Name, Shame and Progress

It is absolutely embarassing that I started my last blog mentioning how little time I'd had available to write, and over two months later I'm about to do just the exact same thing.

In my defense, I have to say the first two months of the year have been totally crazy. January was spent in planning for, and delivering, the Hay Festival in Cartagena. Meeting the writers you've read definitely brings a different perspective to what you thought of the books in the first place.

Then, in February, I turned 30. And two days later I returned to London for the first time in over 5 1/2 years. It was really strange and I couldn't help but feel down during most of the week. Firstly, I had always imagined the moment when I returned to London to happen with Andrés. But I was told I was to go with so little time to plan he couldn't take the time off and I couldn't plan a holiday. Secondly, a remarkable amount of things that were there when I lived there aren't there anymore. The city is under construction and, much to my dismay, I found that two of the nice and dodgy(ish) areas where I used to live have turned to nice and polished shopping high streets. Thirdly, I never expected to be so alone during this trip. Sure, I'm used to traveling on my own, but from Monday to Thursday I was keeping myself company in a hotel room with a book, and not enjoying the city where I lived for so long and where I left so many friends. Things picked up on Thursday. I had a fantastic chinese dinner with what I proudly like to call "my English family". DNA standing aside, they really are the closest thing to a family. They have known me for 25-odd years, and have welcomed me much like a daughter and a sister... Friday and Saturday were spent in the company of my old friend Lynn, with whom I used to work at a gallery. Besides how wonderful it was to see her it is amazing that during all those years we have kept some interests and made choices that are bringing us together again in a professional scenario.

But the return to London didn't provide with one of the things I'd always hoped for: I couldn't get my stripy unfinished jumper from Gina. She was in France and thus the jumper will have to remain unfinished and hibernating until I get to come again.

In the midst of the closing of the financial year, the moment of reporting on 2009's projects, the finishing of the Creative Economy project's documents and the planning for two overlapping festivals (one performing arts, one film) I have still managed to make significant progress to my knitting projects. I am almost finished with Andres's jumper, and I've figured out how to do the baby booties. I've finished a pair (already sent to the young owner) and I'm in the process of finishing the second one.

In the meantime, all freelance projects have been stalled. ICCA finished without me being able to complete the research I had started on my last artist, and it seems like the exhibition circuit has gone into hiatus due to lack of funding and curatorial hogging by the usual suspects. Now I have two artists waiting for me to confirm an exhibition I promised last year and I feel myself getting into a tighter position by the minute. I've been trying to finish the bicentennial exhibition script for weeks and weeks, but reducing 22 pages of script to 10 is an impossible task when the person directing the project only wants to add more and more information. In the meantime, ironic as it seems, fixing times to work on the script with the producer (who happens to be my flat mate and husband) has proven to be a more slippery task than imagined in the first place. So that leaves me with the professional assurance that I won't over do it again (as I did last year) but with the uncertainty of ever being financially viable enough to finish furbishing our flat... or refurbishing our bathrooms and kitchen... or turning a family of two into a family of three. Disheartening.

Pictures of DH proudly wearing new jumper to come soon (I hope), as well as pictures of cute baby booties!

Progress

The good news is that I finally finished writing the first draft of the script for the Bicentennial exhibition's documentary. It caused me two whole weeks of waking up at 3am and working again after I came back from the office until I collapsed. I finished completely exhausted and with a ridiculous cold that knocked me out for a whole weekend. I missed one day of work and I wasted my precious Saturday and Sunday waltzing in and out of feverish states.

I guess that is also why I have managed so little during this short holiday. I went through corrections yesterday with the head curator. It doesn't need much in most chapters, but it turns out that my research assistant's work was completely wrong for one of the topics and now I must redo her work as well as rewrite the whole chapter. Then I've got the hideous task of timing it, shortening it to 15 minutes and adding footnotes for the filming crew to capture all the artwork and images that must appear throughout each and every second of the piece... still lots to do.

