What I Did On My Non-Holiday

If one were to judge from social media and memes alone, there are only two experiences of lockdown: Exhausted Parenthood and Exorbitant Boredom. (Clearly, this overlooks other experiences such as Having to Work Despite Feeling Unsafe, and Fearing Your Family Will Starve to a Covid-Free Death, possibly because the people having those experiences don’t have a lot of time for memeing.)

Personally, my experience of lockdown was busier and more stressed than my ordinary life, due in small part to the technolofication of all communications, and in large part to publishing a book in the middle of NZ’s Level 3. Publishing in a Time of Pandemic: not recommended.

But in amongst the stress and confusion and delays, I did manage to fit in a bit of sanity-maintaining handwork. I did a moderate amount of tatting, including a very simple lace collar, and two bookmarks.

simple tatted lace collar
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Stripy Happy Fun

Despite my overall eccentricity, I consider myself a conventional knitter. I’m not into in improvisational design, knitting on broomsticks or arms or anything else that leaves gaping holes in the knitting, or using novelty yarns with lumps or wire or spangles in, or knitting models of gardens, fruit, royal weddings or anything else of the sort.

No judgement if that’s your cup of tea, but I am more a plain-but-well-made-and-durable-garments kind of knitter. But even I have my eccentric moments. The Dishonour Cow, for example. And more recently, the Diplodocus from Tina Barrett’s wonderful book Knitted Dinosaurs (winner of Pattern Book I’ve Used Most Often Without Actually Owning A Copy, Alas).


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