Cherry Ripe

cherry garni socks by yours truly

araucania ranco solid in pt 485

the yarn side walker merino in red lentil evenings

It's about time another cocktail sock pattern was added to the repertoire, so here's something a little fruity! Cherry Garni is a toe-up, heel-flapped, cherry-lace sock, with contrasting cocktail-skewer toe, heel and cuff.

Okay, these should really, technically, be called 'Cherry Garnish Socks', as 'garni' isn't foreign for garnish, but is only an attempt on my part to sound fancy!  I am nothing if not creative in the ways of language!  Or lazy...  Either or, the cherry is a massive part of cocktail dressing, and this new patterns is a natural progression from the Twist of Citrus homage to all things zesty in the cocktail world!

So, whether you're adding a rich red Maraschino cherry to a Manhattan, a green cherry to your Blue Lagoon, drinking a black cherry Mojito, or having your tequila sunrise adorned with a yellow ground cherry, I'm sure you'll agree that the cherry, no matter what colour, is truly a worthy addition to the cocktail sock theme!

The sock begins at the contrasting toe with a simple but effective cocktail-skewer rib pattern:

then moves on to the cherry-lace pattern (a rich, ripe cherry with its stalk and a leaves) :

and for something completely different, I've added a heel-flap.  I have to say I love the final appearance of this - the gusset pick-up is oh-so-very neat, but pay attention - you have to start the increases around 4 inches from the final edge of the heel.  (I've suggested adding a life-line if you aren't completely sure of the length you need - I measured 4 inches from a sock I had previously made and worked out where I needed to start the increases.)

Totally worth it - it looks fabulous!

And another plus: it looks great in different colours!  I asked my testers to use different colours - purples, greens, yellows for different coloured cherries, and they turned out looking fabulous - check out the pattern page for linked projects!  

So, what else do you need to know?  Oh yes indeed - the link to the pattern page and a lovely Ravelry button to click if you fancy investing in something fruity!

Cherry ripe, cherry ripe, 
Ripe I cry, Full and fair ones

Come and buy.

Cherry ripe, cherry ripe,

Ripe I cry,

Full and fair ones

Come and buy.

Sticks & String: An Introduction

I think that before I throw my latest knitting patterns into the mix, I should give you a brief run-down of the whole sticks and string thing.  

I knit. I knit for fun AND profit, as they say. Actually, pretty much just for fun, but it keeps me off the streets, and if I've got needles and yarn in my hands, it means there's less of a chance that I have food in my hands, too. 

A friend of mine introduced me to the gentle are of not garrotting or impaling people with twine and sharp spikes in the Summer of 2008 and I was hooked. Well, I was needled. I can't crochet to save myself. (Some of you will get that pun. And for that we thank you.) Not long after that I was inducted into the hallowed halls of Ravelry; a website for knitters, crocheters and other fibre artists that sounds a lot more dull than it really is. What it is is a treasure-trove of patterns, inspiration, community, friendship, and much more fibre-related wonderfulness. 

I was inspired to start a knitting blog, initially describing my attempts at fitting in, learning to knit, singing locations, and lots of stained glass windows. (I am nothing if not eclectic in my choice of subjects.) It grew in scope once I started designing my own patterns and although I make it sound much more grandiose than it really is, it's something I really enjoy, and I'm proud to share my creations.

What are these creations? Well, if you click HERE, you'll be taken to the afore-mentioned knitting blog's page containing all my blog pattern links. You can take it from there! What I will do, though, is add a cross post from my knitting blog to here when I have a new pattern up. I thoroughly enjoy knitting, it's a part of who I am, and I think it's right to include some of it here.

(I just have to point out that the inspiration for most of my patterns is alcohol in mostly cocktail form - you'll understand it when you see them. I know. Cake and alcohol. But all things in moderation, and all that!)

Muscular Antipathy

"Nic is knackered.  Truly knackered."

The things you do. The things you hope your muscles will do again, once they've decided not to hate you any more. Wii Fit ain't got nuttin' on this baby. Now please excuse me, my muscles won't let me sit upright for much longer...

Denim: The Great Leveller

"Nic tried on a previously un-try-onable pair of jeans this morning and managed to get them zipped-up and buttoned. Whilst she was wearing them, even! Just don't ask her to move..."

Or breathe.

But O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! There's nothing quite like the feeling you get when you can button/zip/close up an item of clothing when before such a meeting of edges was but a wild imagining.  

Size 26 black jeans from East Coast at Evans, bought on eBay for pennies a few years back, when the possibility of them fitting was quite high. Jeans are weird. No, that's not fair. Jeans are great! My body is weird. Which also isn't fair, but nearer the truth. I am a 'pear', which, okay, isn't so weird, (because we're talking about body types, not being actual pieces of fruit) and means my hips are much larger in proportion to the rest of my body, and for me that difference is about three, and sometimes four, dress sizes. And I go in in the middle rather a lot. I'm not talking a waspish waist, more like a natural fold in the... folds, but when it comes to jeans, pairs that fit me round my lower portions should come with it's own PA system to warn everyone to Please Mind The Waist Gap.

