A Day Out

I haven't been getting out much lately. Monocular vision, poor depth perception, and no peripheral vision on the right hand side closes in the big world of outdoors and makes it a slightly threatening place. People and kerbs and steps keep looming up out of nowhere.

Last Saturday was such a lovely spring day, I wanted to be out, but not necessarily out walking the whole day, so we drove off to spend the day in Ely, about 70 miles from London in the fenlands of North Cambridgeshire. We are cathedral junkies, and Ely was one of the first cathedrals we visited when we were new in England. We had been back once or twice, but not for many years.

The Fens are the marshy lands of East Anglia and Lincolnshire, that were first drained by the Romans, and then seriously drained in the 17th century by wealthy land owners using Dutch technology to create rich agricultural land from the drained peat bogs. Before the drainage, the high land areas were often referred to as Isles. In the early years of Saxon Christianity, St Etheldreda, a local princess, founded a monastery at Ely in 673. Her monastery was destroyed by the Vikings in 870, but rebuilt a hundred years later as a Benedictine house. In 1066, the Normans came and conquered, but they did not conquer the Saxon stronghold of East Anglia for another four years. When the Normans conquered, they built castles and cathedrals as quickly as they could to secure their foothold. Ely Cathedral was begun in the 1080s.

The West Tower

 This is the north side of the cathedral showing the exterior of the special spaces within the cathedral in the photos I took on Saturday. From the right is the edge of the West Tower where you enter the cathedral. The nave behind it is 248 feet long. The nave ends at the Octagon, built in the 14th century after the Norman central tower collapsed in 1322. To the left is the North Transept which was begun in 1080. Finally, the large Gothic window to the far left is the Lady Chapel, the largest Lady Chapel in England, added in 1349.

Here is Bob in the South aisle of the nave. The rounded Norman arches with the alternating columns of solid drums and carved piers.

The exterior walls of the nave are filled with Victorian glass that shimmered beautifully in Saturday's sunlight.

The interior of the Octagon roof with the light pouring down into the crossing.

The arches around the Octagon are carved with heads and with scenes from Etheldreda's life.

The North Transept is quite plain, but the symmetry of the rounded arches is elegant.

Except for the painted 15th century Hammerbeam ceiling with the flying angels that appear in two rows along the side edges of the ceiling.

The Lady Chapel is a stunningly beautiful space.  By the 14th century, the Cult of Mary was well established, and every church was adding a space devoted to the Lady who could intervene with her Son to grant the prayers of the faithful. From the first photo above, you can see the Lady Chapel was separate from the main building, connected by a narrow vaulted aisle. The fan vaulted ceiling is dotted with beautifully carved and painted bosses. The  transition into Gothic Chapel with narrow piers and huge windows creating a light filled space in contrast to the dark mysterious space of the Norman Romanesque cathedral interior must have been a religious experience itself.

The Chapel walls are ornately carved along the arcades along all sides. Look closely though and you will see that every face or head has been carefully chipped away. There must have been a thousand heads in this chapel, gone forever, thanks to the iconoclasm frenzy of Thomas Cromwell's Dissolution troops. Thomas has never been one of my favourites because of this destruction. When my reading eyesight went sour, I had only finished the first section of Wolf Hall, and was feeling quite sad for him. When I get back to reading, I will remember these missing heads however.

England's cathedrals do pride themselves on being living monuments, and most of them have examples of contemporary religious art.

The Lady Chapel at Ely has had this modern Mary for several years, but the new metalwork reredos was just installed earlier this year. I am warming to Mary, but this posted sign indicates not everyone feels the same way.

Looking through my photos, and the new book we bought about the cathedral on Saturday has made me realise we are way out of practice with our church tourism forays. We missed so many treasures on this trip. Perhaps it was because it was the lure of the beautiful day outside or perhaps it was the lure of our next stop at Topping & Company, one of the best bookstores in England. (We had been to the Bath branch several years ago, but never to Ely's branch.)

After time well spent supporting a local independent bookseller and a superb lunch of codfish cakes for me and sausages for Bob in the garden of the Prince Albert . . .

. . . We headed to the Oliver Cromwell House . . .

where he lived with his family in the years before he went off to protect England from the King and the Papists, instead of bunking off with the rest of his Cambridge cohort to Massachusetts to found towns like Boston and Hingham and Braintree and Needham and Ipswich and so many others. (It can be very confusing to drive around East Anglia if you have previously lived in Eastern Massachusetts.) I guess that's why there is no Ely, Massachusetts. The Cromwell House devotes a little bit of their display to the question of Hero or Villain? But their answer is clearly Hero.

