A Typical Saturday

When I was working Saturday was always the day of the week that I reserved to do whatever I fancied. If I felt like having a lie-in, then that was what I would do, although I rarely did because I often went to spend time with a friend who had a pottery.

When I was there I must have watched him throw thousands of pots of various kinds; mugs, cups, plates, bowls, vases, and lots of anything else that could be hand-thrown. However, for all my watching him throw pots, it was something that I never really managed to do very successfully. I did make some lovely little objects but they were never more than a couple of inches in height, except for one occasion when I managed to produce something that was a good size and shape and with the addition of a handle made an excellent cup-shaped mug. After it had been fired, glazed and fired again I took it into work and used it for my cups of tea from that day onwards.

The one thing that I learned from all this was that although I do have a lot of patience and I'm willing to keep trying to get something right, there comes a time when even I get frustrated and have to give up. There have sometimes been occasions when I have been knitting or crocheting something and no matter how hard I try, it doesn't seem to turn out how it should. I remember in the early days of this blog describing the trials and tribulations that I was suffering when I started knitting a Shetland Lace shawl. The shawl did get finished eventually, but I lost count of the number of times that I started to knit the centre section only to have to unpick it all and start again.

I had always thought that except for one or two minor things there was little difference in the terms used for knitting and crochet here and in the USA and Canada. I was to learn that I was very wrong when it came to crochet and it took me many hours of crocheting and then unpicking to find out that what we call trebles, across the Atlantic are called doubles. This came about because on one of my work trips to Canada I bought a book of patterns for crocheted baby blankets and the wool to make one with gingerbread men on it for Mr Smiley's first granddaughter. I kept starting the blocks that made up the blanket but they just weren't coming up to size. As I have always been lucky in that I knit and crochet to gauge, this understandably caused me a great deal of concern. I think that I had spent a couple of evenings in my hotel room trying to get the blocks to come out to the right size before I, by chance, looked at the pages at the back of the pattern book which showed you how to do the various crochet stitches and realised that I should have been doing trebles instead of doubles. Once I had found this out it didn't take me long to start to produce the nine blocks that were necessary to make up the bulk of the blanket and they all came up to the right size.

At the moment I would love to be able to sit down and do some knitting or crocheting but I just don't seem to have the enthusiasm for it, so on this Saturday I have spent my day writing emails, reading a few blogs, trying to write this post, and flicking through the channels to see if there is anything worth watching on television.

So, this has been a Saturday that follows the precedent that started when I was working. Do what you fancy and can manage and blow everything else, it will still be there tomorrow.