Yes. You read it well. Three things in one post again - and amongst them,
The Star of This Post, The Real Reason that Got Me to Write: Knitting.
Breaking news, I started knitting. A few days ago, somehow, I ended up watching videos about Mount Everest. I went down the rabbit hole of base camps, oxygen levels and do I even like hiking? God no. Do I like nature? Kind of. Yes, actually, I quite like it. I like it when it comes to strolling alongside riverbanks (in pretty dresses), smelling roses (especially in the garden of my little wooden cabin - I LOVE everything about that garden), and I LOVE English parks and gardens. Ah, and of course, I love watching nature when it's raining. But I cannot imagine hiking for days. An hour of hike, for me, is more than enough.
Of course, I still have a few odd hiking dreams - there is a lake in Canada for example (called Lake Agnes...) that you need to hike up to (duh), and there's nothing else, really, but the lake and a tea house.
Here's the lake:
And here's the tea house (with such an impressive collection of tea!):
Now, how magical is that? One day, I'll go there, I swear.
In the meantime.... this is how I imagine the place:
But how is this all connected to knitting? And Mount Everest?
So, I went down the rabbit hole of videos about the Himalayas and just kept watching people hike, but mostly the local and traditional life of Tibetan people surviving at 3500 metres - or higher... And then there was this Tibetan girl knitting in one of the videos with great excitement. Of course, I'm not sure how traditional knitting itself is over there, but her joy was captivating...
Yes. That was all. I was like: I want that.
So, I'm learning to knit. For now, I'm quite tense. Knitting, by the way, reminded me of that 'very knitting scene' from Alice Through the Looking Glass (by Lewis Carroll). And hurray for it being in the public domain. It is one of my favourite chapters, so let me share it:
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Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
CHAPTER V.
Wool and Water
(Excerpt)
“Oh, much better!” cried the Queen, her voice rising to a squeak as she went on. “Much be-etter! Be-etter! Be-e-e-etter! Be-e-ehh!” The last word ended in a long bleat, so like a sheep that Alice quite started.
She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have suddenly wrapped herself up in wool. Alice rubbed her eyes, and looked again. She couldn’t make out what had happened at all. Was she in a shop? And was that really—was it really a sheep that was sitting on the other side of the counter? Rub as she could, she could make nothing more of it: she was in a little dark shop, leaning with her elbows on the counter, and opposite to her was an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair of spectacles.
“What is it you want to buy?” the Sheep said at last, looking up for a moment from her knitting.
“I don’t quite know yet,” Alice said, very gently. “I should like to look all round me first, if I might.”
“You may look in front of you, and on both sides, if you like,” said the Sheep: “but you can’t look all round you—unless you’ve got eyes at the back of your head.”
But these, as it happened, Alice had not got: so she contented herself with turning round, looking at the shelves as she came to them.
The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things—but the oddest part of it all was, that whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty: though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold.
“Things flow about so here!” she said at last in a plaintive tone, after she had spent a minute or so in vainly pursuing a large bright thing, that looked sometimes like a doll and sometimes like a work-box, and was always in the shelf next above the one she was looking at. “And this one is the most provoking of all—but I’ll tell you what—” she added, as a sudden thought struck her, “I’ll follow it up to the very top shelf of all. It’ll puzzle it to go through the ceiling, I expect!”
But even this plan failed: the “thing” went through the ceiling as quietly as possible, as if it were quite used to it.
“Are you a child or a teetotum?” the Sheep said, as she took up another pair of needles. “You’ll make me giddy soon, if you go on turning round like that.” She was now working with fourteen pairs at once, and Alice couldn’t help looking at her in great astonishment.
“How can she knit with so many?” the puzzled child thought to herself. “She gets more and more like a porcupine every minute!”
“Can you row?” the Sheep asked, handing her a pair of knitting-needles as she spoke.
“Yes, a little—but not on land—and not with needles—” Alice was beginning to say, when suddenly the needles turned into oars in her hands, and she found they were in a little boat, gliding along between banks: so there was nothing for it but to do her best.
“Feather!” cried the Sheep, as she took up another pair of needles.
This didn’t sound like a remark that needed any answer, so Alice said nothing, but pulled away. There was something very queer about the water, she thought, as every now and then the oars got fast in it, and would hardly come out again.
“Feather! Feather!” the Sheep cried again, taking more needles. “You’ll be catching a crab directly.”
“A dear little crab!” thought Alice. “I should like that.”
“Didn’t you hear me say ‘Feather’?” the Sheep cried angrily, taking up quite a bunch of needles.
“Indeed I did,” said Alice: “you’ve said it very often—and very loud. Please, where are the crabs?”
“In the water, of course!” said the Sheep, sticking some of the needles into her hair, as her hands were full. “Feather, I say!”
“Why do you say ‘feather’ so often?” Alice asked at last, rather vexed. “I’m not a bird!”
“You are,” said the Sheep: “you’re a little goose.”
This offended Alice a little, so there was no more conversation for a minute or two, while the boat glided gently on, sometimes among beds of weeds (which made the oars stick fast in the water, worse then ever), and sometimes under trees, but always with the same tall river-banks frowning over their heads.
“Oh, please! There are some scented rushes!” Alice cried in a sudden transport of delight. “There really are—and such beauties!”