The House included a very interesting short film on the draining of the Fenlands. As an MP, Cromwell was an advocate for his constituents forced off the land by the enclosures and the drainages. So we headed over to the local history museum for more displays about traditional agriculture in the Fens. Another weekend, we will go back to visit the agricultural museums that explain the technology of the drainage systems that still keep the land from returning to marshy waterland.

A lovely day out. Next weekend, we head back to East Anglia to look at a possible wedding venue in Suffolk.

A Year Out

What a year!
In one week, in the month of March, one year ago my world tilted a bit.

Megan was visiting with her two children, and I was worried that she was ill. No, she was just very newly pregnant, and now we have a second granddaughter, the lovely Trixie added to the world.

Susan was compelled to quit her job at the local museum because a triumvirate of the museum head and two trustees were interfering with her projects and unfairly impugning her abilities. She was offered a new job the following week, and another when that one ended. Unfortunately, museum work tends to be part time and short term, linked to specific projects and grants, so she is still chasing the elusive permanent job. Whilst she was dealing with unfair employers last year, she was also reconciling with a boyfriend after a short break-up.  Last month they became engaged, and now we are planning a wedding for spring 2012.

Bob was made redundant to cap off that week a year ago. Miraculously he was offered another job despite his advanced age. During the interregnum of unemployment from June to October, we discovered the joy of free time, but were reminded of the joylessness of no steady income.

Going forward to another week last year, this time in October, when Bob was preparing to begin his new job, and I was preparing to travel to Massachusetts for six weeks to help Megan with Bibs and Bobs and the baby about to arrive, I went to the local Vision Express for some much needed new glasses. The eye exam indicated a problem in my right eye, was followed by a visit to my primary care doctor, and quickly followed by an examination at the ophthalmology clinic at the local hospital. I had a hole in the macula of my right eye. There is surgery to repair a hole, but no flying allowed for 6 to 8 weeks after the operation, which would have left Megan high and dry with almost no notice. So we decided to schedule the surgery for my return in December.

That's when the problem with the National Health Service began. We have never had any problems before, but scheduling surgeries seems to be a big problem. The December date was cancelled, which I was glad about because I didn't want to interfere with Christmas, in favour of an early January date, which was cancelled on the day before the surgery for a mid-January date, which was also cancelled on the day before for a mid-March date. By this time I knew I had to turn to private care through Bob's private health care policy. So mid-March, four weeks ago, I had the surgery done at England's top eye hospital by the world's best retinal surgeon.

The outcome is still not determined because the recovery is long. A bubble of gas is left in the eye to hold everything in place so the retina can heal, and the bubble dissipates slowly over 6 weeks. At first it occludes all vision in that eye, then it starts to "fall" or rise, since the optic nerve reverses what we see, but it bounces around like a balloon, and light shimmers off of it, so really it is just terribly annoying. My working eye lets me do things, but my binocular vision is terrible, as is my depth perception. I can't sew, but knitting is okay as long as it's not too complicated, hence all the knitting I have been doing. Reading small print on a page is uncomfortable very quickly, but reading computer screens with large backlit type is good, hence all the time I have been spending on-line.

A year of waiting for things to fall into place, and for the most part everything has fallen into a good place for everyone, so I can only feel happy for that, but somehow I feel a bit exhausted from never quite knowing what to expect next. I don't often remember dreams, but I had a dream last night where I got out of bed and left the flat, left the building, and to take a walk around the local streets, when I realised I had not brought my pocketbook, so I had no keys, no way to get back home, and I kept telling myself what a stupid thing I had done. Somehow, I did get back into bed (it's a dream), and I told myself that I would not have this problem again if I simply decided to stay in bed forever. When I woke up this morning, I lay there thinking I shouldn't get up because for some reason I was supposed to stay in bed forever. I was tempted to try it, but then I didn't feel quite exhausted enough for that.

Is it April already?

The Knitting Resolution has been going exceptionally well. Here are some projects finished since the last update at the end of January.

A Hanne Falkenberg kit bought in Copenhagen 5 years ago. A sort of Elizabeth Zimmermann Baby Surprise variation knit in two halves. The cast on rows are the front, back, and bottom edges, knit in garter stitch with decreases until the sleeve edge is reached. The neck yoke is added at the end, after the sleeve is sewn together from the shoulder to cuff, and the two sides are joined together along the back edge of the cast on edge. 

