Out of Office Message

I am on holiday. I'll be back in the second week of September.

If you are looking for something new to read, try one of the links on the right hand side. I've recently added some links to discussion forums, which should keep you busy. Or you could visit the Cloud Appreciation Society, or read Calculated Risk, or watch a free public lecture at the Royal Society or at UC Berkeley or look at the sky from above.

Otherwise, talk amongst yourselves.

Por una cabeza

If you read some Spanish, go and see El Rey de la Milonga.

Presented by Una Milonguera in association with Colombia Pictures, and starring Escarlata Juanson, Natalia Puertman, and Enrico Banana.

I laughed at the spolier alert, and then asked myself - if I were Argentinian, why on earth would I already know what happens to Anne Boleyn?

Jajajajaja.

A new dress

I had a new dress on Saturday. It's not especially revealing or provocative, but it's a little bit more of both than I usually wear. It's also very brightly-coloured, and it suits me.

It was enough of a departure that I spent most of the evening feeling selfconscious and partly convinced that it would fall to pieces or detach itself from my person as a judgement upon me for wearing an eye-catching dress that only cost £10. Still, if you added the price of the shoes, you'd get at least as respectable a figure for the outfit, as an outfit for the figure. And I think my problem was that the fabric is one of those strange polyester stuffs that feels a lot like wearing nothing at all.

Anyway, here's the thing: as always happens when I wear something more striking than usual, I got more extra attention from the women than the men. Women know very well that putting on clothes is a public artistic endeavour, whether the artist likes it or not. They know how insecure you feel, and why; they know the value of kindly applause, and they give it with great generosity. When women think one of their number has made a happy choice or a good aesthetic judgement, has managed her resources well, or achieved a pleasing and appropriate effect, it's not at all uncommon for them to sit down next to her and say exactly what they think about her outfit. Such praise - and it is praise, more than a compliment - is worth having, and should be treasured, and taken as gracefully as possible with a thank you for the kindness. And I hope I manage that, when I'm so fortunate.

Men who can give praise naturally, who do not convince themselves women hear them thinking, or edit themselves to frigidity rather than risk being misunderstood, deserve to be encouraged too. And I hope I do it.

Fair Isle Tiger

This is another present for a baby. I am at the age where my friends and colleagues are going into production. There are two more babies on the way already, and I don't know what I'm going to do about them.

For this baby, I thought I would do a tiger. It has to be black and yellow, but I didn't want to do anything too complex with the shape. Fair Isle patterns seemed right for a tiger's wavy, irregular camouflage stripes. I got the particular patterns used here from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Opinionated Knitter - some are her own, some traditional. I work Fair Isle in the same way she did, with one colour in each hand. I don't do it very often, so I had a false start and had to unravel; but once you get into the rhythm it's not at all difficult, and not much slower than plain knitting. It looks very impressive, though.

I made the body first. You can see the provisional cast-on in green in the pre-assembly picture on the right. Each end is closed with hexagonal decreases. When making animals, I always cast on 60 and work in the round. It gives a tube of reasonable size, and has lots of factors, which is useful for placing increases and decreases, and very handy for Fair Isle. Here, I used patterns repeating over ten, six, and two. For each leg I cast on 24 and used patterns over six and eight. For the tail, I cast on sixteen, and used the same pattern over eight. All appendages end with sock toes.

I did the Moomin on four needles, but nowadays I use the Magic Loop method. This doesn't work for every shape, but it's perfectly OK for anything more or less symmetrical - which animals notoriously are - and it doesn't matter what size the tube is, which is nice for all the fiddly limbs. I also find it significantly faster than working on four needles. Magic Loop naturally divides the knitting into two equal parts, and for the Frog, it was very convenient for one half to be its back and the other its belly. For the tiger, I put the end of the round, where the patterns jog, down the centre of its belly.

