Feeling much better

Aspirin, a very hot bath, pints of tea, a whisky-mac that a spoon would stand up in (mixed by my Dad - thank you), the run of my parents' library, and spending three days more or less horizontal, either sleeping or distracting my mind from all difficult subjects, have pretty much perked me up again. I'm not sure I'll actually go for a dance tomorrow, that might be a bad idea, but we'll see.

My holiday was indeed completely wasted, but that happens in winter. I should have taken the days last Spring.

Thank you all of my commenters for your good wishes, it is sweet of you and I appreciate it.

Reading bits and bobs of books I've read before is just the best thing for keeping the mind quiet. Desolation Island - my word, that man was good. Georgette Heyer was also great at what she did, and nobody else would have bothered to construct something like These Old Shades, or The Grand Sophy, or the brilliantly ridiculous Beauvallet. I wonder if either of those last two is even in print now. My mother's paperbacks have pre-decimal prices, and I think one has her maiden name written inside. Even Ellis Peters, who wasn't nearly as good, though inventive, makes a real contribution to healing. Her familiar paperbacks were new when I first read them, about twenty years ago. I've brought one back to my flat, to doze off with; my library is a fluid, amoebic daughter of the family one.

Feeling sorry for myself

I don't know what this is - it doesn't really feel like a cold - but I wish it would go away. My head hurts. Yesterday I felt pretty sick but I went into work anyway for an important technical meeting. It was cancelled, so I answered a few emails, gave people things they needed, came back and went to bed. Today I just stayed at home and tried not to cry. Tomorrow I am officially on holiday, but that'll probably be completely wasted.

Zigzag beret

Beret
Originally uploaded by mshedgehog

I still had some aran-weight angora left over, so I've made a beret to go with the Pair of Sleeves.

I was working on 5mm needles. The hat starts at the bottom edge, and I repeated the pattern six times around. You could work with any yarn and needles, and cast on any multiple of six that gives you a good fit around the intended wearer's head. Divide your number by six, and the answer is the number of stitches between the yarn-overs on the first pattern row. The rest of the yarn-overs just arrange themselves on top, and you would continue till you were down to 18 stitches; you might get an extra zigzag and the middle would look different. Or, I suppose you could add or subtract a pattern repeat, and you would get a heptagonal or pentagonal beret.

It's a little bit big for the Intended Wearer - no-one could accuse her of bigheadedness.

Instructions

Cast on 72 using Techknitting's 'provisional tail' 1x1 tubular cast-on.

Join into a round. The cast-on leaves a little gap, which you can sew up at the end. Do 1x1 ribbing for three rows.

Place a marker at the beginning of the round. Otherwise it's very easy to find yourself mixing even and odd rows. You will have to move the marker eventually, because it will get into the middle of a decrease. Just make sure it's always between the same two YO-decrease sets - after the last and before the first. Move it just enough to get it out of the way, no more.

Row 1 and all odd rows: k.
Row 2: k12, (YO, k12) 5 times, k6, repeat to end of round (first row of chart).
Continue from chart, because it's the best way I have of explaining it. Keep the YOs in the right places in relation to each other and decrease before or after them as shown. I tried counting all the stitches in between but it just makes a simple procedure seem complicated, and I'd certainly make mistakes.

When you are down to 24 stitches, change down a needle size to make the top of the hat nice and flat (this tip is also from Techknitting). After 2 more rounds there are 18 stitches. When you get down to 18, knit one more row, then arrange them as 9 on each needle and graft them together. Sew up the little gap in the cast-on, and block to shape.

Essentially, we increase to 102 stitches by adding yarn-overs. Then we keep adding the YOs, but for each YO we do a double decrease immediately before or after it, so the net effect is to decrease by one. We arrange the YOs and their decreases in zigzags so that we make a flat hexagon, then close the top.

Cover Art

I've discovered the joy of no-label cover art.

CDBaby distributes CDs one at a time, to order, from the artist to the listener. They seem to be muddling along well enough to provide some evidence that it might be possible to scrape a living in the 'long tail'. The automatic emails are disturbingly wierd, but they delivered the CD, and that's what matters.

I've bought a CD of Joe Powers (harmonica), who played at a festival this summer.

On the front, Joe - who I remember looking like a perfectly normal, perhaps mid-twenties Germanic American in a suit - is represented posing in enough soft focus for a boudoir portrait of a seventy-five-year-old tart, and holding his instrument erect as firearms are held by James Bond. In the background is a woman, wearing not-a-right-lot of red dress, and looking the other way.

