to welcome a new member of the family I have this baby blanket - hope the baby likes purple. The baby is the first great grandchild for one of my sisters.
I’m not sure about this revised edition of wordpress. I can’t seem to get my pictures to the size I want, and in this case the colours are all blotchy. The blanket looks better in reality.
Just an addendum to my previous post telling about my latest reading. Again, browsing in the Oxfam Charity Shop the cover of this book caught my eye.
This book was a bit flip but rather an interesting topic. It was really the cover that attracted my attention. A good piece of graphic art. Nevertheless, I liked the contents of the book well enough.
Perhaps the title of this blog entry is a bit of an exaggeration. I have been doing some knitting of late but now the lawn bowling season has started and also May is verging on turning into “music month”.
Above is Hodge Podge 6, almost ready for its border. That pile of stash yarns is getting smaller!
my other current knitting project is another pair of socks
Apart from knitting, time spent lawn bowling is increasing - and that’s a real pleasure with the weather we had yesterday. Weather almost like summer. Not so pleasant a couple days previously when it was “winter”.
After the big concert on April 25th, we are now practising for another concert - this one to be even bigger with all the bands of the Rathfarnham Band Society. Almost 150 players. This is to be an outdoor concert, weather permitting, to celebrate Europe Day this coming Friday May 9th. We have had 2 and 3 hour rehearsals one day after another - my right hand is starting to cramp!
Knitting, music making, and reading. I really like biography and social history. A few months ago I found a book - a very big book - almost 500 pages - about the Life of Noel Coward.
This book turned out to be quite fascinating, long as it was with lists and lists of parties and party guests over the years. Having finished that book, I am now turning to a book about Cecil Beaton - another biography and social history. I purchased it along with the Noel Coward book and I suspect that these 2 books were donated to Oxfam by the same person - I wonder who it was.
This rather amusing link came in the mail (email of course) last week. Do you want to create more private space? Then have a look at this link. I got a bit of a chuckle and now I have found on Jean Miles’ blog, one of the blogs I read regularly. You Knit What Two has surfaced. Read more if you want to explore what not to knit or what to do with knitting that didn’t turn out to be quite what you intended.
There seems to be some concern as to what I am going to do when I have used up all my knitting stash. Like the last person to leave, do I just turn out the lights? Well, first of all, I don’t think I will actually manage to use up all my stash - I’m pretty certain I will acquire more yarn when the stash gets too low. It’s sort of similar to my book buying - I always have a lot of unread books on my shelves and I slowly work through them, but long before I have read them all, I have acquired more. Reminds me of the old Walt Disney film Fantasia.
The sock knitting continues, as shown below. And the squares knitting for hodge podge 6 is the other part of the ongoing assault on the stash of knitting yarn.
Another project lurking in the wings is a cardigan in natural colours. I find that yarn a bit difficult to knit and I am not totally convinced I want to do that project - hence it has been moved to the back of the queue.
The Bealtaine Festival 2008 is nearly upon us. Bealtaine - celebrating creativity in older age. A lot of emphasis is appearing in the newspaper now about how older people are being creative in many different areas. For the past 3 years I have been playing clarinet with an adult beginner band. Most of the members of the band have some sort of musical background and they have played an instrument when they were younger or they have decided to try playing a particular instrument for the first time. The Rathfarnham Adult Band is what we call ouselves and we come under the umbrella of the Rathfarnham Concert Band Society.
For several years we have been talking about giving a concert - 5 years ago in its very early stages the band held a concert but I understand this was quite rudimentary. This year we became more serious about it and a date was set and a hall was booked - we were committeed and it was going to happen. That focussed our minds and attendance at our weekly rehearsals improved dramatically. Excitement and trepidation went hand in hand. The word went out to family and friends and last Friday night, the Concert actually took place. The hall was full to overflowing. 
Spring is in the Air was the title of our concert and
here is the programme showing the pieces we played. 
It was a wonderful evening and we felt absolutely euphoric over how well it went. We did not play on our own however. To boost our confidence - and needless to say to make for a much better sound - we had a number of “guest players” from the Rathfarnham Concert Band Society. What a boost that was. A very skilled clarinet player played with us in the clarinet section and she was so helpful in keeping us on the beat and at the right place in the music. The same was happening in other sections of the band.
I felt that this event was very definitely in the spirit of Bealtaine.
Over the weekend we had a computer glitch and we finally had to call in a computer doctor to solve the problem. Honestly, the way we were pacing around, it was like waiting for the diagnosis about a sick child. Joy and jubilation when the patient was pronounced to be well on the road to recovery and internet access was restored. Why were we so upset? As one friend suggested, it was upsetting all our routines. Well, one routine I deviated from this past weekend was my usual Saturday morning at our local country co-operative market at Kilternan. Instead, this Saturday morning was my only chance to go to the Trinity Book Sale. This was the final day of the Book Sale and I hardly expected to find anything of interest. I arrived shortly after it opened at 10 o’clock and was very surprised to find it so crowded. I rummaged through the books on the various tables and no, I didn’t find any great treasures - a few small items but nothing much. Still I got pleasure out of the searching.