I made four legs and a tail seperately, stuffed and closed each individually, then sewed them on with what Debbie Stoller calls fake grafting. The last step was to embroider a face. Except that I suddenly noticed he had no ears. To make ears, I cast on 9 and decreased by two in each knit row till there was nothing left; I sewed them on with a bit of a curve to make them perk up.

This particular tiger has a long voyage to make. This week, he is to be posted to Mumbai.

My Mother's Work

When I was little, my mother used to make granny squares. She had a big bag of different coloured yarns, and for each row of each square, she would reach into the bag and take a colour without looking. The last row she would always work in black. Eventually the yarns became a big bag of random, multicoloured, black-edged squares.

One day when I was, I think, about ten, she laid all the squares out on the floor, and arranged them in rows with predominantly-blue squares at one corner and predominantly-yellow squares at the opposite corner. She discarded a few, made a few to fill in gaps, stored them all in order and began to join them up.

This is the result. Isn't it beautiful?

Tango in Seattle

I'm going to be in Seattle, WA, USA from 27th August to 5th September, staying with a (non-dancing) friend.

Without assuming I actually will - my mind will be on other things - where could I go to get one or two nice dances, where my friend would also be welcome, and be able to sit and have a quiet drink, possibly take a beginners' class if she feels like an adventure, or perhaps have a cake and a cup of tea?

Tango al fresco

This is an annual event, on two dates in summer, and I only made it to the second and an hour of the first. So this post is only useful if you might go next year.

The class: There's a beginners' class before the dancing, I was too late for it but heard good things about it and met one person who seemed to have been inspired by the one in July.

Layout and atmosphere: A temporary dance floor, plus a DJ tent, in Broadwalk, Regent's Park. It's very, very beautiful. The weather adds excitement; and the wide-eyed audience of people just there to enjoy the park has its charm. Each time I've been, it's been very well attended and the small floor extremely crowded.

I think it bears repeating that the floor is small, and was very crowded - sometimes almost properly, 'milonguero' crowded, so that if you use no more than your fair share of space, you will have less than the length of your shins in leeway. <rant>Deleted.</rant>

Hospitality: Bring your own picnic and put down your rug to reserve a place on the grass. I just brought a box of strawberries from the farmers' market, and they were great. Open to the elements, on two dates in an English summer, so omit neither sun cream nor an adequate umbrella. If you wear proper dancing shoes, choose some you don't mind spoiling a little or which won't be too much harmed by surprise rain. There is a place to get tea, coffee, and ice cream a short distance away (continue down Broadwalk to where the road comes through, cross, and you're there). The ladies' loos are round the back of the coffee place, and are plentiful, working, and clean, if wonky. Don't know where the gents' is, you'd have to check the park map.

Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: there was a performance by Carlos Paredes and Diana Giraldo. They were delayed, and they danced as soon as the floor was dry enough after a sudden storm of rain. The style of this performance didn't happen to be my thing, but I applaud them for a spirited professional act under difficult conditions, with some very scary moments.

DJing: Traditonal plus a tanda or two of modern here and there, a few valses, a few milonga sets. Nothing eccentric or challenging that I remember. The crowded floor is more than enough for most people to deal with.

Getting in: £10 donation if you're dancing, profits to the Regent's Park tree-planting fund.

Getting there and getting home: A few minutes' walk from either Regent's Park or Great Portland Street stations. From Great Portland Street, that means cross the main (Euston) road at the crossing in front of the station, walk left (crossing at the pelican crossing) until you reach the street on your right with the big, open iron gates; follow it, and you will soon see trees, and you enter the park at one corner. Take the left hand path of three, and listen for the music. But the location within the park may change, and the park is huge, so check the website.

The website: clean, simple, does the job of what, when, where, how much.

How it went: Well. It rained twice - the first time heavily enough so they had to clear the floor, the second time lightly so people danced with umbrellas in the open-side hand. Which is lovely. I danced ok, apart from wrong-footing myself with a misjudged ornament in a milonga.

When I got home, I was greeted by a magnficent double rainbow. A lovely day.