Apparently this is what separates us from the lower life forms. If true it begs the question: Is the life form responsible for these “accessories” an inhabitant of our planet?

Sadly, no answers are forthcoming from CoOperative Designs where these beauties feature prominently, albeit namelessly, in their Spring/Summer 2010 Collection. As to their lack of specific nomenclature, no surprises there. I don’t know what to call them either. Leg warmers? Leg Coolers? I have no idea.

Who can wear these leg… thingies? Well, knitsibs, let’s be frank. These whatsits are for the young people. The appropriate age range and thigh girth required to wear these… whatevers both fall within a certain band, and that band is most decidedly narrow. Cute-as-a-button Suzie, over at over at Style Bubble, where I found these leg whozits, is certainly rocking the look. The strappy sandals she chose are just perfect. Personally, I think they’re a really tough sell on anyone over twenty-five, but I don’t mean to be prescriptive. If you can picture yourself wearing them, and the words “mutton” and “lamb” do not appear in your self description then, I suppose, you should go for it.

The real question isn’t, of course, whether or not you can wear them, but how would you knit them? That was my second thought when I first saw them. (My first being, “Ewww.”) I have to admit I find the prospect of figuring out a pattern for them somewhat intriguing. They should be ridiculously easy to knock off, if one had a mind to. Where would you start? At the top of the thigh? Or would these be a toe-up item? Would you knit all the motifs first and then join them with I-cord? Or would crochet chains be easier? And how about those knee pad/shin guard jobbies that roll in at the sides? Come on. We can do better than that, surely. A two stitch garter selvage ought to tidy those up. Or, better yet, knit the flat bits in moss stitch, and avoid the baggy knees that we all know will become an issue about an hour after you don these… Okay, I am tired of not having a name for them here. What the hell should we call them? Wait. I know.

If these Leg Whackadoodles were ever to become this season’s Must Knit item, I’d undoubtedly knit them. I hate to admit it, style maven that I am, but I am susceptible to both knitting and fashion trends. (I knit a poncho once, for pity’s sake. ‘Nuff said?) Though am well past the wearing of such an accessory in public, they might come in handy when Tonia and I play “Princess and her Slave”. I seriously doubt, however, that I could get Tonia to wear them.

PS: Thank you, knitsibs, from the bottom of my heart, for your kind messages of support these past few days. You have helped more than I can say.

This is the posture that Ruby used to adopt, sat with her nose in the air, right beneath Tonia’s feet, whenever vegetables were being chopped in the kitchen. It was an attitude of expectation, that we came to call, “Assuming the Position.” She only ever did this at Tonia’s feet, because Ruby knew Tonia was a soft touch when it came to vegetables. And Ruby also knew better than to beg when I was in the kitchen.

I knew that Ruby was aging. She had heart disease, and kidney disease, and skin problems, and I’ve seen them taking their toll for many months. I had noticed that her most endearing behaviors were dropping away. She stopped Assuming the Position. She no longer chased butterflies. She used to love crunching ice cubes, but had stopped running to the kitchen every time she heard the freezer door open. Sometimes she’d take an ice cube if it was offered, and mouth it for a while, before dropping it and wandering off. Most noticeably, she had stopped following me around the house these last few months. Well, not entirely. If I left a room for too long, she’d always come and find me. But she wasn’t right behind me anymore. She’d usually wait a few minutes where she was, to see if I came back. As if she were weighing her need to be with me, against the exertion that following me required.

All of these things I had noticed. They just didn’t translate as “very sick dog.” Much like that twisted sock I wrote about last week, all the signs that something was awry simply didn’t register. In my head I saw an “older dog”. Not a dying one. She was bright, and happy, and though she moved at a slower pace, and I knew she had health issues, I convinced myself that with the right food, and a little more exercise, we’d have her for years to come. Tonia knew differently, and so did our vet. But I didn’t.

Ruby came to us nearly five years ago a very damaged little dog. A former breeding bitch, she’d been a puppy machine, and had spent her entire life in a kennel. We don’t know how many litters she had. We don’t even know how old she was. Somewhere between six and eight, the vet said, when we brought her in for her first visit. She needed shots. She needed to be spayed. She really needed some decent food. She needed people to love her, but what she needed more than anything were people that she could love. I read somewhere that all dogs need some sort of job to do, and this was hers: loving us.