Inside, a folded leaflet shows Joe sitting alone in some dark-wood café with a nice cup of tea. In a photo-story lacking only captions, which I suppose the buyer is invited to provide, Red Dress Woman wanders truculently in. She siezes the politely-rising Joe, and wraps herself around him in various poses. Unable to rip his shirt off with her fingers, she tries a stiletto, the sharpest thing to hand, in a process of lateral thinking familiar to all who've tried to get the packaging off a memory card. I might have started that line of attack by removing the stiletto from my foot, first, or at least not approached the buttons from behind; but there you are. She fails, and they're both still more-or-less dressed on the back.

It reminds me of the dream sequence in The Two Towers when Aragorn falls of a cliff, receives a psychic message from his sexpot fairy princess in a blue nightie, wakes up being snogged by his horse, and spends the next scene riding through the hills to the sound of Howard Shore doing Ennio Morricone. Maybe that was what they had in mind.

As for the music, I like the milongas best, but don't listen to me. You can hear samples here and here.

Carablanca @ Conway Hall

My review for this new milonga was from its first night, so I thought I'd better update it. Actually it's an old milonga reincarnated, with a new venue and a new name, but under the same management of Danny, Diana and friends. My previous review, with recent reader comments, is here. It's on most Friday nights from 20:30 till midnight, but until January they still won't have the venue for all the Fridays, so check the website, and tango-uk for announcements. [UPDATE 13-Jan-09: they now have a continuous booking, so it's every Friday and you probably only need to check around the holiday season.]

The Class: I skipped the class. Danny and Diana teach a beginners' class in another room, while the intermediate class is always given by guests. This week it was Kicca Tommasi and Julio Mendez, who usually teach at the Dome. I've taken a class with them once before, and it included some valuable technique stuff for both leaders and followers, especially on close embrace.

Layout and Atmosphere: The building is the large, handsome meeting hall of the South Place Ethical Society, and has its own website. Assuming you come in before 10pm, so by the front door, you come into roomy tiled foyer with benches along the walls. You can sit out here to cool off and have little breakout chats. The main room for dancing is large and square, with a proper stage, not used by the milonga, at the far end, a square glass skylight, and a suspended gallery with a square clock above the entrance. It has a geometric, dark-wood feel which makes me think of British neoclassicism and Arts-and-Crafts both at the same time. It's just what you'd imagine for an Ethical Society. I think that the floor being more or less square instead of rectangular makes it slightly harder to develop a clear line of dance, especially given that this is London and a lot of people don't know they're supposed to, or don't care. But that might be just my imagination. It's roomy, and I had hardly any bumps. The air conditioning was on, it was cold outside, and one of my partners still had a freezing cold nose at 11pm. "I'm a mediterranean person!" he said.

The floor has been cleaned since this milonga started, and is much better. The brass circles are less slippery, and the lighter colour lifts the room.

The lighting seems to be built with lighting the stage in mind, rather than the room as a whole, and they're still working on how to adjust it. At the moment the average quantity is about right, but there's a dark patch and a light patch. They'll get it sorted out, but it will probably take a while.

Hospitality: Very good. There are rails to hang your coat on, on the far side of the room - not quite enough, but some. I tucked my handbag underneath a bench. The tables, with their bright red tablecloths, have expanded a little on each side and you can sit down whenever you need to, or go into the foyer to cool off. Plentiful free water is in jugs on a table; pens are provided to write your name on your plastic cup so you don't have to keep getting new ones. Drinks are available from a makeshift bar; my G&T with ice and slice of citrus was £3. The loos are well-lit, properly supplied, and quite roomy, they stayed clean and dry all evening, and it is quite feasible to change your clothes and shoes in there.

Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: Kicca and Julio gave a performance. They have great chemistry, and I liked their choreography with the music. They dolled themselves up, delivered two tangos and a milonga which were all significantly different from each other, gracefully accepted their applause, then cleared off to put proper clothes back on and gave the floor back to the social dancers.

What I thought of the DJing: DJs here vary, but almost always play traditional music in tandas, with cortinas. This week it was Nikki Preddy, who did a decent job. The sound system here is better than most, and so far I think I've always heard the music properly from all parts of the room, often not the case elsewhere. [Update Summer 2011 - I think that was probably true when I wrote it, but it's deteriorated markedly and now it usually often sounds muffled to me. I can't be absolutely sure how much of this is due to DJs, and how much is due to wear and tear on connectors, speakers, etc, but it's become a fairly consistent intermittent problem. Nowadays the large speakers above the stage are not normally used, for some technical or logistical reason. Instead there are smaller ones on stage. Muffled sound at high volume tends to make people talk louder, and it spirals down. On the other hand, they now quite often hire professional guest DJs, and are going in that direction. Further update after a bit more research: The sound quality was good when they had La Rubia, and when they had Bernhard Gehberger, and also it was good when Beto did it a couple of weeks ago, so I'm assuming it's mainly the DJs. Danny, who runs it tells me they're working on some future guidelines for DJs]

Getting in: normally £8.50, £10 if there is a performance. Cheaper if you just want to take the class.

