house taking pictures of things which aren't really supposed to have snow on them. But picturesque though it was (and good fun for trying out the lens on the new camera) it did rather put a crimp on my plans to spend the day gardening.


Still, every cloud, as they say: instead I spent most of the afternoon sitting in bed, chatting on the phone, drinking tea, and crocheting, which meant after weeks of only working on it in 15 minute bursts on the train, I was finally able to make some serious progress with the doily and produce a FO.

However, having completed the actual crochet I have been struggling unsuccessfully to block it all week for the simple reason that it has so many frills and furbelows that needed pinning out, that I ran out of pins on three separate occasions. Having raided my "reserve" pin box and then been to buy more on two consecutive lunchtimes, I eventually finished pinning it out on Thursday night. It took a grand total of 314 pins and after pulling them all out this morning my fingernails will never be the same again. But it is finished and considerably more successful than my last doily-related effort I think.

Going to pot

This week's Tuesday mess comes courtesy of the greenhouse and my ever-expanding plastic plant-pot collection.

When I first took possession of the greenhouse I cleared it all out with great gusto muttering disgustedly at the mess that had been left behind and protesting that I would never let it get into such a dreadful state. For the first few months everything was in its own place and order reigned.

Then gradually and inevitably the situation started to slip. Things didn't get put back where they came from. Plants which had died off got dumped on the side and left to be dealt with later. Plastic detritus that couldn't go into the compost but was too big for the kitchen bin started to collect in little piles awaiting the long-promised trip to the tip, only to be forgotten by the time we actually went. And the windows got green and smeary, and moss started to grow in the joints of the frame. And somewhere, in the in dark corners behind the paraffin-heater that I have never used because on those nights when it's cold enough to need a heater in the greenhouse it is, lets face it, far too cold to go outside and start fiddling about with paraffin-heaters, there in the damp half-light, the plant-pots began to breed.


Large pots, small pots, hundreds of little thumb-pots, tall dark clematis pots, multibuy inter-linked pots, huge great tree pots, buy-one-get-one-free pots, square pots, round pots, green pots, brown pots, pots in every shade of black, pots which just never quite stack...neatly

Eventually I could hardly get into the greenhouse. So today C and I carried out a cull, keeping only two or three hundred of the most useful-looking pots and putting all the others on one side to go to the tip. We also braved the monstrous spiders (big as your hand with great big pointy teeth) and the clammy horror which is the embrace of the unexpected slug, to drag all the contents of the greenhouse out onto the lawn, wash the windows, sweep and generally reorganise.


So, the mess is now somewhat subdued, although the fact that we didn't actually get to the tip and so had to put all the junk back in (admittedly in a different place) rather spoiled the effect. The rejected plant-pots are now languishing in a black sack (from which they will no doubt be trying to escape), along with the old wooden lawn-edging which was the occasion for the last trip to the tip, but which had become so buried by the time we eventually got round to going, that it was actually left behind!

Messy Tuesday - 18/03

Sad to say, our house has a terrible case of piles. So, tonight, for your delectation and in honour of Messy Tuesday, I present the notable feature of our house which is the Pile of Junk that accumulates on the corner of the sideboard no matter how much I try to keep it clear.


Remarkably small at the moment since it has only just started to creep back into existence after being banished when we had visitors a few days ago, a large portion of this comprises unopened mail, fully 80% of which is for a) the person who used to live here before us and who seemingly signed up for every useless free catalogue and special offer in the world; b) someone we've never heard of who has never lived here as far as we know; c) someone who lives several streets away but the postman couldn't be bothered to walk all the way round there. The remainder consists of things C got out and didn't put away again (putting things away is against his religion, along with closing cupboard doors and turning off lights), things that were on the table when we wanted to use it and so had to be moved somewhere else, and things that have no home and are sitting there until I can figure out what to do with them. Today, to add a little je ne sais quoi I have included a vase of decaying tulips in the foreground, while behind can be glimpsed the edifying spectacle of Pile of Half-done Ironing.

However, the piece de resistance for this Tuesday has to be the kitchen wall, still undecorated as it has been ever since the removal of the old gas boiler last summer.


For particular effect the grubby curling paper and chipped plaster is presented juxtaposed against Pile of Yesterday's Washing-up. Unfortunately without a wide angle lens I was unable to complete the composition by capturing the mess on the floor where, while making apple and rhubarb crumble, I inadvertently created a new technique for rubbing butter and flour together, which consisted of throwing handfuls of the mixture in my own face. Maybe next week.

Froggy went a-courting

To quote the inimitable Tom Lehrer:

Spring is here, spring is here,
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the Spring...

OK, well I'm not so sure about the skittles and beer.* Come to think of it I'm not that sure about the spring now it's been p---ing it down all afternoon. However, this morning spring certainly seemed to be in the air when I toddled out into the back garden to dump the veg clippings into the compost. The weather was mild with occasional bursts of sunshine and all sorts of spring flowers and bulbs finally putting in an appearance to brighten the place up a bit, and the trees coming into leaf (and/or flower), and the many amphibious denizens of the garden frantically shagging all over the place and turning the pond into one gelatinous wobbly mass.





