#i wish it didn't fit so well but it fits like a fingerless glove on a frozen corpse

[yarnandink]

Turns out that today marked the ninth anniversary of my learning how to knit!

Nine years ago today, I successfully cast on by myself, and managed to knit flat stockinette stitch without accidentally adding stitches!

I've come a long way since that project, with some ambitious finished objects, some even more ambitious WIPs and a to-do project list and stash that'll probably last me at least another nine years!

Longer and slightly maudlin retrospective below the cut. CW for parent death.

Nine years ago wasn't the first time I'd tried to learn how to knit - Mum tried to teach me in my teens. It... didn't go well.

Between my untreated anxiety and perfectionism demanding that I be perfect immediately or abandon all attempts as a permanent failure, and Mum's seeming inability to find ways to help me learn how to hold yarn to maintain tension or - more crucially - relax tension, it became an unmitigated disaster which led to me rage-quitting and flouncing off to feel sorry for myself.

She never did get to try to teach me again, later.

And then, ten years ago I picked up fabric, embroidery floss, hoops and needles and hyperfixated on cross-stitch embroidery. I stitched on public transport, in pubs, basically anywhere I could. And somehow in that year my fingers finally learnt to feel when the thread had reached the right tension - enough to pull the stitches taut without warping the fabric.

And after a year of that, I saw a video on arm knitting, assumed I'd be able to do it (I was wrong) and then bought chunky needles to match the chunky yarn, so as not to let the yarn go to waste.

And suddenly, FINALLY, something clicked and I managed to knit. Clumsily at first, but I wasn't pulling the yarn so tightly that I couldn't even insert a needle into the stitches on the return row. My fingers had learnt when to stop.

First I learnt knit and purl. Then I dove straight into basic lace (yarnovers and knit-two-togethers). I figured out my own overcomplicated way of holding and tensioning my yarn. From there, I played once with DPNs, then abandoned the "grumpy hedgehog" for magic loop on circular needles and never looked back.

I began adding changes and personal touches to patterns, then began developing my own patterns. Some of which I've even written down!

I discovered luxury yarns and independent dyers, met fellow knitters and made friends. I once knit on public transport in full Halloween costume (as a punk mermaid), to the fascination and amusement of many fellow passengers.

I learnt how to undo mistakes - how to forgive myself for making them, how to mitigate, or undo them. How to know when a mistake was fixable and when it would be easier to start all over again. And - more crucially - I learnt to let myself embrace that, how to let the mistakes be okay, to forgive myself for making them and focus on fixing them and learning from them, instead of beating myself up for making them.

I stopped biting my fingernails, a habit I'd had since age 2, which I'd previously thought was unbreakable. I discovered that when I could knit, I was less anxious, less depressed and more settled and centred.

I inherited a bunch of Mum's yarn stash which my sister had been keeping safe, and used some of it to make a big drapey-sleeved shrug, which I describe as being like wearing a hug from Mum.

I've now knit blankets and jumpers and fingerless gloves and hats and intricate lace shawls.

This year I plan to finally try to master custom-fit socks. Though I have a baby blanket to make first, for a colleague.

I wish I could show Mum how far I've progressed as a knitter - I wish I could show her that I'm carrying on a traditional craft into a third generation (her own mother was also an excellent knitter) - that I know of.

I can't, of course. But that's okay. I've also learnt how to be proud of myself, enough for the both of us!

[kiev4am]

The AU that nobody asked for. Really, nobody.

Okay, so (a) this is a terrible idea and I'm a terrible person, but please consider (b) Brexit is legitimately horrifying if you live in the UK and aren't a xenophobic 'rah rah Blitz spirit' wingnut, because if we leave the EU without a trade deal we will have a degree of difficulty importing essentials like fresh food and medicines that has 100% not been honestly evaluated.  Supermarkets, hospitals, factories etc. have been stockpiling supplies for months in preparation for a possible no-deal Brexit in six weeks' time and our political leaders are so busy chasing their slim margins of power that they'd rather run the clock down while trumpeting jingoistic slogans than materially protect the country.  People are writing unironically in the papers about stockpiling food at home and it scares the crap out of me.  So much of the language of Brexit harks back to imperial nostalgia, mythical glory days when Britain supposedly forged ahead and didn't answer to anyone, and I'm already obsessed with a TV show whose major theme is 'people finding out in cruelly short order that Britishness isn't magical and you can't eat patriotism' so, well, here we are: with bitter sincerity and many apologies, I give you the Terror No-Deal Brexit AU.  Feel free to skip this if you feel it's too close to the bone.  I've split it into three posts to try and spare mobile users some pain - it's loooong because apparently I derived catharsis from this wreck of a concept.

