The Struggle With The Inner Self

I was laughing the other day over Dez's description of how she behaves when her laptop goes loopy. Mostly because I too tend to disintegrate when high-tech stuff starts to act haywire, and shriek for Richard to come and sort it out. That time I lost the hit counter on my weblog page I was a babbling, flailing fisted wreck. Go and check out what Dez does - it'll make you chuckle too, if only because you recognise yourself!

Unfortunately, not only the juvenile but the downright bloody-minded, badly-behaved child lurks in the best of us as was discovered chez Celtic Memory last night when with heavy sigh the unending tale of the Celtic Vest was yet again being taken up. Heavens above, this thing is longer than the Forsythe Saga. Will it ever be completed?

This is where the second front is up to - nearly to the armhole but not quite. After that you might think it's plain sailing but it most certainly isn't. Decreasing followed by complex motif at the armhole side, combined with a 'decrease third, fifth, ninth, eleventh, fifteenth, oh and whenever it looks like a good idea AT THE SAME TIME not forgetting what you were doing earlier, and did you check those lifted increases, no, thought you didn't...' It was bad enough on the first front, the prospect of the second does not inspire. What? Work them both at the same time? Look, it's bad enough as it is. Why double the stress (and the likelihood of one error after another?)

But to return to the badly-behaved brat. On the way to pick up the CV, it seemed like a good idea to check the Internet for anything interesting. After all, we owe it to ourselves to keep up to date. There had been an email from Elann, so their website seemed a reasonable option. What new patterns are around? (Don't they do great patterns? Remember that lace cropped cardi? Oh no, on second thoughts, don't. The scar is still vivid.)

I saw this.

Even as my own eyes widened, my Inner Child (IC) burst into noisy shrieks.

IC: Want it. WANT IT! WANNIT NOW, NOW, NOW!

Calm Collected Outer Persona (CCOP): Don't be silly. You can't have it and that's that.

IC: But I could MAKE it. I could, I COULD. Lookit those crochet cuffs! I CAN CROCHET TOO!

CCOP: Stop that this instant. You know very well there is a Celtic Vest to finish. (dropping to honeyed tones). Just think how happy we will be when that's all done and lovely. Won't that be nice?

IC: NO! DON'T WANT SILLY CELTIC VEST! (sob) WANT THAT PINWHEEL SHRUG THING. WANT IT NO-O-O-W!

CCOP (dropping honeyed tone for gritted teeth hiss): Will you stop that this instant? What will people think? Be your age.

IC (in hysterics by this time, lying face down on the floor hammering heels and shrieking). DON'T WANNA BE MY AGE. WANT PINWHEEL SHRUG. HATE YOU! YOU'RE NOT MY REAL PERSONA. YOU'RE A WICKED CRUEL STEP-PERSONA AND I HATE YOU!

I'm afraid there was no option. I shut my Inner Child into a dark cupboard (no, not the one with the Noro yarn) and left her to simmer while I went wearily back to the Celtic Vest. Who'd have inner children?

I let her out later. She had a lower lip so stuck out you could have put a vase of daffodils on it, and she sulked all night, but we heard no more of the Elann pinwheel shrug.

(Not for the moment anyway. OK, OK, Steph, I do realise it has crochet on the cuffs. That doesn't necessarily make me a bad person. You have to broaden your outlook. You're being knittist., that's what you are and how mean is that? Have you ever asked your IC if she'd like to crochet? No. Thought not.)

I have a whole row of dancing skeins on the washing line at the moment. I have listed some utterly beautiful linen/cotton yarns on eBay, so that people can start thinking about their summer wardrobe (or indeed cool soothing socks), together with that dangerously seductive denim cotton slub which I am trying to resist, and a real discovery - a cotton sort-of-boucle thicker yarn which looks like it has been pre-knitted (or pre-crocheted) into the most elegant lace effect. This is what it's like:

I would love to make a lacy summer top in this one. It would look beautiful.

Anyway, don't you get a real kick out of giving coned yarns sourced from factories and the back of dusty shelves and remainder bins and places like that a gentle wash to see how they come out? You get the loveliest surprises sometimes, like that rescue Shetland I brought home all dusty and dirty and oily from the Shed in the Woods, which comes up rosy and smiling and happy when it's washed. And I wanted to see how these aristocratic linen/cottons emerged. Of course they took to the water like - well, like ducks to water I suppose - and are even now drying happily (in between the showers, that is. DH asked a while ago if he should bring them in as it was raining. Heck, no, they're linen aren't they? They should be used to rain.)

I must tell you in the next posting about a really beautiful book which I received for review from Cork University Press.

It's called Weaving Tapestry in Rural Ireland and it is stunning, both pictorially and editorially. It deserves a whole posting to itself. You'll yearn for it!

In the meantime, BIBLE SUPPLIES HAVE ARRIVED FOR THE MISSIONS! Yes, wonderful Sister Denise of the Mission Outreach Services at Our Lady of Perpetual Gauge has sent a whole stack of the Interweave Edition, together with hymn books from the Spinning Sisterhood and a whole lot of catechisms from Vogue and other Sunday School groups. Isn't she marvellous? I can't wait to see their wide eyes and grasping hands down in Kenmare when I go there this weekend. (Or they'll think we're all absolutely mad, there's always that risk, but I'd stake the lure of IK against disbelief any day.) Joy to you all!