Third and final day of the Trinity Book Sale April 2008
Following my big expenditure of euro 2.60 at the sale, I decided to visit the shop at the National Gallery. This visit also looked as if it was not going to bear fruit until…….I was leaving the shop and spotted a book of interest in the window display. Back I went and ended up purchasing Framing the West, Images of Rural Ireland 1891-1920 What attracted me to the book were the old photographs, particularly those relating to spinning. To quote from one particular link “This collection put together by Breathnach (U. of Limerick, Ireland) aims to demonstrate the value of photographic images as historical evidence for scholars of Ireland. Drawing largely on the works of commercial photographer Robert J. Welch (1859-1936), 14 contributions discuss the history of photography in Ireland and explore what photography tells us about the social and economic history of the West of Ireland between 1890 and 1920. Topics addressed include the use of photography in Irish tourist literature, images of poverty, the cultural relationship between Welch and his subjects, the gender division of labor in commercial fisheries, and agricultural transformation of the Irish landscape.”
Quite a number of the old photographs also appear to have been postcards. I must be on the lookout for those at future antique postcard hunting opportunities.
During the past few weeks I have returned to sock knitting. A very satisfying pastime. After the toe surgery now almost 6 weeks ago, the only sock I could wear was a loose handknit one. On my visit to the surgeon after week 4, the surgeon went so far as to admire my handknit socks. He went up 10 points in my estimation!! A skillful surgeon who also appreciated handknit socks!
That spurred me on to knit more socks. 
These are the socks for my husband who so kindly ferried me around to my various classes and activities before I was able to drive again.
My other recent knitting has been the continuation of my stash reduction drive - knitting squares to be made up into blankets.
Here is the start of Hodge Podge 6.
And here is the current state of the knitting stash - considerably smaller than one month ago - progress has been made.
On Nationwide last night one of the clips was about the Kerry Woollen Mills in Beaufort, County Kerry, Ireland. We lament the disappearance of many mills in the British Isles but Kerry Woollen Mills appears to be thriving. The business is over 100 years old. It was established 104 years ago by a Scotsman named Eadie.
To quote from the Kerry Woollen Mills website:
“Kerry Woollen Mills is one of the last surviving traditional woollen mills still manufacturing in the beautiful Kerry countryside. Established over 300 years ago to alleviate local poverty the mill drew on the adjacent River Gweestin for the power to drive its machinery and the water to wash and dye its wool. The mill was bought over by the Eadie family in 1904 who had previously been in the woollen manufacturing business for many years in Fermangh and Scotland and continues under the fourth generation of family ownership to this day.
The mill is set in a rural location with many of the three hundred year old buildings still standing and functional! The machinery has of course changed many times over the years!”
I think it is the great grandson, Andrew Eadie, who is the current owner/manager. True to his Scottish heritage, Andrew attended the Scottish College of Textiles when it came time for him for enter the business as an adult. Of course he had grown up surrounded by the whirr of the machines and all the processes involved. Two points struck me especially about the programme - the use of imported wool and the dependence on the American tourist. Most of the wool they use is imported from Australia. They process the fine Australian merino wool and then make it up into lap rugs, shawls, blankets, garments, etc. They have a shop at the mill site and they are heavily dependent on American tourists coming to visit and purchase from the shop. Andrew said that Americans were the life blood of their business.
I have commented before about the difficulties In shopping for knitting wool in Dublin and the closing down of a number of wool shops. Well, even in years past I have not been that aware of knitting yarn from Kerry Woollen Mills. It has only been when I have gone to the West of Ireland to Connemara or County Mayo that I have found hanks of bainin (white yarn) from Kerry Woollen Mills. I see from their website that they do have knitting yarn and I’m sure that if I went to their mill shop I would find it there. Otherwise, I suppose failing a trip to the West, I could order it from the website.
On another note, here’s the message I was given today in Irish class. Éist le fuaim na habhann agus gheobhaidh tú breac. Which in translation means “Listen to the sound of the river and you will get a trout.” Guess where this came from - a sugar packet from a local Chinese restaurant.
And finally, if you read my earlier blog about the Leargas programme featuring Tomás MacNiocláis - yes it was my Irish teacher filmed as part of the Irish Book Group. I found out today that they meet once a month and that there are about 12 of them in the group. She said that RTE spent at least an hour filming them and in the programme they were shown for about half a minute. Just shows you how much editing goes on.
This postcard is a replica of an old photograph. Copyright National Museum of Ireland. What bothers me about it is the caption - Spinning and carding wool. The spinning part is all right but the carding term is incorrect, isn’t it? The woman in the foreground is beating flax, isn’t she? And isn’t there a special term other than beating for this stage of the process?
