Words, words, words! I’m so sick of words!

I get words all day through, first from him now from you,

Is that all you blighters can do?!

My Fair Lady, Lerner and Loewe

That’s how I’m feeling at the moment. There’s everything to say about this *gestures around* worldwide utter mess, and yet nothing that’s not already been said, not least by me on all sorts of social media. I’m tired of it all but worse than shouting on Twitter and Facebook is not having a voice at all. I’m terrified of drowning in a sea of claim and counter-claim, statistics and manipulations of statistics, the truth and disingenuous side angles. It makes me want to wrap myself up in the cashmere travel wrap that will not be accompanying me anywhere for weeks, months, to come, and just shutting up. Of course I won’t do that.

This month’s steady progress with the travel temperature blanket that has become the Hong Kong temperature blanket has become monotonal and monotonous to reflect the relentlessness of the white noise OUTSIDE. According to my *counts* now SEVEN weather data sources, the temperature here has not dropped below 21C once this month, keeping within a steady band of, well, mostly orange. It’s a good thing that I ordered more of that splitty peach colour Scheepjes yarn from Deramores when I did. Virus-related shipping delays including one completely lost parcel meant that I only received the consignment with a day in hand before I ran out of 26-30C peach. Nights and days blend into each other in the blanket as, almost, in life at the moment, and I do find myself wishing that I’d chosen a less exuberant orange seeing how this one fails to match my mood.

None of the seven data sources seem to agree on the temperature on any given day, which is why I cross-reference so many of them and I now retro-check with Past Weather Hong Kong. AccuWeather is anything but; Dark Sky seems to be the best at temperature but failed to tell me about the stormy rainy sky over the bay yesterday, largely because it can’t pick up a weather radar signal. I’m reassured by this disagreement among experts: if they can’t get it right, how can I be expected to make a decision? Wait a minute! That sounds familiar. In any case, the exact temperature only really matters at the range boundaries: 25/26C, 30/31C. Even then it only really matters to me and I’m insignificant. The one thing I regret is that the structure of the blanket doesn’t reflect the type of weather. It’s mostly cloudy, humid, thunderstorms, heavy rain showers at times here, which accounts for the low variation in temperature and colour.

Notwithstanding my yarnal difficulties, the crochet almanac thing sister project is going great guns, par contre. I’ve managed to find patterns and groups for many if not all of the representative flowers I want to depict on this wall hanging. Some are extremely daunting and I really do feel frightened of taking on some of the more intricate wired projects created by Leticia Lebron at Flawless Crochet Flowers, but I shall one day. I’ve noticed that my dexterity and knowledge improve through the weeks. I can knock up a 6SC (6DC) magic ring in 60 seconds now, where it would have taken me at least five times as long, and here’s a photo comparing the two versions of my April tulip crochet square, a tribute to the fine work of DJ Hefty and Saied at Dulwich Ecogardens (see the cover photo), who’ve been able to work whilst social distancing in my garden at home in Beckers. Spring is probably my favourite season in England and Hefty spent hours planting tulips for me to enjoy on my trip that was cancelled. The first draft of the square took me most of two frustrating days and a lot of unpicking. The second was just an afternoon’s work with a smaller hook et voilà, I’ve now learned to do tapestry crochet! Despite its image in my mind as the sort of thing done by Agatha Christie’s biddies, I’m really enjoying the mental challenge of crochet and it’s a really gratifying wormhole that distracts me from Out There. I’ve bought a couple of books and done lots of research into crochet hooks and techniques from lots of different sources. I’ve even treated myself to a couple of new hooks from Furls to replace the one that broke last week through my frantic crochet exertion. They’re quite a revelation.

Anyway, here’s the current state of my yarn obsession, but even now I find that I need different colours for all the flowers I keep finding and wanting to make, and for when I can eventually find a pattern for these butterflies. The next thing I might work on is a caterpillar I found on a walk the other day. I think it’s just a matter of making quite a thick crochet cord and attaching little strands of red thread for legs. It is, as my mum used to call it, a yukti, a sort of ingenious way of making things up as you go along. But this one won’t cause the deaths of 60,000 people.