Pottering at home

I’ve had a nice day at home today, inbetween the sniffles and sneezing and an afternoon snooze. I have been reading some of Pierced for Our Trangressions, in preparation for our church “house party” (in my country days they were always church “camps”, but I have noticed that Sydney people don’t go on “camps”) this weekend.

I’ve also been trying to make this hat, from the Happy Hooker crochet book (yes, I hate the title). It’s a little complicated - well only in the sense that you have to concentrate to keep track of where you’re up because the pattern isn’t entirely consistent, and I had to undo Row 2 twice before I read it properly and completely understood. I’m making it with some Blue-Mix Alpaca I have left over from a shawl. I have a big head, so hopefully it fits.

The other thing I have been contemplating is some of these ideas. Some of you may have received the email circulating that claimed that these artworks were entries to a competition at the Hirschorn gallery. That’s actually not true (and I don’t know why people make such things up) and they were all created by the same person, Peter Callesen. I think some of the ideas, particularly under the framed A4 section, look very doable – well, OK, so this one pictured looks doable, the rest, maybe not.

To that end I wandered into Art on King the other day just to peruse craft knives. I used to use the scalpel out of my biology lab kit for such things (with a new blade of course!) and it worked brilliantly, but I seem to have lost it. In an attempt to make friendly conversation with the saleswoman in Art on King I mentioned this. She then pointed out to me that they do actually sell surgical scalpels (kept behind the desk) and conceded that they are by far the sharpest thing around, but then she narrowed her eyes and looked at me and said “but they are dangerous”. I blinked and wondered what sort of possibility I looked like. Anyway, I suppose it’s good that she’s not an irresponsible scalpel seller ...