Don't post pictures of anything you peed on.

The first thing I ever knitted was a pink scarf. It was a long, straggly mess, full of holes and imperfections. I was so proud.

One day last year, a Monday, I put my pink scarf in a bag with some circular needles and carried it with me. In a quiet waiting room, I slowly and deliberately pulled it apart. Line by line, stitch by stitch, I dismantled everything I'd made. The wool lay in scrawled loops across my lap, like a child's scribble.

Then I wound it back up into a fat, pink ball and began to knit again.

I knitted and I waited. Round and round my needles clicked, building row upon row of neat stitches. No holes. No imperfections. Not this time.

I knitted under the sympathetic gaze of the heavily pregnant nurse who checked me in.

I knitted with Fin beside me, his arm resting on the back of my seat. His fingers played a restless rhythm on the NHS regulation fabric.

I knitted as the woman sitting across from me began, quietly, to cry.

I knitted right up until the moment they came for me. Then they took me along a corridor, put me to sleep, and helped my body finish what it had started, in waves of pain and despair, five days before.

It had been nothing, really. Just a faint line, an outline on a screen. Except that it was everything. And it was over.

In the days that followed, I kept knitting. In tears, in silence, in mourning for the future that wasn't coming, I kept knitting. It gave me something to do. It gave me comfort. It gave me, eventually, a perfect, hole-free pink snood.

Then Smidgen ate it.


I'm trying not to place too much store in the little grey hat I'm knitting now. I try not to leave it lying around the flat for the dog to chew on, but I try not to worry about the holes, either. It will be what it will be. The little person who's going to wear it won't mind, and I won't mind either, because that little person will be here. This time, we'll have made it.

Just five more months of knitting, and waiting, to go.


Let's hope Smidgen doesn't eat the baby.




Images: 1. The ill-fated snood. 2. Hat pattern by Purlbee, washi tape download by Pugly Pixel. 3. More successful snood, more successful bump. Touch wood.

1. You can never have too much glitter in your life. Or on your face.

2. If you have the option, always choose time over money.

3. Never wear anything less than factor 30 in the sun.

4. Don't read women's magazines. They make you stupid.

5. Marry the person who feels like home.

6. If in doubt, have a nap.

If I had a daughter, these are the kinds of things I would teach her about the world. None of that follow your dreams, reach for the stars, we can all be Beyoncé if we want it enough crap. I'm not buying it.

What would you tell the next generation of girls? And the one after that? What have you learned in your one messy and confusing life that is worth passing on? My list is worryingly short. I'm hoping it'll get longer over time. Maybe by the time I'm 80 I'll have, oh, I don't know, ten whole things.


This Saturday is International Women's Day, a yearly ritual that will forever be tangled in my head with blogging and with Any Other Woman. Unlike previous years, when they asked their readers and blogging pals to send in full posts on a particular theme to be run throughout the day, this time they're seeking wisdom. (Aren't we all?)

From the AOW team:

This year, on Friday, we want to do something a little different. We want to run snippets of advice throughout the day from our readers. And our question is this: 

What advice would you give the next generation of AOW readers? 

What do you wish someone could have told you? Email (anna@anyotherwoman.com), or tweet @AnyOtherAnnaK or @AnyOtherAisling whatever advice you'd like to give - it can be a few words, a paragraph or a whole post.

You heard the ladies. Get involved.

Now here is my final piece of advice to you: if you don't already read Any Other Woman, Friday might be a good day to start.

EVIDENCE OF IWD AWESOMENESS:

and bonus kittens:
→ Dear National Stress Awareness Day


Images: Vintage glittery glasses and vintage tortoiseshell glasses via Etsy. This place will fit prescription lenses to vintage frames. I suspect this could become an expensive discovery.

The word count of my Valentine's Day posts seems to be diminishing every year.

Luckily, the love count is going in the opposite direction.

Happy Valentine's Day, F. I got you a card this time. I also drew you a picture AND wrote you a poem.

No pressure.

SEE ALSO:

Stunning original artwork by me. I don't know why I have a weirdly long body or why I'm only wearing a skirt or what is going on with my hair. Smidgen looks pretty lifelike, though.

I've decided. I'm going to learn the words of the Marseillaise.

I think this every year, when the Six Nations rolls around and all the other countries are droning out their mirthlesss dirges at the start of each game before being obliterated by the triumphant, bloodthirsty, powerful song of the French. This is the year I will actually do it.

Knowing the words of the Marseillaise is the kind of pointless achievement that appeals to me. It says I'm a glamorous, jetsetting francophile (the same impression I've been trying to cultivate with my swanky new French coat), who also has enough spare time on my hands to sit around and acquire obscure knowledge like the foreign-language lyrics to national anthems of countries that I don't even live in. There are very few occasions where knowing the words of the Marseillaise will be useful, seeing as how I'm unlikely to play rugby for France any time soon, but to be able to whip it out of my pocket at just the right moment, well. Won't I look like a smarty pantalon.

(I should clarify that I'm only aiming for the first verse and the chorus, not the fifteen verses that apparently exist. I might be crazy, but I'm not crazy.)

I've set myself the target of learning the words by the end of this year's Six Nations. I don't actually know when that is, since I don't actually know anything about rugby and usually like to avoid watching Scotland embarrass ourselves at sport if at all possible (it's not always possible), but I should probably get cracking. Da da da da la patriiiiiii-uh da da da da daaaaa, da da da. Yeah, needs more work.


Speaking of watching my fellow countrymen humiliate themselves in internationally-televised sporting events, I'm VERY EXCITED about the Winter Olympics. ALL CAPS EXCITED. Despite the fact that it's basically just one big sliding competition, the Winter Olympics are vastly superior to their summer counterpart. The quirky human interest stories! The ridiculous outfits! The very real risk of severe and permanent injury! I love it.

My love of the Winter Olympics goes way back. In pride of place above my childhood bed, I had a poster of Hidy and Howdy, the official mascots of Calgary 88. In 2002, Fin and I first locked eyes across a crowded bar in which there were not one but two people in fancy dress as gold-medal-winning British curlers (neither of which was us, sadly). I screamed when Alain Baxter won his medal, wept when he lost it again, was flabbergasted when Lindsey Jacobellis did this. Just the other day, my dad emailed me to let me know that a British woman came fourth in the Olympic slalom in 1968, because that's how my family rolls.

Of course, the downside of watching the Winter Olympics as a British person is that we are just so chronically bad at them. Sure, we win the occasional medal in an obscure sport, but where's the downhill gold? Where are the glory days of Torvill and Dean in matching purple chiffon? I suppose you can't blame us for doing badly at the Winter Olympics, since we don't really have much of a winter - or a summer, come to think of it - but it gets depressing after a while.

Maybe I'll support the French instead. At least I'll be able to sing along.

SEE ALSO:

Images: 1. A French women's rugby team, source untraced 2. Competitors in the Ladies Figure Skating competiton at the Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland, February 1928, via Olympic.org