Single Christmas

Okay, maybe I’m over-egging the ‘single’ but this is the first Christmas I’ve been single in 22 years, in fact except for the age of 19 it’s the first single Christmas in my adult life. So I’m feeling it a bit. But I’m not completely beaten down. I’ve had a bit of help with the decorations:

And for the first time ever I’ve made a Christmas cake. It’s the first cake I’ve baked in at least 13 years and possibly more. I’ve never made a Christmas dinner on my own either and although I’m not planning to cook a turkey considering I’m vegan, I am planning to do the stuffing and veg and I’m doing plenty so that I have lots left over for bubble and squeak which is one of my favourite aspects of Christmas food. I’m working on Christmas Day itself so the dinner will be my Christmas Eve dinner. (I volunteered to work a shift so that I wouldn’t have to spend the day alone.)

So, the Christmas cake. I used vegan margarine and egg replacement, and took photos as I was going along so that I could provide proof in case anyone didn’t believe me!

 

And this is the point where I admit that it was made using a kit, where everything except the fresh ingredients came in little packages.

I made a special little hood for the cake as the instructions dictated.

When I cooked it (four hours!!) I decided to do some slow roasted veg at the same time to use the oven to its fullest capacity. I also didn’t need to put the heater on that evening and the whole flat smelled fabulous all night.

Icing it was fun. I love marzipan but get bored with the decorations people usually put on their cakes so decided to use blueberries and lemon to make a snowman face.

More or Less

Since writing the previous blog post requesting lots of things, I’ve now managed to acquire most of what I need thankyou! I’ve also done a video of my flat which is on the CastingPods youtube page (and also posted below), and immediately had a phonecall from a friend checking I was ok because it seems quite sad! It isn’t very sad really, it’s just that I was extremely tired when I shot the video because I was moving boxes and boxes of stuff all by myself for two solid days with a bit of help on the second day! I hadn’t had a chance to edit and upload between moving and now (10 days later).

Now that I’ve had a bit of time to settle in it doesn’t look quite so messy and I’ll probably do another video after the New Year. Today I’m defrosting the fridge which I hope will reduce the noise as well as the electricity consumption. I’ve had some time to think of another inventory of things I still need:

Iron

Ironing board

Bookshelves (narrow shelves for books rather than wide for storage boxes which I already have)

Blankets and throws

I could of course buy these new and will probably have to if I can’t find them second hand soon. The cheapest iron I’ve found is £3.97 at Tesco and yes, this would be a very sensible option. However it has probably been made by slave labour for the price to be that cheap. I’m trying to stick to my ethical principals but just can’t afford to buy something that isn’t dubious hence my reliance on second hand. It’s also been suggested to me by several people that I dump my current clothes and buy only clothes that will dry creaselessly in a tumble dryer and then I won’t need to iron. I can’t begin to explain how far removed from my life this concept is! I wish that I didn’t have to iron at all but unfortunately I live in a world where a person’s appearance is directly related to their perceived worth which then has an effect on the way they are treated by society, in particular by work colleagues. So if I haven’t been able to find a second hand iron between now and when my clothes run out, which may be some time in January, I will have to bite that particular bullet.

On a lighter note, I was very pleased this week to hear Brenda Dayne of Cast On mention me in her podcast about sock knitting, as I’d put a comment on her previous show with a link to my recent blog post about extending the toes of Aran’s socks. My Christmas knitting and spinning is all on track and I’m managing to forge ahead with a social life, new friends and old.

Lots of really heartbreaking things are still happening but I’m not going to go into those here, I’m just going to say that I’m staying safe and taking care of myself. I think in many ways I’m managing to be in better mental health now than I have been for years, simply because I know that I’m the only one that can make changes to my life whereas before I was working under the erroneous assumption that it was someone else’s responsibility.

New Flat, Some Things Missing

This evening, as I was sitting eating my dinner out of a saucepan, using the lid as a side plate, I decided it might be an idea to put out a list of things I still need for my new flat. I’ve had lots of offers of help, thankyou very much, and have managed to scavenge quite a few things. But here are some things I still need:

Crockery – plates, bowls (not mugs, got plenty)

Cutlery insert for drawer (got cutlery)

Washing up bowl

Food storage tubs

Chopping board (preferably wooden but beggars can’t be choosers)

Frying pan (griddle or wok will do)

2 small bins with lids

Dustpan and brush

Bedding – single sheets, duvet cover, pillow cases (currently got one of each)

A basic phone handset – nothing special – in time for my landline connection at the end of Dec.