So really, it's not the buttoning, but the zipping. The button is already at the least wide part of me, but the zip, the zip always needs a bit of convincing. What I DO love about jeans, though, is the very unbiased nature of the beast. The squeezing legs into tight lengths of semi-stiff, kinda rough fabric, the tugging and shimmying and coaxing them up past your rear end, the lying down, the breathing in, the risking of the finger tips in trying to marry the button to the hole; it is a universal thing. You can be a size 2 or a size 32, but the Dance Of The Jeans remains the same and it's quite the equaliser! 

So HUZZAH! for the humble jeans, for not only do you bring us joy when you close, your very nature doesn't discriminate between short, regular, long, large or small, and for that we love you, just as soon as we can... get... that... zip... ... ... up.

Wii Fat

I lost the equivalent weight of half a bag of sugar last week. Where from, I couldn't tell you.  Probably from one of those areas that nobody would notice anyway.
  

Oh Frank, can you see? That spot behind her left earlobe? I'm SURE it looks less flabby.

But I did, after all, make the decision that I wanted to shift some of this superfluous gorgeousness, and when I was presented with a Wii Fit (second-hand - who can afford these things for new nowadays?) for Christmas I decided it would be worth a try.

Now, I say gorgeousness, but I know you can hear the steady drip of sarcasm. I have been told there are men in the world who like their women voluptuous and well-padded, but I have yet to experience the phenomenon. Or myth, as I prefer to all it, worthy of the greatest story-tellers. Probably the Brothers Grimm.
  
I do realise that I'll never be the 21st century ideal 'thin' and even Rubens would call me chubby, but it would be nice to get some contour back to the full moon I call my face, and have less wobble around my lower portions. So I'm trying my best. To be honest, I don't think that the current skeletal ideal is either healthy or attractive, but then seeing as I am neither healthy nor attractive at the other end of the scale (if you'll excuse the pun) I won't throw boulders...

It does help that I have no life (see, I knew being alone would come in handy one day), so I can devote an hour and a half every evening (except Sundays, because, hell, there's good telly on Sundays and although you can take the girl from the couch, but you can't take the couch from the girl for long) to stretching, punching and stepping my flab away. "This is YOUR fight against YOUR fat" as the boxing instructor informs me. Repeatedly. Really, self-abuse notwithstanding, if I could have punched my fat away, do you not think I'd have already done it? Hell, one of the bullies at school would have done it for me. That generous soul obviously saw the future when she decided my stomach would make a good punching bag.

Of course, the losing weight part is subjective, or at least it is to the balance board. Lean 2 degrees in any direction other than straight up while you're attempting to register your avoirdupois, and your 'weight' increases or decreases by pounds, so if your balance isn't up to keeping your centre of gravity dead-centre (which, when you're fat and using a balance board, ISN'T standing straight up, top-of-your-head-on-a-string-pinned-to-the-ceiling style, because your excess weight means that you have to lean forward/backwards (depending on where it's located) to make sure the red dot that indicates your centre of gravity hits the centre of the televisually-represented board.
  
Before I realised the force could be both with you and against you, I would come away from the weigh-in feeling either elated or utterly depressed, depending on whether left gravity or right gravity was being particularly strong that day. I've lost two pounds.  WOOHOO - this thing is a MIRACLE and I'm starting a new religion, complete with balance board altar and chocolate sacrifices!  Or, I've put on three pounds. Excuse me while I douse the fire of my hopes and dreams with the salty despair of my tears. So, I take several tries to get that middle balance... Better that than 'losing' 3 pounds only to find out the next day that you've put on those same 3 pounds again. Fickle. The board is fickle.

And talking of fickle, may I bring to everyone's attention the biased method of measurement known as BMI, or Body Mass Index. Yes, you can tell it your height and it'll spout out what your BMI should be according to how far away the top of your head is from the ground, but won't take the contextually important body build into account. So, if you're built like a brick sh*t-house, with broad shoulders and a pelvis that could comfortably birth a small whale, or, because these things are equally problematic for the small-framed amongst us, built like a rake, with narrow shoulders and equally fine bone structure throughout, then BMI isn't going to be particularly accurate. Or useful.

I believe it helps that I've learned to ignore the setting and go straight on to pounds lost (or gained, according to the wind direction and the rotation of the tides), because although I am fat and short, if my build is not taken into account to assess my ratio of portliness to health, then I'm not going to get a fair reading, so the whole BMI shebang is not deserving of my attention.

But please excuse me, I must go and say a small prayer to the Board of Boards, burn a few calories in lieu of incense, and hope for a following wind. It is time to sacrifice an hour in the pursuit of someone else's ideal me.

disclaimer: all being said, I've lost 16 lbs since the end of January, and I can now touch my toes without having to re-attach them to my feet afterwards. But, as always, it is much more interesting to write about the dark side of the board...

A Little Of What You Fancy Does You Good

"Nic has sampled, thanks to the fine introductory services of Kevin 'The Enabler' D___, possibly the finest apple pie in Amsterdam. If not the world!"

