Saturday 27 July 2019

WOOL!

I was so excited by my ideas, for my crocheted bedspread, that I had to try and explain to Graham what I wanted to do.
     He was also full of enthusiasm for the Project and could see the possibilities also.
     However, for what I had in mind I was going to need a whole lot more wool!
     And not only in the bold, rich colours I had already selected, but in lots of shades, dark and light, deep and pale. But also, unlike a straight forward item like my poncho or shawl, I was not restricted to using lots of a single colour needing many balls of wool all the same, I could use odds and ends. Odd balls of wool, or even little bits and pieces left over from other work.
     The obvious places to look for odds and ends of wool, especially on a restricted budget, were charity shops and Boot Sales.
     Graham was a man on a mission!
     In my wheelchair it is very difficult for me to go round Boot Sales as these are often in fields or other surfaces where my wheels simply dig in. So Graham was going to have to be my eyes, and go in search of wool.
     Now, when Graham is fired up and pointed in a particular direction, that is where he goes.
     Forget everything else, nothing exists for him but the search for wool!
    So after several Sundays visiting various Boot Sales, we now had three huge bags full of various kinds of wool, in a very wide variety of fibres and thicknesses.
     I was delighted - even though a lot of the stuff I had no idea how it could be used.
     Tallulah was also delighted, as I have already written about in my post 'What Tallulah Did Next', and her joy in demolishing any unattended balls of wool resulted in us buying some huge lidded storage boxes just to keep her nose out of it.



The most worrying buy were three large coils of very thick rope, which looked like they would be used for tethering a ship. I had no idea how I was supposed to incorporate these in my work.
     'No, No!' said Graham, 'These are for battling ropes!'
     Ah! Something for his home gym - you grab the ends of the ropes and try to make waves along their length (I think)
     Phew! That's a relief.





Sunday 21 July 2019

Crocheting - The Project!

So, last time I told you that I am now the proud possessor of quite a few large balls of brightly coloured wool* So what was I going to do with it?


     I wanted to make something big, bold, bright and colourful.
     And the obvious choice was - a bedspread!
     So far, so yawn.
     I could make squares, triangles and circles - with exciting forays into wonky hexagons and an experimental oblong. So my first thought was a bedspread made of random squares and triangles.
     Then I realised that when you looked down on this patchwork of squares and triangles it was like looking down on a patchwork of fields.
     Suddenly the bedspread became a landscape!
     The joins between the fields were obviously walls and hedges. And if this was a landscape, then it could be an island surrounded by the sea, with shades of blue squares around the edges.
     And in the fields could be flowers and trees.
     Then I took another leap into the world of magic and realised that as I was crocheting, I could be working magic into the bedspread too. So that when finished the bedspread would not only be (hopefully) beautiful, but also a magical object which could help you with magical dreaming, spell work and astral travel.
     I wanted this bedspread to have many layers.
     Layers of crochet, crochet on crochet, but also layers of meaning, symbolism and use.
     It would be a warm and practical (ish) bed cover, but then you could enter into its magical landscape. You could explore the scenery, visit a particular place, swim in the sea. Maybe meet creatures who inhabit the landscape. The bedspread was going to have to have secret pockets in it with hidden objects or creatures.
     Suddenly it had become a wonderful and exciting Project, full of amazing possibilities. It could be as interesting and elaborate as my skills would allow.
     I wanted things not to be in proportion or scale. so you might have a field with huge flowers or trees. Some things would be flat, others three dimensional.
     So for a person who up to this point could only crochet circles, triangles and squares, this was going to be quite an undertaking.
     But one I couldn't wait to get started on.





* I know technically these should be referred to as 'yarn' as this covers all forms of fibre used in creating these balls of thread whether it be wool, polyester, viscose or whatever. But in the UK these are always called balls of wool, because wool was the stuff we used for thousands of years. So rather than putting wool (yarn) I shall just use whichever term appeals to me at the time, and I'm afraid you, dear reader, will have to make your own mental arrangements.



Sunday 14 July 2019

Crocheting

I have mentioned that I have been doing a bit of crocheting recently.
     I haven't done any for years. The last thing I made was a throw, which was basically a spiral square, where you just add another colour in and go round and round and round until you either run out of wool, or the square is big enough.
    And crocheting squares was really the extent of my crocheting knowledge and expertise.
    Then a few months back I had the opportunity to buy some very cheap wool - a local shop was closing down and selling off all their stock. Now the colours were limited, the choice was purple, black and white, so I bought all the purple and black I could and carried it home in triumph.
     I had fancied a poncho, but couldn't find one I liked for sale, so thought this was an ideal opportunity to have a go at making one. The only problem was: I could make squares, making two triangles to fit together was way out there! This was quantum crocheting, as far as I was concerned.
    So I had a look on the internet and found a lovely tutorial on how to make a simple triangle. I watched carefully, took notes and had a go, and found that this was as easy as making squares.
     I had more black yarn than purple, so I used the purple to make pattern elements, and I am very pleased with the result.  (Graham decided to help me display my finished stuff)