I may well add to this list as it is an ongoing adventure, whereby I don’t realise I need something until I go to do something and find it not there.

Please don’t be insulted if I turn down offers of furniture or kitchen equipment, as it is a *very* small space and is already mostly taken up by my books and my yarn stash. Oh dear.

I am asking for your old stuff that you don’t use anymore and can spare for me, and also to keep an eye out for these items in charity shops. I’m not asking for new things to be bought for me! I am trying to be as eco as possible here, but if I can’t find what I need after weeks of hunting and begging then I may well abandon my principles and make a trip to Ikea!

Things that I don’t *need* but would make my life much easier:

Visitation rights to somewhere warm with free broadband, preferably with tea. Only needed till January.

Any old food you might have in your cupboards that you probably won’t use before the use-by date.

Preliminary photos before the piles of stuff began arriving:

 

Now I will do some more packing and then fall into bed. Bed goes tomorrow after which I am officially a flat-dweller. Email me for my new address if you need it.

Extending the toe of a sock for a boy with huge feet

I worked out how to do this myself, though it’s probably in a book somewhere too as there’s nothing new under the sun and especially in knitting! These are a pair of the subversive socks I knitted last year for my boy, and I had been telling him that if any of these needed darning he should let me know. He said that this particular pair have become a bit small for him so I told him I could extend them. The sock ‘neck’ is also tight so I’m now unpicking that to knit it on a larger gauge and cast off more loosely, so these socks have taken some attention but it’s still faster than knitting a new pair (two afternoons of work compared to a week).

I thought I’d share the benefit of my experience in case anyone has a similar scenario on their own or more likely their children’s socks.

Step 1: before cutting, pick up stitches all around the sock

Step 2: snip the yarn of one stitch in the row *below* the pick up row and begin picking up the stitches that this exposes, on the row below that (so you’re losing one row)

Step 3: pick up backwards as well as forwards (using circs or double-pointed) so that there is a length of yarn on either side rather than a tiny bit. This may get difficult if there has been some felting going on. 

Step 4: continue to unpick the row between the two pick up rows, so it’s like you’re unzipping the sock

Step 5: put aside the top part (if it’s a toe-up sock, or the toe if it’s a bottom-down sock) and knit from the toe (or top) in the direction that the original sock was knitted, knit your one lost row plus however many inches you need to extend the sock by.

Step 6: once the extra bit is knitted, graft (kitchener stitch) the toe and top back together, wish I was better at grafting.

Step 7: Remember to knit the same number of rows for both socks. Using a contrasting yarn here cos that’s his way, but if the same yarn is used it’s possible to do it relatively invisibly, if you were better at grafting than me.

Points to remember: The top row of stitches will be the bottom of the ‘true’ stitch as it was knitted in the original direction, so it will need to be treated carefully especially if a stitch is dropped (this is why it’s recommended to add rows in the direction of the original knitting). If the socks are striped like these, start at the ‘jog’ i.e. the point where the previous row ends and the next row begins, to avoid getting confused as to which needle the stitch should go on.

Feelings

Here is my new personal mantra: I am responsible for my own feelings. I will not expect or rely on anyone to make me feel positive and I will not blame anyone for making me feel negative. I will behave respectfully to others as I expect them to behave towards me and in doing so I will not need to take responsibility for anyone else’s negative feelings.

Why I decided to avoid facebook for a while

Although I didn’t think I would need to put more explanation than I already had done on facebook about not posting publicly, it looks like I may need to outline a few things after all. Several friends have commented or sent me messages and I’ve got into contact with them privately, and I thank everyone for their support at a difficult time for me. However it may be that my wider group of facebook friends deserve an explanation and I don’t want anyone to feel that I’ve simply dropped them for no good reason.

I’m not going to go into a great deal of personal detail because that would defeat the object of not posting publicly on facebook, and I do feel quite uncomfortable when I see people ‘washing their dirty laundry’ in public. But I accept that an explanation is needed. Someone I care about very deeply has decided to unfriend me – that’s the official facebook term so I’m using it although I prefer de-friend. We are still talking privately but have made a mutual decision to avoid each other’s facebook streams for various reasons. However, as we share a number of mutual friends, this has proven to be impossible unless one of us takes the decision to step away from facebook altogether for a while.