Of course by the time I was actually free to go out into the garden and play, the heavens had opened and all the flowers were bent double and dripping. The frogs haven't been put off at all by the rain though; indeed they have been positively frolicking in it. Our garden is frog central at the moment. As soon as you open the back door the whole garden hops and you are treated to a pleasantly mellifluous frrrrrp, frrrrrp, frrrrrp sound emanating from the bottom (the bottom of the garden that is). Gardening at this time of year can be quite disconcerting as resting your hand on the ground in any place are liable to find that the earth squirms and wriggles under your fingers and then (depending on how much weight you've rested on said hand) hops off looking irritated.



Anyway, whilst the weather was fine, and in the spirit of "hurrah it's spring" I rushed off into the garden with the camera hoping to cheer up the old blog with some pretty pictures. This is to compensate for the fact that once again I have no knitting-related pictures to post. The Twisted Flower pattern didn't not turn up, so I will have to buy it again before I can resume knitting. In its absence I have been working on a Διακοσμητικο πετσετακι (decorative doily) on the train, but haven't got round to taking a photo of it yet as it's still only coaster-sized and looking a bit like an old dishcloth.

The Probably jumper is now almost certainly a jumper but much further from being one than it was because, after trying it on, I decided the colour change fell in an unfortunately emphatic location and ripped back about a quarter of what I had knitted. I bought some buttons for it this afternoon, but I don't think that really counts as progress. The River Stole is just stalled because every time I pick it up I lose my place in the pattern, drift onto the wrong line (they are all nearly but not quite the same and the repeat's too long for me to memorize), and then spend twice as long unknitting and cursing, so for the sake of my blood pressure I haven't touched it for a while.



So for the time being here are some pretty spring flowers. As with much of our house (and indeed my life in general) viewed in tight enough close-up, or indeed from far enough away, the garden can sometime look quite good. When you're in the middle of it, however, you realize the extent to which it's fraying round the edges. However, the fraying sections can wait for Messy Tuesday. I'll continue to pretend a bit longer.

* And tomorrow won't be spent poisoning pigeons in the park either.

Lavenders Blue

Saturday this week saw me in the Sheldonian singing about sheep along with about 150 other people. As this coincided with several meetings my dad had in and around Oxford on Friday, he and mum came down for the weekend arriving on Thursday night, and C and I took Friday off to spend with mum. The plan was to do some serious gardening with my mum acting as consultant whilst we put in a new bed at the front of the house to differentiate our front garden from the (shall we say) somewhat unkempt front lawn of our neighbours.

In spite of a wet start most of Friday was beautiful gardening weather and we made good progress so that the path to the front door is now lined with a proto-hedge of lavender mulched with gravel. Lots of digging which was pretty tiring* but we were pleased with the result.


Egged on by mother, from whom I have inherited my gardening philosophy of "Oh what the hell, try it; if it dies you can always plant something else", we also finally plucked up the courage to split the flag iris that has been threatening to engulf our little pond completely. It is no doubt completely the wrong time of year to do this, but it seemed like the only practical alternative, since later in the season the wretched plant is so big it's practically impossible to get the spade into it. This is it last summer (at the end of the garden in front of the shed). It was as tall as me (probably taller) and filled fully half the pond. After the flowers finished it all fell over sideways and filled the rest of the pond as well.

This is it today in its considerably reduced condition. Fingers crossed that it doesn't turn up its toes! I did feet a bit sorry for the large family of frogs we had to evict in order to do this. They all took refuge next-door, from where we could hear them croaking reproachfully as we attacked their erstwhile home.

Gardening aside, my weekend was mostly taken up with singing. The concert went well, although once again it confirmed the Sheldonian's right to the title of "Most Uncomfortable Arts Venue in Britain" which it was awarded a few years ago. Two people fainted in the first half; there may have been a third but opinion was divided as to whether he was just lying on the floor because he could no longer bear sitting on the narrow planks which pass for seats. Still it's a good place for a standing ovation - everyone's always so glad to have an excuse to get up!

Unfortunately for me the unsuitability of Wren's masterpiece for concerts had dire consequences. Conditions for the performers are not much better than they are for the audience. There are only two dressing-rooms - long, narrow, corridor-like affairs in the basement, each about two metres wide and 12 long. In this space all the members of the 150+-strong choir and most of the orchestra are supposed to change and leave belongings. Needless to say the place is like rugby scrum after the concert with people trying to get in and out and others trying to change at the same time.

I left my bag as close to the door as possible in the hope that I would be able stick my hand round the door and grab it, but when I got there I found someone had knocked it over and half the stuff had fallen out. One lady had her foot caught in the strap of my knitting bag and was dragging it along behind her. Terrified that she would trip and hurt herself I crawled in on my hands and knees, extricated her feet, collected everything (or so I thought) and scarpered, but when I got home, alas and alack, I found that my Twisted Flower Sock pattern, of which I had done no more than 20 rows, was no longer to be found :o(

* C tried manfully to get out of it by finding excuses to be called into work on on two separate occasions, spending a good 3.5 hours of his day off in the office, but he finally relented and came back to help us with the serious digging.