I felt so chuffed with the result that I wondered if I could make other shapes based on the same simple principles, and decided to try hexagons for a start. These are a bit more complicated and were more fiddly than I expected. But I was having a bit of a play and an experiment - and basically using up the remaining wool.  (Man, the Mighty Hunter modelling hexagon wrap)



I really enjoyed the crocheting, and was pleased with the results too, so I thought I would like to carry on and make more stuff.
     So when we went to the Humber Bridge Farmer's Market, there was a stall selling all sorts of big balls of brightly coloured wool (yarn) and I fell upon it like a starving chocoholic on a box of Mars Bars. I bought one of lots of different colours, then Graham picked out a few more. So we ended up with a bag full of brightly coloured yarn.
     'What are you going to make?' asked the lady on the stall.
     'I don't know.' I replied truthfully

     The crocheting world is my oyster!

     And as for coloured wool (yarn).... More! I want MORE!

I also made a shawl, which I wasn't going to mention, but my lovely assistant insisted on displaying it for me



The bottom pic shows off the tassle ....


Next time - The Project!







Thursday 4 July 2019

Life Death and the Universe

I heard somebody on TV disparaging the 'Cosmic Ordering' system, because it made people think they were 'some kind of magical being'.
     Well, of course we are magical beings!
       For people who do not believe in magic I will just say three things:
1) Life
2) Death
3) The Big Bang

    Let me explain a little.
     When you hear scientists talking about the evolution of our planet, Earth, they will often say something like 'And around 3 billion years ago, life appeared.'
     Hang on a tick. Where from? What made inanimate minerals and chemicals suddenly decide to 'come alive'?
     One explanation I have heard bandied about is that the Earth was 'seeded' with life from outer space. Fair enough, but we return to my original question - where did that original 'life' come from? What is the difference between inanimate rocks and minerals and animate bacteria, algae and ultimately us?
    How can minerals be inert, dead, matter at one instance and 'alive' the next?
   The answer is easy - Magic!

     And if we are talking about the transition from inert matter to living organism, then there is its opposite occurrence:
     Death: there is no actual scientific explanation for what makes a body alive one second and dead the next. Neither is there even a consensus of opinion amongst doctors over when a body is actually dead or alive. There are clues about when a body is dead, eg. not breathing, no heartbeat, we can even check that there is no brain activity. But even with all these checks there are occasions when beyond all logic and expectation the body will decide to live again, even after it has been declared dead.
      But the most magical part of all is: what makes this packet of flesh and bones alive? What is the fundamental difference between a live body and a dead one? A body can appear to be fully functional, in the prime of its physical manifestation and yet there is no life in it.
      In religions and magical philosophies the answer is simple: The body is a material vehicle which is used by a non material entity in order to interact with the physical universe. Or in simpler terms our true nature is as non-physical beings, we are all spirits using bodies to live for a while in this physical universe. At death our true self, our spirit or personality, will leave the physical sheath it has been inhabiting and will return to its immortal life on the spirit planes. This is much the same as how we use a car to get from one place to the next, and then get out an leave it when we get to our destination.

      And thirdly: The Big Bang. Most scientists believe these days that our universe appeared spontaneously in an event known as The Big Bang. Now what this means is: once upon a time there was nothing. Then this 'nothing' exploded, and not only did it explode, but from nothing there was suddenly an almost infinite amount of Mass (a vast quantity of which (ie most of it), the scientists tell us, should be there but apparently is not!)
     Now what any physicist will tell you is that energy and matter cannot be created from nothing. This is why (in theory) infinity machines cannot work. An infinity machine is a machine which generates more energy than it consumes. According to the 'Law of Entropy' if you use energy, you will always end up getting less back than you put in. So according to this Law, eventually the Universe will end because it will run out of material to make new stars, all the stars will go out, and that will be the end.
     However, the other day on TV I heard a scientist say. 'Of course, we don't know what is outside the Universe, but we know there is something.'
     Hang on another cotton-picking moment! Where did that come from? Why is that never mentioned? It is like there are secrets within science that are known about and not mentioned to 'outsiders' possibly because our tiny brains would explode if we knew about these amazing possibilities.

      We always come back to Magic.
     There are certain questions to which the only possible answer is 'Magic'.
      And as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (himself a believer in spirits, fairies and the supernatural) said through his detective Sherlock Holmes: if you have discounted all other possibilities, then what is left must be the true explanation.

Oh and as someone once said:
'You are a ghost, driving a meat coated skeleton, made from stardust,
what do you have to be scared of?'