I don’t expect her to say nasty things about me, as she is a lovely person and has shown that she values integrity, and I won’t be saying nasty things about her either. I made a decision a long time ago to only put positive or neutral comments on facebook, never personally negative comments. But it is quite difficult for me to see things that she might say about her life that no longer includes me. Even if we are not facebook friends, I still see these comments in my stream and I am not comfortable with changing privacy settings just yet. It has also disturbed me quite a bit that some mutual friends (I’m sure a minority) have reported back to her that I’ve been on facebook and things that I’ve said. Even the most innocuous things about housework I’ve done, or when I’m trying desperately to present a positive face to the world even when my heart is breaking, these have been twisted and returned to me as evidence that I’m not suffering or that I’m lying.

In the past I’ve made attempts to step away from facebook because of the amount of time I realise I spend on it in comparison to other aspects of my life. When I’ve been incredibly busy I’ve still managed to log in for five minutes every few hours and swoop down on the stream clicking like-like-like and making the occasional clever, funny or political comments and status updates (I take pride if a single comment can be described as all three of these adjectives). However, even this has been returned to me as me not really being busy at all but spending all day on facebook. It now seems that facebook is more of a burden to my life than an asset and even though the last few days sans facebook have felt as if I’ve lost a limb, or perhaps more accurately, my second voice, this is something that I believe I have to do to preserve my sanity.

I’m very hurt by the insinuation that I might have lied on facebook or anywhere else because I’ve never consciously told a mistruth or misrepresented myself publicly, either here on the blog, on my podcast, on social networks or in real life. I’d also like to say that everyone has a public face they present to the world which may be very different to how they feel on the inside. This is not about lying, it’s about preserving one’s privacy and sanity.

I would appreciate it if friends didn’t try to stir and gossip between us as we are communicating a lot and carefully. I can’t speak for her because she has always been a wonderful person but I am probably more communicative and caring now than for the majority of the time we’ve known each other. I know that I’ve taken her for granted and this is one of the main reasons she’s decided to take this step. The precepts of the poly life are really helping me to work through my feelings and behaviour right now, such as ‘just because you care about someone it doesn’t mean you have a right to dictate what they do with their life’. I’m hoping that this experience will help me to grow as a person and improve my relationships rather than turning me into a bitter, angry and ultimately lonely person.

There are a number of social networks I am going to avoid for a while so that I can give her space and have some space away from her. These include online and offline social networks. Please be reassured that I am not isolated, I am surrounded by people who care about me and I am taking care of myself. I still have a number of online and offline places that are my own and never have been shared with her, and I am planning to spend more time in these places. I’m not planning to simply replace facebook with another network, though, as what I said about the amount of time it takes away from other things still stands. At some point I may come back to facebook and other social networks as myself or under a pseudonym, depending on how things go. Whichever it is I will still be me but will definitely be more cautious as I feel very let down by people in general and have drastically reduced my level of trust.

I am never going to criticise her publicly and am never going to try to make myself seem to be the injured party. I am confident that she will treat me with the same respect because she really is a lovely person.

I still have a public presence. My podcast is still available and this blog. I’m not currently planning to talk about all of this on the podcast as it still hurts too much but at some point in the future when things have settled down, I may well mention this on the podcast. The latest podcast episode is already recorded and edited and waiting in the wings for me to set up the new libsyn feed.

As for facebook, I will be popping in occasionally because there are some people who only connect with me via that network, but am not planning to make public status updates and will only post links for things that are very important to me. I will scroll through my feed when I can brace myself for anything that I might see, so there will be times that I occasionally click ‘like’ or make a comment, just so that I can stay in touch with my friends.

Watch Me Spin!

This is a ‘how to’ video for spinning with a drop spindle, including my own unique brand of humorous commentary (loving the opportunities for innuendo that a spindle offers).

I videoed it on my laptop and then did a separate commentary while watching the video so I know it was in time originally, but my software is a bit naff and I can’t get the two to match, even after much editing. When there’s a cut it goes back into synch and then out again. It looks like the video is slightly speeding up (except the obvious bits where I speed it up on purpose), so the sound gradually gets more and more delayed and what I’m saying doesn’t match what’s on the screen.