.. when the media decides to call you an expert .
(thank you Alison for the commemorative photo)
And They Lived Happily Ever After
.. and they lived happily ever after - they being the knitter and her own Liesl.
I frogged a scarf I knitted last year but only wore twice and miraculously I got an entire top out of my three re-purposed skeins of Noro Iro. Liesl is a magical pattern, I think.
Right now I'm really using knitting as means of escape from a very, very busy life. I cannot write about the things that are happening as I have vowed to keep certain aspects of my life separate from this blog, but I am currently facing a workload which is causing me to a) freak out slightly, b) stress and worry a lot and c) have brain-freezes. I wish I could pick up a book and escape, but my head is not in that sort of space at the moment.
So I knit. I knit a lot.
Earlier this year I was told to relax by watching trashy TV and reading crap books. I've finally taken those words on board and so I'm watching a lot more TV - whilst knitting, of course - than I usually do. This has lead me to conclude that FlashForward is very bad; that True Blood is very interesting; that Merlin is very silly, has pretty art direction and occasionally sports hidden depths; and that I have very little patience for reality TV (bar BBC's MasterChef which Other Half watches religiously).
In other news, the most despicable "newspaper" in the UK - the Daily Mail which does not deserve a link - has published a poisonous article on the death of boyband singer Stephen Gately of Boyzone (BBC link). I read the homophobic article itself earlier today before the Daily Mail found it necessary to edit it. In the words of the Guardian's Charlie Brooker (and his entire column is magnificent):
The funeral of Stephen Gately has not yet taken place. The man hasn't been buried yet. Nevertheless, Jan Moir of the Daily Mail has already managed to dance on his grave. For money.
It has been 20 minutes since I've read her now-notorious column, and I'm still struggling to absorb the sheer scope of its hateful idiocy. It's like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo.
I hope Gately's husband and family sues the hell of Daily Mail. And I hope that other advertisers follow Marks & Spencer's example and withdraw their advertising money from the Mail. It is not the first time the Daily Mail angers me (in fact, you could set your clock by how often I feel personally insulted) but this is truly gobsmacking vicious.
Ah, a blog entry which is all over the place. And all I meant to say was that I really do love my new top and that I'm knitting a lot at the moment. The fact that this turned into a bit of a rant should give you a clue as to how stressed I am.
Pax.
The Scandalous Adventures of Lord Byron
Channel4 executive: "OMG, OMG! BBC just had their poetry season and it was so supercool! What do we do?!" Other Channel4 executive: "Is there anyway we can make poetry really sensationalist and entertaining? I mean, I am not not opposed to clever things but poetry is really stuffy, y'know?"
Channel4 Executive: "Uhm.... how about Lord Byron? He was not stuffy. He slept with his half-sister, was 'mad, bad and dangerous to know', wanted to liberate Greece, went a-roving with the Shelleys and wrote really amusing poetry about eating spaniels."
Other Channel4 Executive: "We need a celeb angle. We need.. we could send Rupert Everett around Europe whilst he settles into his botched facelift - and he could talk about Lord Byron's sex life. The incest bit and how he fancied Percy Bysshe Shelley?"
Rupert Everett: "I'll only do it if I get to say naughty words, show off my naked bum, swim in my underwear with cute semi-naked boys, eat caviar with Donatella Versace, and pretend that Lord Byron is really me, me, me!"
Channel4 Executives: "You're on!"