She was in dreadful physical shape when we brought her home, but I can’t describe the condition she was in. It would be too shocking. Worse than her physical condition, the signs of emotional trauma she’d suffered broke our hearts. Though she had no manners to speak of when she arrived, with love and training she improved enormously. She didn’t learn quickly, but she did learn. Eventually all the odd behaviors, the constant pacing, the separation anxiety, and the barking at shadows or flickers of light on walls – all hold overs from her kennel years – all those weird little quirks dropped away and she became a normal dog. A normal dog, with a steadily increasing amount of health problems.

Ruby stopped eating last Thursday, and even then I didn’t think anything was truly wrong. We had recently changed her food to help manage the kidney disease, and I thought she was being finicky. I took her to see the vet again on Friday, and came away with more drugs, and a plan that I just knew would make her better. By Saturday she was worse, drinking little, peeing little, still not eating. We could see her becoming weaker and we began a desperate attempt to find something that she’d eat. We roasted a chicken, just for her, boiled and mashed many varieties of vegetables, squirted maple syrup in her mouth hoping to stimulate her appetite. But the only thing she’d accept were little hard dry dog biscuits, her favorite treats. When she threw all of those up on the lawn a few hours later, and couldn’t keep even water down, I finally got it. We were losing her. And I was not ready.

I called the vet who suggested that we while we could pump fluids into her for a couple of days, he was not hopeful. Tonia and I decided we didn’t want her to spend what could, in all likelihood, be her last days, away from home, away from me, and back in a cage. So on Saturday evening I drove her to the vet for the last time, while Tonia stayed home with the puppy. Our wonderful vet, who has treated Ruby’s myriad health problems over the years, was on call that day. It made the sad journey a little easier. He said that it’s always hard to know when to let them go, and assured me that it was not too soon for Ruby. I held her while he gave her the injection to end her life, and she died in my arms.

For Ruby, whose early life we can only imagine from the damage it wrought, becoming a normal dog was in every way extraordinary. She wasn’t smart, but she was as loving and sweet-tempered a dog as I’ve ever known, and a beautiful quiet presence in our lives. She learned to know joy, and she brought us as much in return.

As Tonia returns to work after a bank holiday weekend, I am grateful for Truman’s company. I’m also more grateful than I have words for, to Tonia, for sensing that I would need a little warm dog body to comfort me, and some goofy puppy attitude in the house to cheer me, much sooner than I ever anticipated.

One thing that never ceases to amaze me about my knitting is that, as experienced a knitter as I consider myself to be, I am, even after all these years, still capable of churning out the occasional turkey. This morning, as I tried for the third time to fold neatly and put away my recently finished and blocked toe-up socks, I realized it had happened again. I have managed to knit not one, but two unwearable objects.

With a new puppy in the house it may come as some surprise that I have found time to knit at all. In fact, the increased activity level in the in the household of late has, paradoxically, increased my daily knitting allotment. It has also made me appreciate the small, brief moments of quiet that do come, every day.

Like right now.

The only sounds in my world at this moment are the steady drone of farm equipment off in the distance, and the equally steady snoring of dogs beneath my desk. It’s afternoon nap time, and if I weren’t sitting here writing, I’d be on the sofa, with the dogs, and my knitting. They sleep, and I knit and listen to Radio 4 – a daily win-win for everyone. This should explain why I’ve been cranking out socks like there’s nothing else I can do because, for a couple of hours every day, there isn’t.

Socks, as you know, are my go-to mindless knitting project. I’ve finished three pairs since Truman came to live with us, and am about to turn the heel on the second sock of my fourth pair. I’ve been so productive with the pointy sticks that, incredibly, I have considered using my daily requirement of puppy-sofa-time to get the jump on Festivus knitting. I know. Normally, I wouldn’t even think Festivus until after Halloween.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending upon your point of view) this morning’s WTF? sock folding moment quashed any hopes of embarking on early Festivus projects. I may have the time, but I clearly don’t have the metal capacity for even the most mindless of knitting projects, let alone those requiring, you know, skills. Skills such as counting. Or looking at what you are actually knitting. It was the third recently finished pair of toe-up socks, the ones I tried to fold this morning, that alerted me to the problem. Here are the socks.