So this is what my holiday to - do list looks like. I've got 5 days left to do this:

1. Read books:

- Design and evaluation of cultural projects

- Marketing for the arts and culture

- Helena Kennedy (Eve Was Framed)

- Sarfraz Manzoor (Greetings from Bury Park)

- I should also read the volume of Simon Schama's History of Britain I've been carrying around for the last four weeks, but I need to be realistic. There's no way I'll manage all this in the time I've got left.

2. Close my home's accounting for 2009. I need to figure out how our finances are doing so Andrés and I can decide our next steps for next year. I dread this one.

3. Catch up on my office work. January is going to be pretty busy with the Hay Festival coming up and I must not have as many overdue to - dos as I have now.

4. Finish my ICCA text reviews. I haven't even had the time to check out the submission deadline calendar, and I fear I've lost the chance of getting paid for the reviews I've already done because I never had the time of sending my invoices.

5. Finish my bicentennial script. This is a top 1 priority.

6. Read all my overdue magazines. I've got 4 Parketts, at least ten Art Forums (one more about to arrive shortly), a few Art Nexus and a whole stack of a mixture of Colombian magazines on arts, books and culture. Not manageable at all if I also want to cover my points 1- 5.

7. I have to knit baby booties for my former boss's baby and my first childhood friend's baby. They have both been so amazing to me I'd be ashamed if I went over to meet their firstborns in January empty handed.

So not much time and millions to do. I need to start waking up a bit earlier. Which also means I need to be going to sleep a bit earlier. So good night for now.

Long absence

It's been ages since I last had the time to write.

I must correct that.

Since I last had the impulse to write. And I must, to my shame, add that I've been on holiday for 4 whole weekdays and 2 days on the weekend.

I've just been tangled with family. Both natural and in - law. And I've been ill. And it was christmas last Thursday. And I've been exhausted. And to top things up I went into a frenzy reading Ian Mc Ewan's Atonement and I gave Andrés a brand new bike for our anniversary and we had to take it out for a spin. And then another.

But I finally finished reading the novel. I was a little disappointed by the ending. And I kept finding similarities with Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assasin, which is one of my absolute favourite books (coincidence: I was reading it last year around this time). I don't intend to go back to my days as a literature student, but here are a few themes that are parallel to both novels:

1. The older sister - younger sister relationship tainted by issues of maturity and trust

2. Both sisters in love with the same man

3. Both younger sisters portrayed as writers, both (allegedly) publish novels posthumously for different reasons

4. WWII

5. The older man raping a young girl, and its subsequent discovery by each book's heroine

6. The Misce - en - Abime, revealed at the end of each novel. However, the novel - within - novel theme in The Blind Assassin has three levels, while Atonement only has two.

7. The first person narrative in the ending pages of each book

I have to say, to do Atonement justice, that I had started it in the first week of December but because of work related issues I never got too much into it. I only managed the first two or three chapters two pages at a time before falling asleep. Then I started it again last Friday and I literally couldn't stop reading until I finished it today. Mc Ewan has a mastery for keeping the reader completely glued to the pages, and even if the pace of the narrative is slow at certain times, I always finish reading his books feeling physically exhausted because I find them so exhilarating. Same thing happened to me when I read Saturday, but it was even worse then.

So my knitting and writing endeavors have been displaced by reading and writing, but certainly not blogging.

New challenge.

If I want to knit through this new phase of my life and still be able to type on my computer I'll need to become ambidextrous. First challenge is to learn how to "throw".

I found this video tutorial, totally clear until she starts purling. I was trying it out and my absent mindedness resulted in my starting the spiral pattern along Andres' jumper unknowingly. Since I'm still working on the neck and raglan bit I assume it won't look like a spiral at all, but more like a weird angled figure... I have no idea how this one will behave.

Let's kick it off!

So, let's face it. I've been knitting for about 10 years and I haven't really gone on to the really advanced stuff. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I haven't knitted with more experienced knitters, maybe with the fact that besides being taught how to knit and purl by my aunt (credits to you, Puertica) and being taught how to increase and decrease by my mum's friend I've pretty much taught myself by following patterns and trying to figure things out on the internet.

