Don’t Skip Christmas Lunch

(forget about the Credit Crunch)

I went to my fairy godmother’s for tea yesterday afternoon. Copious beverages and much pastry was consumed by the two of us. It was wonderful to see her, there’d been an interval of about six months since she was incontactable whilst filming, but finally has finished her film and is back in London.

And gave me Christmas gifts! I had to keep the wrapping paper to show you because it’s just so funny. Apparently it’s credit crunch Christmas paper, she says she got it from a shop in Stoke Newington. (Trendy North London, for those of you not in the know.) Look closely and read up…

I get the feeling that it’s been designed by Rob Ryan, and is it just me or is he everywhere right now?

Inside the paper was this:

It is called a Perpetual Calendar and basically is a lush tree in beautiful colours (its packaging is beautiful too, tangerine and a soft aqua blue with eggshell and chocolate lettering and decor), whereby you turn dials of card on the back to change the day, date, and select the weather. Fantastic. It’s on my mantelpiece shelf and as you can see I still have my Christmas bits up.

The lovely card with coloured baubles on was made – or rather painted – by a friend. She says that she made loads, it is done is watercolour and is both beautiful and impressive. She used to want to be a graphic designer but decided to apply to  study English Literaure instead. C’est la vie! Such talent it makes me green.

Season’s Greetings

Dear All,

Wish slightly belated wishes for the best year ahead to all of you. Thanks for reading, writing, and being a consistently encouraging and wonderful audience to my various endeavours in knit and banter. Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, or if you choose to celebrate something else instead, I hope you’ll agree with the sentiment behind the words when I belatedly wish you the merriest Christmas and the happiest new year coming.

-Anushka

I love my city

Walking around the West End late at night.

Wanting to steal a red bauble from Selfridges.

Running on the tube platform.

Waking up to a bright blue sky.

Steep road, bright sunshine, fresh wind – the path from a friend’s house to the station.

The differences on tube lines: the way the Victoria line makes you bounce up and down on your seat, the lights flicker on and off on the Hammersmith & City, how the carriages are packed like sardine tins past 9pm on the Central.

The way I feel when I walk around Spitalfields and up & down the buzzing part of Brick Lane. (Why would anyone buy anything from a chain shop ever again?)

My hairdressers.

How the poor, bad, mad, sad exist right next to the rich. And how you just shut your eyes.

How my thoughts peter out and my mind settles on a rhythmic train.

Which cost far too much to ride.

Comparing two denominations of yoofs – Caucasian Chav and Asian Rude Boy.

Walking to my grandfather’s house and staying the night. I’ve had a very, very good twenty-four hours.

Happy Pre-Christmas, everyone.

xox

PS – apologies if I owe you an e-mail, I’ll make sure that I get back to you by the end of the year (!)

Excitement!

What a lot of post I came home to this evening! I’m so excited – I’ve got an interview at Bournemouth on the 3rd of February!

Though I’m so busy at the moment I can barely think straight , the fact that I now have a date and an actual interview warms the cockles of my heart and gives me perspective. It’s cold, the heating is on, I’m wearing a scarf indoors and my fingers are chilled to the bone – but I’m happy!

The fact that it’s the day after a Massive French Deadline is the slightest bit of a sliver of inconvenience, but the fact that it is also three weeks after my art mock exam – thereby allowing me to include the dramatic papier-mâché masks I’m currently working towards – is cheering in the extreme. Of course it must be said that I’ve still got tonnes to do and the interview doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily get a place and so on and so forth. Whatever. I’m happy.

Christmas Greetings

This evening I come bearing gifts – or gift, at least. A few months ago I designed a Christmas card for Jerusalem Press. It was originally going to be printed on beautiful paper and sold, but instead it’s been released as a downloadable .pdf card, which means that it’s free for you to print out yourself and send to your lovelies. You can print it from home  on paper or card and write your own message within. (It doesn’t strictly have to be a Christmas card, does it? In fact, my friend Ellena distinctly told me that it isn’t very Christmassy…) At any rate, have fun!

Click here to download the card as a free .pdf file

www.jerusalempress.co.uk

There’s not much on their website at the moment (no, I don’t know whose forearm that is) but I reccomend you subscribe to their mailing list soonish. There are three other cards which are going to be sent to subscribers this week (all very different from mine, it must be said!), plus exciting news on forthcoming titles (hint) in January.

Hand Wash Only

I folded these up and stacked them before taking this photo

This is a bad thing to admit, and one that I therefore admit with abandon. For me, hand wash only means never gets washed.

Many knitters these days seem to be very snobby about what fibre they choose to knit with. And for the most part I’ve got to say that I agree: given the choice, I would certainly choose a soft merino wool over an acrylic yarn. But the drawback to those sumptuous, cosy, basic natural fibres means that they are often not given the machine-wash treatment, and you risk being left with a big sheet of luxury wool felt if you ever try to wash something sheeplike in the machine.

The problem with wool is thatwithout being treated the fibres matt together when subject to heat and pressure (read: washing machine), which also happens to similar animal fibres such as cashmere, yak or angora. But it’s not just wool and related-to-sheep fibres that this in-machine ruination affects. I have a deep, lasting and long-standing love with silk. It’s terribly cruel what they do to the silk worms, but still I adore it in all its forms – spun, woven or knit; blended or pure; satin, chiffon, velvet….My heart aches for silk! Crisp to cut, easy to sew with. The colours it absorbs and reflects. Call it a look to luxury, call it an inheritance within my culture; its cruelty and torture mixed in with the connotations of wealth, power, beauty and luxe: silk is my favourite. And yet! The washing machine kills it.

I have a pile of jumpers sitting on a chair n my bedroom. They have been sitting there for nigh on two months, which is when I unearthed them from their places (on hangers, in the corner, on the floor, and shoved in the bottom of my wardrobe)  and chose to dump them in full view on said chair. The plan was that I would be spurred on my their obvious presence to actually get round to washing them. The reality is that they have become nothing but a nuisance, and I have to shove them somewhere else, i.e. my bed or the floor, whenever I need to use the chair. I really hope that I manage to get my arse in gear and wash the things some time soon because at the moment my outfits are revolving around a grey zip wool cardigan from Topshop – machine washable, but thin and now looking pretty worn!

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I felt terrible at having abandoned the blog! I’m not sure why – it’s probably not a good thing to have this kind of withdrawal reaction to writing a blog, but then I do so little writing these days that it’s nice to have an outlet. I will update here, just probably not more than once a week. I’m waiting for a highly reccomended book I ordered to arrive, then the figure-drawing-portfolio-plumping will commence in earnest. But I have managed to [commence] tying up some loose ends of projects (see above).

Temporary leave of absence