'Nother Solent

The smooth new concrete by the side of the house was much admired. Nobody connected it to the mysterious absence of blog posts. Nobody except the annoying old guy who made it his business to look into such things...

I am going to be very busy in the next week, so there may be few or no posts. Make of that what you will.

The Joy of Knitting.

"It begins with a simple thread onto a needle...but it ends in no holds barred diatribes against the pathetic left, weakness in the face of terrorism and capitulation to the new Eurabia."

My kind of gal. Except I can't knit.

(Via Tim Blair.)

Mind you, the non-pathetic left, as represented by the likes of Normblog and the boys at Harry's Place can stitch up an anti-appeasement storm themselves.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Gary Farber of Amygdala writes in Whitmanesque fashion comparing:

"Some of you may be under the misapprehension, which I concede I have not striven to correct, that I like sewing."

to

"You got a problem, bud? I like sewing" [in the sidebar]

I admire people with big brains, my love.

We contain multitudes. Darn them. Don't sew them.

;-)

(Strictly meant in a non-sexual, platonic, non-threatening or imposing or implying, way.)

What are you talking about Gary me old china? I love sewing. Adore it. Especially really challenging projects that make full use of my skills; the cream dress in slinky fabric I am just completing for my daughter, for instance. There is little in this harsh world so satisfying as finally reaching the stage when you can sew in one of the "Made by Natalie" nametapes so vaingloriously ordered from Cash's the other day.

Some of you may be under the misapprehension

, which I concede I have not striven to correct, that I like sewing.

In fact I loathe it and perform the hateful act only as a spiritual discipline. Of all the sects of this peculiar practice the most contorted, maddening and repugnant to a free spirit is that branch of self-flagellation known as dressmaking.

I am currently making a dress. But that's not the worst.

If it were for me I could have quietly left the half-made thing out for the recycling van by now, like Dr Moreau deciding that the result of crossing man and lobster was an idea whose time had not yet come. But once parental guilt enters the arena such easy tactics are unthinkable. My imagination instantly supplies a scene from a therapist's consulting room, circa 2030 and Offspring saying, "It all started to go wrong when my mother promised to make me a dress..." So I'm stuck with it till it's done. But that's not the worst.

It's made of utterly unforgiving monocoloured light cream fabric. No matter how carefully you match the thread to the fabric, every stitch shows and has to be perfectly placed, and every wobble in the line has to be unpicked, and then the frickin' holes show. But that's not the worst.

It's all smooth and shiny. Every possible misjudgement of tension shows, and every possible misjudgement of tension happens because it's so slippery. But that's not the worst.

I have just enough. There is no more of that fabric in the shop.

That's the worst.

Tomorrow's excuse for not blogging is that I will be mixing concrete. Strange but true.

"Natalie would go beyond the non-throat-slitting definition of good, and say that making money is actively a good thing."

Hmmm. Would I? Definitely the first bit, not sure about the second.

Anne Cunningham has written a post in response to one of mine. In a snatched moment I'm posting it here. Read the comments, too, which include a second post-within-a-comment by Anne herself.

Forgive me, amigos, I have to go away and do lots of non-blogging stuff. I also have to think of a response which is somewhere close to the level of thoughtfulness I am credited with.

UPDATE: First draft: making money, like the public exercise of any other talent, is good thing but not a duty.