I learnt how to knit while I was studying literature in University. I quickly found out that besides giving me ridiculous hand stiffs it unblocked me emotionally and intellectually. So I gradually involved two of my other passions into the activity: watching films... and TEA! Suddenly I was knitting like crazy (only scarves because then I didn't know anything else) and had watched a dozen films week after week. I've also amassed what I consider to be a fantastic tea collection. There's teas of every kind, and I buy teas wherever I go. There's a few I don't use (I know, it's absurd... but I bought them in China, all the way on the other side of the planet and I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to get them again. I should get over myself, shouldn't I?), but in general I believe the best combination is a good ball of yarn on needles, a film I love or I haven't seen before and a steaming cup of tea. Much better if I've got Andrés munching on pop corn or his much beloved biscuits beside me.

Soon I knitted a (rather awful, two - shaded, long sleeved and short bodied) jumper in about two or three days. A rather astonishing first accomplishment (to myself I guess, and to my ever cheering and super supportive dear mum). Then I invented another one after while recovering from dental surgery. I guess this was impressive to my dad too, who decided he'd buy it for me (of course, he was also buying from me. It's important to mention that he always saw this entrepreneurial side on me, which he always wanted to nourish).

After that things started slowing down a bit. I graduated and moved to London to do an MA. There I tried inventing a brown and mint stripey jumper, but it is really the most awful thing I've ever seen. So I unraveled it and re did it using the formula for the magic, custom fit raglan sweater (http://www.woolworks.org/patterns/raglan.html). However, a hasty return home made me stop the project. I packed a whole flat in just a day and couldn't fit all of my belongings in the various suitcases and boxes I sent home. It currently sits with (just!) one sleeve missing at the bottom of my friend Gina's closet. I imagine leaving that behind was a mistake, as I haven't been able to stop thinking about it and what it would look like if I'd just finished the one sleeve it's missing.

On my return, and over a period of about three years, I only managed to knit a jumper for my cousin, another one for my godmother and a vest I created for my mum. This last one was important. This has been my first design to work out, and I knitted it during the last months before my marriage and just after that.

Then all my attempts have been failing one after another. I knitted a "martian" jumper for Andrés. It was so awful we had to throw it out. It wasn't so bad when I finished but I washed it and before I could stop the tragedy my domestic engineer decided to hang it up (while still soaking). Results? The sleeves went all the way down to his knees and his navel was fully exposed.

I embarked on a really crazy work schedule for a job I absolutely adore, managing projects in arts and culture. I also try to spend as much time as I possibly can with DH Andrés, and I've been trying to ride a bike, go to the gym, swim, cook, still see dear mum and dad, read art magazines and books, write for magazines and write essays, curate a couple of shows here and there... the list goes on and on.

But now I've been knitting an asymmetrical wrap three or four rows at a time during my lunch hours. It's coming out nicely, but the whole reason I started it is that I recently taught the basics to my cousin Laura and she wanted to do it. She's now in the other side of the Atlantic and I decided knitting it together is a fantastic way to keep close. And on the other hand, I promised Andrés a raglan ages ago and I haven't even started it yet (but I bought the wool over a year ago). Then luck struck last week. I went over to Spain to see my cousin. We went to a wool shop to buy her yarn and needles for the project. And there I learnt about Ravelry. Two days later, at a meeting in Brussels, I met one of my colleagues from Wales who is also on Ravelry and was wearing a really amazing hat she did herself.

So here it is. My attempt at resuming knitting on a more regular basis while teaching myself things I haven't thought I'd be able to do before. It seems to me that this is the perfect place to keep track of my internet findings and record my second journey with Knitting. This time it will be a higher skilled challenge on the knitting side and a feat at multitasking on a personal level.

On that note, I'd better get back to work. Serious e-mail overload to solve and quite significant writing overdue to finish by tomorrow.