Back to my knitting design course

Thanks to the support of my lovely husband I am now back on my City and Guilds Knitting Design course. I feel really happy about this. I am going to Israel and am now thinking about taking a load of photos to use for design inspiration-the colours and textures of the Israeli landscape are so different to here.

I felt really sad when I gave this course up but Social Work left me drained and I was only capable of the most simple knitting. This is actually a dream come true.

coming out as a baker

I was liberated last weekend. I decided that my minimal Shabbat observance could decline even further as I wanted to watch the All Blacks. My friend who has Sky agreed to host in return for homemade muffins. Cranberry and banana muffins and chocolate brownies were duly baked. However other friends were also invited and my friends wife did not want these drunken blokes hanging around their home and I was called to say we were now meeting at the function room in a local pub. This is how I found myself with tupperware boxes full of baking in a room full of blokes. I felt really embarrassed and like some sort of walking stereotype. Then I thought I don't care I am a stereotype and baking is not a bad thing. Once they all got over their shock the baking went down really well. All these blokes obsessively kept track of football games as they watched the rugby. Do these men have no idea of just how important All Black games are and what do they obsess over for the few weeks they do not play football in summer?

I have by writing kept up my weekly write-if not slightly late. My knitting/crochet angst-when will the 140 squares in my blanket be finished-I am getting a tad bored and what do I take to knit to Israel next week-it is 30C in Jerusalem today and apparently even hotter in Tiberius where I will be staying with my daughter

Looking

I worked with a client on Sunday to sort out her room and I realised there is a link between knitting and my Lifestyle management business and that is looking. I work with clients to stop and really look at that room/wardrobe/office and think about how they want it to be and then we get on and do it. Good knitting is also about looking-how is that knitting on my needles? Is it what I really want-I now believe good knitters are often the knitters prepared to start again as many times as it takes to get knitting right.

I also walked to a friends house on Shabbat and made the decision to really look around me. I noticed a climbing plant with autumnal leaves that went from red to green across the plant-against the dark grey of the wet concrete it looked amazing and I saw amazing jumpers and blankets in my mind-it is about taking that time to see. I have made a decision to go and see art once a week in this time of minimal employment.

Tomorrow I want to see the London Underground designs and cameraless photography at the V&A and also to visit WhiteCube in Hoxton

more on this later....