The Einstein Coat, a pattern by Sally Melville, knit all in one piece in the best Elizabeth Zimmermann tradition. The yarn is a heavy bulky Rowan yarn bought by the bag from Liberty when they still had great yarn sales and Rowan yarn was worth buying, early in the century. I have no memory of what I bought it for, but it is the same yarn as the Red Felted Jacket, so maybe I was going to make another one.  My friend Sunny made the coat the winter Christian was born, and I have always admired hers. I am very happy with mine. It's comfortable and it fits.

At the moment it is a neck cowl, but it could still turn into  a cushion cover. It began life as  a baby sweater from the Norwegian Dale yarn company. Despite using the proper yarn, needles, and size directions,  I eventually realised it was big enough to fit a teenager. I love the colours, and the amount of work that went into stranding the design with so many colours made me regret admitting defeat, but I knew I would never have the ambition to carry on with it.

This is literally a little bit of fluff. When London's first modern yarn shop  opened in Islington in 2005, Susan and I were on the doorstep on opening day. We were not as impressed as we had hoped, but we were both taken with the this fluffy pastel yarn with black specks. Very Vintage.  I bought pink; Susan bought mint green. The pattern is by Teva Durham in Scarf Style, but mine looks nothing at all like the original because of various mistakes I incorporated into my version. This is the first time I used short row shaping, and had no clue what I was doing. Fortunately the fuzz hides all mistakes. I'm not sure where or when I would ever wear this, but I still love the soft fuzziness.

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This is a real Mobius strip cowl. I always thought they were just the result of deliberately twisting the stitches when knitting in the round, the mistake everyone makes inadvertently once and discovers the sock cuff has a serious problem. But no, a real Mobius strip, mathematically speaking, has only one edge, and to do this knitwise requires nearly impossible contortions of needles and stitches, that also make the initial knitting decidedly difficult. Add to that my unwise decision to use a silky soft Chines bamboo yarn that splits very easily, and this was a project from hell.  Yet an excellent project for hiding mistakes because at least half of the cowl is hidden at all times.

This odd ball scarf began as the Linoleum Dishcloth,  a pattern from Mason-Dixon Knitting, and distributed free on Ravelry. I wanted to try the slip-stitch  technique.  I still don't understand it, but I liked it, and loved it in my favorite colour combination of red and yellow, so I kept knitting beyond the dishcloth square into a full scarf with the slip-stitch linoleum pattern at the borders and a simple checkerboard around the neck. The yarn is Brown Sheep's Cotton Fleece. The original pattern was designed for Peaches and Cream Yarn, perhaps the last cotton spinning company in North Carolina, now put out of business by Wal-Mart. Rest-in-Peace Peaches. Burn in hell Wal-Mart.

And now for a few new pieces.
Trixies' booties which match the sweater I made when she was born.

Easter Eggs for Megan and the grandchildren to use to decorate an Easter tree. The easy pattern is from the wonderful Purlbee website, and knit with Yarn Yard hand-dyed sock yarn.

And my very favourite Easter chick with his mini eggs, also from the Purlbee website. The yarn is mohair from the stash, bought in Boston in August 2007 on the occasion of Bib's first trip into Boston, and Megan's first trip as a mother, and maybe my first trip as a grandmother. 

How I Spent My Week

The title could be how I spent my month since it is the last day of January, and I have not posted at all during the month, but frankly, it hasn't been a month to remember fondly, so I don't really want to memorialise it.

I did pull myself together for some serious "let's start the new year off right" resolutions. I sorted through my side of the bedroom clutter and have held to the resolution to put clothes away instead of making piles 'to be dealt with later" — usually much later when they topple onto the floor. I also sorted through cookbooks, admitting to the fact I never look at half of them. Limited shelf space should be the limiting factor for collections. So there are piles to take to Oxfam.

Every January, Bob and I say we really should go to the cinema more often, and then we go once or twice during January, often find ourselves disappointed, and that is it for the remainder of the year. True to form we have been to two films this month, The King's Speech and The Social Network, and we loved both of them. With that encouragement we will now see if we follow up with a film in February, finally breaking the January-only cycle.

I am most proud of finding the courage to pull out into the daylight, all of my unfinished knitting projects or objects (UFOs). A few were finally frogged — knit-speak for ripping it out — or as the frog says, ribbit, ribbit. The remaining 24 UFOs were sorted into piles on a spectrum of "this can be finished in 30 minutes" to the infinities projects that will stretch into eternity — e.g. the granny square afghan of the 1980s.

This week I finished the 30 minute projects:

A bag that needed lining

A felted bag that needed lining and a button closure

Everyone should spend their days padding hangers . . .