Getting there and getting home: From Holborn tube, take the right hand exit. Don't cross at the crossing in front of you, but instead walk right, to the next one, and cross over to the corner where the yellow sign says "Gym Box" and the office block makes a bridge across the road. Walk under the bridge and you will soon pass the Square Pig (which has a milonga on Mondays). The trees now in front of you are in Red Lion Square. The front door of Conway Hall is in the furthest corner, so walk round two sides of the square to reach it. If you arrive after 10pm, you will have to use the back door. In that case, [instead of turning into the square] continue past [the trees] it to the next street, which is Theobalds Road, turn right, and you're there when you get to the Humanist window displays. It closes at midnight and the last Tubes are at about twenty past; if you dawdle enough to miss the train, you can get buses in many directions from nearby. Or you could walk down the road for ten minutes and continue your evening at Negracha.

The website: dead simple, gives you what you need. Scroll down for information on beginners' classes, and download the PDF flyer (now fixed, and works properly) for the schedule.

How it went: This is not the fashionable Friday night milonga; that would be Negracha, down the road. The crowd here is usually less demanding as to personal beauty, but a lot more demanding as to comfort, quality of DJ, and value for money, and that means it tends to consist of older dancers, plus a few younger people like me who want to have a nice dance but really can't be bothered to wait for it till after midnight. But this varies a lot depending on who the guest teachers are. It's still quite new, and hasn't settled down. I got good dances, had a comfortable, stress-free evening, and got to sit down and chat to friends during tandas that didn't appeal. It suits me fine.

Update: Added this video from July 2009: Mingo and Esther Pugliese dance tango, and you get a sense of what the space is like when fully lit.

Fire and Ice

You are invited...
Originally uploaded by webwandering

At "Fire and Ice", Carole Edrich's warm and lively pictures of the social and performance tango scene in London are mixed with Jeremy Hoare's studies of glaciers in Argentina. It's a nice spin and a pleasing visual contrast. Jeremy's pictures are painterly, full of blues lit from within, textures and a different kind of light. Carole won the UK heat, and then the 23-country final, of a Sony-Ericsson competition called "Life Captured", and that's certainly a good description. There are shots of Miguel Angel Zotto and (I think) Daiana Guspero, of David Benitez and Kim Schwartz, and a great one of Monica and Omar Ocampo, but my favourites are probably the ones of social dancers, especially the ones from tango al fresco of people dancing with umbrellas in the pouring rain and looking delighted. They're displayed around the walls above the diners' heads, and prints are available at various sizes and prices.

At the private view we had a nice little dance on the tiled floor of the bar, but since dancers eat and drink little while dancing, I don't think it would make sense for the restaurant to do this regularly. A pity - it's in the middle of nowhere, unless you work at Canary Wharf, but it's a very nice place and the dance floor is about the same size as Vino Latino's, with much more comfortable seating and minus the giant pillar. The private view was sponsored by those nice people at Wines of Argentina and I was served a very cosy and palatable red.

Anyway, if you want to have a look, it's at a place called Zero Sette (07) Restaurant, and you'll probably need some directions, since "right next to the Western entrance of ExCeL" got people lost.

Beware the platform signage if you change at Canning Town. It's wrong. You could wait half an hour while your trains depart behind you. Turn around and read the electronic displays. From the platform at Custom House, go up the stairs and turn right, following the signs for the western entrance of ExCeL. You'll go past the upper floor of a restaurant called "neo", and a coffee place. The western entrance itself is a row of glass doors. You can't see Zero Sette anywhere from here. Turn round and go down the stairs to the U-shaped taxi rank outside. Cross the taxi rank towards the lower floor of "neo" and Zero Sette is the much less consipicuous entrance to the left. It's a restaurant, so you might want to eat something, or at least have a drink at the bar.

Carole always asks permission to use pictures of the people whose faces are visible in her shots (neither law nor custom requires this, Carole just does it as a matter of personal preference). There's one person in the exhibition, photographed at River Tango, who Carole was unable to find to ask permission; so if you recognise yourself or a friend in the middle-aged lady with red lipstick, a black bead choker, and a mischievous expression, you are politely asked to contact Carole, or grab her at a milonga. You know - Carole with the camera and the stripey hair.

Zero Sette Restaurant, directions above, till 19th January.

Adventures of the Moomin

Little Pearl can walk around now under her own power. She doesn't talk much yet but she definitely has ideas. Here she is in their cosy house in Helsinki; it's midafternoon, and the window looks like sunset.

A general description of how I made the Moomin (or Muumi as they call him in Finnish) is here. He was the first cuddly animal I made, and the most complicated. I'm glad I wrote notes because otherwise I'd have no idea how I did it. It just had to happen because it seemed right.

I'm so proud. I feel as though it was me getting the hug.