“You needn’t say ‘please’ to me about ’em,” the Sheep said, without looking up from her knitting: “I didn’t put ’em there, and I’m not going to take ’em away.”
“No, but I meant—please, may we wait and pick some?” Alice pleaded. “If you don’t mind stopping the boat for a minute.”
“How am I to stop it?” said the Sheep. “If you leave off rowing, it’ll stop of itself.”
So the boat was left to drift down the stream as it would, till it glided gently in among the waving rushes. And then the little sleeves were carefully rolled up, and the little arms were plunged in elbow-deep to get the rushes a good long way down before breaking them off—and for a while Alice forgot all about the Sheep and the knitting, as she bent over the side of the boat, with just the ends of her tangled hair dipping into the water—while with bright eager eyes she caught at one bunch after another of the darling scented rushes.
“I only hope the boat won’t tipple over!” she said to herself. “Oh, what a lovely one! Only I couldn’t quite reach it.” And it certainly did seem a little provoking (“almost as if it happened on purpose,” she thought) that, though she managed to pick plenty of beautiful rushes as the boat glided by, there was always a more lovely one that she couldn’t reach.
“The prettiest are always further!” she said at last, with a sigh at the obstinacy of the rushes in growing so far off, as, with flushed cheeks and dripping hair and hands, she scrambled back into her place, and began to arrange her new-found treasures.
What mattered it to her just then that the rushes had begun to fade, and to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that she picked them? Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little while—and these, being dream-rushes, melted away almost like snow, as they lay in heaps at her feet—but Alice hardly noticed this, there were so many other curious things to think about.
They hadn’t gone much farther before the blade of one of the oars got fast in the water and wouldn’t come out again (so Alice explained it afterwards), and the consequence was that the handle of it caught her under the chin, and, in spite of a series of little shrieks of “Oh, oh, oh!” from poor Alice, it swept her straight off the seat, and down among the heap of rushes.
However, she wasn’t hurt, and was soon up again: the Sheep went on with her knitting all the while, just as if nothing had happened. “That was a nice crab you caught!” she remarked, as Alice got back into her place, very much relieved to find herself still in the boat.
“Was it? I didn’t see it,” Said Alice, peeping cautiously over the side of the boat into the dark water. “I wish it hadn’t let go—I should so like to see a little crab to take home with me!” But the Sheep only laughed scornfully, and went on with her knitting.
“Are there many crabs here?” said Alice.
“Crabs, and all sorts of things,” said the Sheep: “plenty of choice, only make up your mind. Now, what do you want to buy?”
“To buy!” Alice echoed in a tone that was half astonished and half frightened—for the oars, and the boat, and the river, had vanished all in a moment, and she was back again in the little dark shop.
“I should like to buy an egg, please,” she said timidly. “How do you sell them?”
“Fivepence farthing for one—Twopence for two,” the Sheep replied.
“Then two are cheaper than one?” Alice said in a surprised tone, taking out her purse.
“Only you must eat them both, if you buy two,” said the Sheep.
“Then I’ll have one, please,” said Alice, as she put the money down on the counter. For she thought to herself, “They mightn’t be at all nice, you know.”
The Sheep took the money, and put it away in a box: then she said “I never put things into people’s hands—that would never do—you must get it for yourself.” And so saying, she went off to the other end of the shop, and set the egg upright on a shelf.
“I wonder why it wouldn’t do?” thought Alice, as she groped her way among the tables and chairs, for the shop was very dark towards the end. “The egg seems to get further away the more I walk towards it. Let me see, is this a chair? Why, it’s got branches, I declare! How very odd to find trees growing here! And actually here’s a little brook! Well, this is the very queerest shop I ever saw!”
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Honestly, I can absolutely see myself as this very-crazy-knitting-lady archetype (and knit my way through Europe - or just to my little wooden cabin - depending on how my 2024 unfolds).
Now that I have a new hobby - oddly well working with audiobooks - I have shamefully ambitious knitting plans too. Plans I ought to share as well!
So, I want to knit:
1.) SOCKS. Not much to explain... It just makes sense.
2.) BOOK BAGS. Here, Microsoft Bing didn't really wish to cooperate, it kept bombarding me with pictures like this:
...undoubtedly pretty, though not really what I had in mind.
So, I will attach a few links of my favourite Hungarian one-creator business. Pracli (Paw in Hungarian) sells amazing book bags and a lot of reusable/textile products.
Find them here:
webpage: https://praclishop.hu/
instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pracli__/
their book bags specifically: https://praclishop.hu/termekkategoria/konyvtasi/
And my very own book bag from Pracli - shabby and worn though MUCH loved:
By the way, the design was called Laid-back Llamas. :D
2.) BLANKETS. I want to knit patchwork blankets & Hogwarts house ones.
3.) A TINY HOUSE (probably for next Christmas).
I was inspired by this etsy seller:
And last but absolutely not least:
4.) A COMPLETELY MONOCHROME GREEN GARMENT/ROBE/DRESS that - yes! - I'm absolutely planning to wear.
And because I was SO satisfied with Bing's creations here, I'll add them all. I LOVE green.
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And the final point of today's post:
Postcard of the Month - to my Darling Ishiguro.
Here is this month's chaos:
(The card is from Lúdlabor in Budapest! Find them here: https://ludlabor.com/ )
And... this is all for today, Darlings! Hugs from the Fearless Frock.:))
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