Happiness in a Hook

A busy diary



l to r: Diana, Marta, Bethan and Jo - the Tuesday Night Ladies

My Tuesday Night Ladies have settled in to a regular routine now - which is MARVELLOUS! They come to my house - which, of course, I don't have to pay a hire fee for - and every meeting is like a house warming party. What IS it about this lovely activity that spreads so much hilarity and general good feeling? It's really quite amazing. We fell upon a pattern for something called a mandala in the latest, newest crochet magazine 'Simply Crochet', and all followed it together. We got through about half of it, what with all the story sharing and general merriment as well, and we will do the rest in our next session.

The Simply Crochet Mandala -
to be completed soon

In the meantime, I did my first Improvers, 2-night course at Denman College at the weekend. It was as spiritually edifying and delightful as ever with yet another marvellous bunch of students and fascinating, friendly  fellow tutors. My teaching room was in the main house this time, due to a flood in the designated workshop in the teaching centre. It was a piece of good luck for us really as there can be few crochet workshops as elegant and magnificent as ours was this weekend. I mean it had a full-blown chandelier for goodness' sake!

One of my students brought up something which is becoming increasingly of interest to me and that is: The Invisibility of the Older Woman. It's something I've heard discussed before. I first heard it mentioned when, at 36, I went to Spain on a Flamenco holiday. My fellow student/tourists were almost all quite a bit older than I was. It was brought to my attention a little earlier than might have been, that society isn't very good at giving air space to older women - waiters and bar staff overlook us, that sort of thing. But going to Denman is like changing the filter on a lens and suddenly having access to a quite breathtaking,  rich source of inspiration; of rapier wit, of heart-stopping life stories, of megalithic talents and skills, of productiveness, of strength and resilience in the face of adversity and of positive, nurturing, go-getting, joie-de-vivre. Younger women ARE joining Wi groups up and down the country, of course they are, yet still, it cannot be denied that the AVERAGE age of your AVERAGE Denman student on any given course, IS, come one you can't argue, somewhat, well, a highish number anyway. But, my goodness, if you come away NOT wanting to be a part of that lot, you must be utterly devoid of aspiration.



My second published article

Speaking of amazing ladies, by the way, true to my word I have managed to publish my second article, about Flora Klickmann - now long gone editor of the Girls Own Paper. As part of the article I made up a product from one of her crochet patterns, which I adapted into 'Inside Crochet' house style and included, along with a photo, of course, of the little baby jacket. The garment itself is now to go on display in the Teaching Centre at Denman. Look out too, in the July edition (out at the end of June) for my Beginners Baby Blanket pattern - my first DESIGN to be published.

Fruition of plans is always SO gratifying, don't you think? (Mwah ha ha ha ha ha).