. . .unless they are knitting dishcloths (from a Ravelry pattern). Although in this case I used wool, felted it lightly and made it into  a hot pad instead.

An exercise in learning Domino Knitting that I accepted would never go further. I also threw this into the wash to felt lightly, discovered that the geometric arrangement of attached squares let me sew them into this shape which probably has some topological name. I decided to simply call it my Shetland Artifact since I made it from Jamieson and Smith Shetland wool, bought at the shop in Lerwick when we were there. 

But the next day, this little fellow emerged!

The disastrous coat, knit nearly ten years ago, when I began knitting again.   The sleeves were too long, so I cut them and hemmed them, but it never fit, was too heavy to wear, did not have pockets. Last summer I threw it into a hot wash and a hot dry, and miracle of miracles, it came out as a perfect felted jacket! All it needed was a new button. The old button (see green bag above) was too large for the shrunken buttonhole.

And finally, this week I made marmalade. From organic Seville oranges in the mayonnaise and peanut butter jars. It would have been smart to get some jars before actually cooking up the marmalade. And from some old blood oranges and lemons in the Kilner jars. Now we just have to remember to put marmalade on our toast to use it up.

Day 25 or Christmas At Last!

Window #25

Let's be honest, it is about the gifts! And what a great haul of gifts this year for all of us this morning. Somehow we all managed to make the right buying choices, sometimes when we were flying blind, leading to great gasps of "this is exactly what I wanted, but forgot to ask for..."

My gifts pretty much all revolved around food. My daughters have decided I should stop being such a rubbish baker and Megan, who is the gift for baking, contributed the very very hot Flour Cookbook that she is cooking her way through. Her photos of this week's doughnuts and sticky buns qualify as food porn. Then Susan kicked in with Macaron heaven: the useful how-to handbook, and the Ladurée gold plated picture book to remind me how long it has been since I have been to Paris.

We all got pie makers, Megan courtesy of Williams Sonoma over Thanksgiving when we spotted it in our favourite catalogue. Then I discovered the pricey W-S offering is just a repackaged version from a B-list English TV chef, offered here for cheaper and cheaper as you move down the food chain of discount outlets. Megan kicked in the cookbook of English Pie fillings.

I'm not a fan of coffee table restaurant  books, but Noma would be a major exception. I think it was ranked as the best restaurant in the world recently. Noma is part of an amazing cultural centre in Copenhagen that is devoted to Denmark's northern island possessions. The lunch Bob and I had there a few years ago was a life experience to savour forever.

The salt grinder is practical in that it will replace the one that is all gummed up. The chocolatiere is the
fun extravagance for whizzing up some hot chocolate as England's coldest December in 100 years grinds on to the bitter end. Posh Crosswords from Susan, an Andy Cutting CD (world's cutest accordion player), some sock knitting yarn, and a tiny box of treats from Paul A Young, the best chocolates in London, round out the best Christmas ever.

Advent Calendar Day 24 - Christmas Eve is Here!

Window #24

What would Christmas be without favourite story books read to our children long ago, and still secretly enjoyed. Richard Scarry's Animals' Merry Christmas may be the first Christmas book we bought for Megan. Everyone in the family knows they can make me weep by merely mentioning "The Christmas Tree Lamb" story. Santa Claus and his Elves is a translation of a famous Finnish book that recounts a year and a day in the life of Santa Claus. The Finns know these things because he lives there apparently. I haven't seen any adverts this year, but when we moved to London, there used to be daytrip flights to Lapland for families to visit Santa at home. Everyone knows The Polar Express, which was maybe never a big favourite of our children, but it does remind us that Chris Van Allsburg was our next door neighbor in Providence when he was writing and illustrating it. An Early American Christmas is our all time favorite. Last year we were able to find a copy for our grandchildren, so a new generation can continue to be enchanted by the story of the German family who brought Christmas to an American village steeped in Puritanism.

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night — as the most famous story of all concludes!

Advent Calendar Day 23

Window 23

We have presents! Our local bookstore provided and then wrapped most of what I needed. A present all the way from South Africa arrived in the post today. Christmas can come on time, on schedule.

We also have two more cookies — Lemon Spritz and Bob's favorite Almond — the last cookies are still dough, sitting in the refrigerator awaiting Susan's Thumbprint tomorrow.

Tomorrow is devoted to food — buying it, preparing it, and serving it. Tonight is devoted to making the final list of the season, keeping everything in order tomorrow. On the other hand, maybe curling up in bed with a book and a cup of mint tea sounds like a better idea.