What a way to celebrate nine pounds down! It feels like this is the way forward, with no holds barred on the congratulatory foodstuffs (up to a point, anyway!!) Any why not? I am not the type of person that agrees with the need to withhold certain things for the sake of betterment, when said betterment is made worse when you spend all your time pining for the things you're withholding from yourself in the first place.  

I'm pretty sure that's why diets don't work in the long term for a lot of people. Our heads get in the way. I'm also pretty sure the brain is there to torment us, and in our hour of need it strips us of will-power and instead shows us pictures of cake, flickering against the projection screen of our sugar-craving imagination.

So I say YAY to cake, in moderation. Well, truth be told, I'd prefer to say YAY to cake in massive quantities, all day and every day, but taking it to those extremes one really would have to decide between cake or death. (The plagiarising of Eddy Izzard being an added bonus.) So a little cake goes a long way, and to continue a motion metaphor, this is a marathon and not a sprint, so I'm rather happy to have cake along for the journey. I'm a great believer that a happy head makes a healthy body in the long run. 

And I can't end this post without using a sticky finger to point out the wonders that is Winkel 43 in Amsterdam. Their apple pie truly is of an exemplary nature.~

from Winkel43's facebook page

Fat Rant Rant

I'm always intrigued about these Fat Rants and blogs and videos and books stating how wonderful it is to be ravishing and rotund, how empowering it is to embrace your true substantial self, and how much confidence you can gain if you could only love your own portly personage. Alliteration apart, acceptance seems to be the key issue. Acceptance of yourself by yourself. Allegedly you'll only be loved if you love yourself, which seems a perverse rule to begin with. But if you accept yourself then others will accept you, too. Or will they only accept your acceptance of yourself, and continue to ridicule you behind their hands as you walk off?  

oh my GAWD Frank, did you see her THIGHS? But she does walk with a confident wobble, so I should really admire her sass.

And what if you don't accept yourself? And why should you care? (I know - you shouldn't, but we're not all made of strong revolutionary stuff.)

My point of view is from the sidelines in a way, where acceptance seems to be a one-way street, going in the opposite direction, no matter which way it is traversed.

I've always been ridiculed by the general public's sense of what is 'right' and 'wrong', and I am fat, therefore I am wrong. I was a chunky child, and born with stocky legs and a set of shoulders that would have made a full-back jealous. My mother certainly mentions them still, cough-ty years later. It would certainly make me weep, but for different reasons, as soon as my body shape became an issue with other people. For my peers, it was around aged eight or nine when that happened, and by my teens it was worse, thanks to a knee disease stopping nearly all athletic activities and consigning me to a sport-less decade. It was aged eight, at least when I started getting teased for being chunkier than my fellow pupils at school, and this teasing, in its myriad forms, has not yet ceased. They say children can be cruel, but they can't hold a candle to the grown-ups. And the grown-ups who think they're helping you by pointing out your wobbly bits and ridiculing you to your face are by far the worst of the worst.

Oh, by you'd be so pretty if you only lost some weight. You'd get a boyfriend if you weren't so hefty. You'd be able to get some nice clothes if you were a smaller size. Don't you think so, Frank?

Best not to answer, Frank, because I'm sure you and your lady wife are also on the opinion that all fat people are fat by choice. By laziness. By stuffing their faces with pizza and pop day-in, day-out, lying on a couch festooned with the dead and empty wrappers of countless bars of chocolate. But of course, yes, I choose to be ridiculed. Yes, I choose to only be able to wear frumpy, unfashionable clothes. Yes, I choose to have people like you casting aspersions on my lifestyle and deriding my looks.

Had the fat acceptance movement existed when I was younger, would it have made a difference? To be honest, I doubt that it would have made even the tiniest dent in the fat-hating machine of my era. By that time I was already dipping in and out of black times, and reading a (perceived) forced-positive view on voluptuousness or watching a video extolling the rights of the round would have made not a jot of difference to my general state of mind, or, to be honest, the state of mind of the people around me. This may also be a reflection on where I'm from; a no-nonsense, rather straight-laced part of the world where feelings are, to a great extent, internalised and not discussed.  

Even now I'm almost put off by the (mostly American) tracts on loving the inner self and videos of, on the whole, pretty-faced, chubby girls telling us how you can change the world to accept the large if you're confident in yourself and your largeness at the same time. It seems terrible cliquey. Somewhat akin to one religion telling the other they're going to hell for belonging to the wrong religion. Pff. We're all doomed, if that's the case. Only fat chicks who accept their own fat beauty will be allowed happiness on earth and have the goodwill of men? (Or whoever's goodwill of which you'd like to partake.) You don't love your largeness? Sorry, zaftig-fail, but you're doomed to everlasting loneliness and evenings spent with only the Wii Fit for company.

It seems rather unfair to those of us stuck with bodies we don't want to celebrate: bodies that don't conform to the current norms, whether fat or thin, no matter how much we try to change them. Where's the love for those of us left behind in the aftermath of the Fat Rant Revolution?