You don’t need to look very closely to see that the stitches of these socks slant and spiral around the foot and ankle. The fabric is biased. This is why I had trouble folding them this morning.

Here you can clearly see the columns of stitches arcing away from vertical on both sides of the mitered heel. The short heel flap of the combination heel is on the right of the picture. The sole of the sock is on the left.

When the toe miters line up, the rest of the socks don’t. When the heels are laying flat, the rest of the sock isn’t.

What is the problem with these socks? The short answer is: stupidity.

The long answer is in the yarn. Specifically, in the winding of the yarn, from skein to ball. As near as I can figure, when I wound the skein into a ball using a standard ball-winder I must have added twist to the yarn. As I know from spinning, when you knit with yarn that has too much twist, the stitches slant and you get biased knitting.

This problem was compounded by an energetic puppy, for whom my knitting basket proved too tempting to ignore. While I was working on this project, Truman slyly snatched the ball of yarn from the basket, and ran around the room with it, shaking it like a dead rat. It took an hour to untangle the mess, and I ended up breaking off the yarn to rewind the ball again, and then splicing to continue with the project.

Did I rewind the yarn in the same direction as I had the first time, thus adding yet more twist? Probably. I remember the yarn sort of twisting back on itself and kinking up as I pulled it from the center of the ball. It just didn’t register as a potential problem. One that I made even worse by rewinding the ball for a third time, in the same direction. Yes. Truman discovered my knitting AGAIN, with nearly the same results. The only thing different the second time was that he managed to extract one of the bamboo needles and snap it in two with his sharp little teeth, and I managed to learn to keep my knitting in zippered project bags. Frankly, given how sleep deprived and exhausted I’ve been feeling lately, I’m surprised it took just two episodes of puppy yarn theft to drive the lesson home.

I have read a lot of books on dog training and behavior. Nowhere do they warn that puppies make you knit stupid, but its 100% true. Anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you a puppy.

That said, their joy is utterly contagious. Watch the video of Truman in action and I’m sure you’ll agree, he’s more than worth a couple of unwearable socks.

Yes, his name is Truman and he is, right at this very moment, blissfully napping in his box. So I thought I’d take advantage of what I laughingly refer to these days as “my free time” and pound out a blog post to say thanks for helping us name the dog. Also, I know if I leave my little office and try to do anything else like, say, hang some laundry out, or make lunch, Truman will awake and follow me. He’ll want to go out. He’ll want to play. He’ll want a bite of my sandwich. It’s quite true what they say about sleeping dogs, so it’s probably best if I stay right where I am for the moment.

Thank you for voting, and weighing in with your dog name choices. You have been enormously helpful. Friday night Tonia and I began calling our new puppy Truman. Now, after just a few days, he seems to know the word has something to do with him. Progress.

I had completely forgotten the huge time sink that is puppy raising. I’ve wished more than once this past week that puppy raising were a bit more like barn raising. By which I mean, a more collective effort. I did get a little time off this weekend, when Tonia was home, but during the week it’s just me and the dogs here. It’s a big job that requires Constant Vigilance, and leaves me wishing I could invite a few hundred Amish round for a weekend, hoping they’d leave behind a fully trained dog. Alas, a puppy is not like a barn.

The web design project I’ve been working on so hard for the past month is nearing completion, and I should be back to more regular blogging soon. I’ve been so busy spinning and knitting and dyeing and jam making this summer, as well as working on projects for paychecks, I haven’t had much time to stop and write about it all. I will though. Soon. In one of those rare quiet moments while Truman sleeps.

Oh, I almost forgot. The video about wooden cawl spoons that I stuck up there last week isn’t as random as it seems. Tonia has been carving wooden spoons for a while now. Though there is a Welsh tradition of intricately hand-carved loved spoons, Tonia’s been more interested in the every day object-ness of the hand carved spoon. She was talking about spoon carving in work one day, and discovered that a few of her workmates there had memories of eating cawl (a thick Welsh stew) off wooden spoons. So she took the video camera to work and filmed them talking about their memories of wooden spoons, and showing off a few hand carved wooden spoons that are still in service. It’s nice little film that actually got Boing Boinged, and it’s totally worth four and a half minutes of your time.

