I wrote yesterday, but when I tried to upload it, I found that there was no wifi. I restarted the router, tried to get on from the laptop, switched the telly on and even the Tivo wasn’t connected. Went looking for the contact details for Virgin Media, funny how they never give you a phone number, or if there’s a letter or document somewhere that has that information, I couldn’t find it. It was down all morning, came back up just before one o’clock. I’d texted a friend who lives a few streets away who also uses Virgin, he replied mid-afternoon, when mine was back, to say that it had been up and down all day.
So I never posted what I’d written, but might do later.
Horrible weather yesterday. That does sometimes seem to correspond with the wifi being crap, I don’t know if it’s related, or if so how, it’s just an anecdotal correlation.
When I wasn’t fretting about the wifi not working, I was fretting about my knitting. I have one knitting project (jumper) and one crochet project (weather blanket) and they both have multiple colours of yarn which are permanently tangled, so that it feels some days I spend more time untangling yarn than I do crafting. Sometimes it can be quite a soothing thing to do, but mostly it’s a frustrating chore. I don’t know what I do to make it happen and I don’t know what I can do to stop it happening, except not use so many different colours – and I don’t want to do that, which would be very boring.
For the Christmas jumper, I’ve currently got two additional balls of white on the back (for snowflakes), two on the one sleeve that I’ve started (for candy canes) and seven on the front. You may ask why I make it so complicated, but the point is that it’s a pictorial design, and unlike cross stitch or tapestry, where you can work on one area at a time, everything that appears on one row has to be done at the same time.
I’m also having doubts about what the recipient (my daughter) will think of it. Is what I’m doing completely bonkers? On the current bit of the front, there’s a gingerbread man flanked by two candy canes and two cup cakes – okay, I admit, that IS a bonkers idea. I’ve adapted it from a cross stitch pattern and a jumper a friend of mine had last year, with the slogan: ‘Calories don’t count at Christmas’. Over the last three years I’ve made jumpers for the grandkids, and my daughter kept saying: ‘when are you going to do one for me?’ but I do wonder how she’ll react.
I always have this when I make things for other people. Will they like it, will they wear it? Personally, I wouldn’t be seen dead in half the things I make. I’m following my creative instinct, but I do wonder about what it produces.