Part 2  |  Part 3

Setting: 2 years into a no-deal Brexit.  Imports into the UK are subject to catastrophic delays and huge cost increases, which means demand for anything home-produced or home-grown is far in excess of supply.  The wealth/quality of life gap hasn't been this stark since the 1800s, and nobody in power is losing sleep over this since most of them are hard-right Tories who've spent their careers fetishising the undeserving-poor Victorian model of society.  Almost all the EU citizens who were living here have gotten the Tories' 'hostile environment' message loud and clear and departed, leaving many sectors struggling to survive without that workforce; this especially impacts healthcare, agriculture and local councils.  Non-critical clinical and surgical care is almost non-existent, medicines are being rationed (officially only non-essential ones, but there's increasing reportage of insulin, heart drugs etc. being withheld, plus things like anti-depressants and contraceptives are ruled 'non-essential', fun times), waste collection and water purification in cities is compromised, fresh food is a luxury, unrest and rioting is commonplace with typically harsh response by overstretched but well-armed police and security services who've been given the 'state of emergency' nod to use extreme force.  Schools are on a three-day week with much depleted class sizes (the research into why those numbers have gone down makes grim Dickensian reading) and many local authorities have introduced water and electricity rationing.  There is rhetoric about 'temporary measures' and 'light at the end of the tunnel' and 'Britain once more proud and independent' but the politicians who engineered the mess have all moved to their second homes in Spain and Italy, and in their few carefully curated television appearances the ones who are left speak with ghostly, heartsick cheerfulness.  Every local council is effectively on a wartime footing and their offices are like seige towers; with fuel, transport and public safety compromised, people frequently sleep at their workplaces rather than chance their route home every night.  There's a sense of everything being one explosion, one riot away from full-blown dystopia; of society hanging in the balance, trying to stay polite and bureaucratic on the very doorstep of anarchy.  No-one sleeps well.  Everyone who isn't super-rich has nutrition problems and is obsessed, on one level or another, with food.

Erebus House is one of those brutal 1960s office blocks with grandiose names that typically house local government departments; surrounded by the closed shops and boarded-up arcades that once made Barrow city centre a cheerful hive of activity, it is Northwest Council's last remaining administrative hub.  From these chilly beige rooms, shuffling in the dead-grey flicker of the last few striplights and guarded by a ragtag division of local police and army, a skeleton staff attempts to maintain law, order and some kind of subsistence for this once-prosperous Middle England town.

John Franklin was the local Tory MP who campaigned vigorously in favour of Brexit and was re-elected comfortably on the strength of his rich, confident visions of independence and national pride.  A keen amateur historian specialising in Victorian industry and exploration, he was also among those whose intransigence and hubris propelled the country towards a no-deal Brexit, convinced as he was that home-grown manufacturing and invention would flourish in adversity.  Unfortunately, he and his confederates were so sure of this outcome that they never underpinned it with any realistic contingency planning.  As the consequences unravelled so did Franklin, succumbing to a heart attack eighteen months in.  His widow Jane now channels her grief into fierce party activism, stubbornly insisting that the problems are transitional and that her husband's legacy will be a stable, thriving Northwest county.  Driven into town by her personal security staff, Jane Franklin visits Erebus House every fortnight to plead support for her causes and stress the need for 'visible, inspiring' gestures.

Francis Crozier was never a politician.  The closest link he ever had to government was his heartfelt but ill-advised attachment to Franklin's niece Sophia - an attachment which has mellowed now into genuine, if wry friendship.  An outsider, he always meant his stay in Barrow to be temporary, his job at the council a purposely dull stop-gap until he collected himself and moved on, preferably back to Ireland or to the itinerant sailing life he'd enjoyed so much in his youth.  Two things have held him back from this goal:  his frequent bouts of debilitating depression, self-medicated with alcohol, and the fact that - against all expectation - he turned out to have an excellent, intuitive grasp of town council management and infighting, combining logistical and bureaucratic shrewdness with an angry compassion that keeps him from walking away even at his most despairing.  His bold advocacy and fairness made him well-liked by activists and local grassroots organisations while setting him at odds with Franklin's complacency; their relationship became strained in the run-up to Brexit, then disastrous in its aftermath.  On his worst days Francis holds himself responsible for aggravating the stress that led to Franklin's death (his closest staff have offered to bar Jane Franklin from the building, but he doesn't have the heart).  On his best days he runs Erebus House like a ship in a squall, holding the shreds of the town's welfare in both shaking fists.