Name this dog. Please.

We’ve had him for three days, and can’t seem to agree on what to call him, though we’ve narrowed it down some. The choices are:

Henry (my favorite, Tonia’s least favorite)
Cooper (Tonia’s favorite, my least favorite)
Truman (the only name we can sort of agree on)

HenryTrumanCooper is smart, friendly, playful, and energetic. Oh boy, is he ever energetic. He enjoys (make that requires, if you want any sleep) long walks in the countryside, pouncing, and stealing yarn when you’re not looking.

Vote here, please.

Thank you.

A few months ago Felix made me a mix tape. Actually, it’s a mix CD, pedantically speaking, but still, it’s a very nice compilation of music that she thought I’d like. The CD got buried somewhere in my office, and it took about a month for it to surface, but eventually I gave it a listen. I have been playing it almost daily since.

It’s a great mix. Twenty two tracks, some podsafe, some not, by artists I know, and artists that are new to me. Tupak Shakur took me completely by surprise. The track , Rose That Grew From a Crack in the Concrete, is heartbreakingly beautiful. (Confession: I never really got rap. Now that’s it’s becoming kind of vintage, I’m kind of liking it.)

Felix’s mix CD has had me thinking lately about the mix tapes I used to make for friends, and about the tapes that people used to make for me, and about the lost art of the mix tape, in general. Most of the people I know are, or were at one time, serious mix tapers. The fact that my mix tapes came with me when I moved to Wales is a measure of their importance. Of course I still have them. Wouldn’t dream of throwing them away. The mix tape is something of a lost art form, and those tapes are full of memories.

Tonia and I were talking last night about what it was that made mix tapes so special. I said it had to do with intimacy. For me, handing over a mix tape to the person I’d made it for said, “I know you well enough to know what you like.” Or, it said, “I’d like to get to know you better, here’s some music I like.” When someone you don’t know very well gives you a mix tape, and you like it, that’s a beautiful basis for friendship right there.

We both agreed that the key to a good mix tape is getting the order of the songs just right. You want to start with something upbeat, but not too upbeat, because you don’t want to peak right away. I liked to begin with a bit of spoken word just before the first track. Usually something offbeat. A bit of Emo Phillips, perhaps. He had this one bit where he said, in his high little sing-song voice, “I was driving down the highway, and I was trying to change the radio. And just when I got the old one taken out…” I’d lead with something like that and then cut straight to the first track, usually something new and obscure, by a band that had been featured in the soundtrack of a John Hughes film. But never the track that was used in the film. That would be too obvious.

And that’s how it went with my mix tapes. I’d lay in the next track, season the middle with odd pieces of audio, maybe a TV theme song, or a bit of Stan Freeberg, one track after another, creating a mood with the music; crafting a listening experience, each song meticulously timed, all the way to the final track on the B side. Here I’d usually end with something old and obscure; Roy Rogers, Bessie Smith, maybe some Dean Martin. That sort of thing. If the old albums were a bit popped and scratchy, so much the better.

All of this happened in real time, which Tonia pointed out is the other key ingredient of a making a mix tape. This is what we lost when we all went digital.

There was something about the process of recording track after track that put you right in the middle of the mix tape experience you were creating. It involved sitting in front of a tape deck and turn table, with the needle in the groove, one finger on the edge of the album, and one finger on the record button. You had to let the disk spin, and instinctively gauge the perfect moment to release the record button, getting the timing between tracks just so. After describing the process to Tonia, she said, “Gee, do you think you were born to podcast, or what?”

I had never thought about it in those terms, but yes, I suppose that’s true. Crafting an audio experience is what Cast On is all about. It doesn’t all happen in real time, but the process is very similar. And, especially in the early days, uploading a new podcast carried with it a lot of the same feelings as handing over a mix tape. It said, ” I’d like to get to know you better, let me tell you about my knitting. Oh, and here’s some music I like.”

All this talking about mix tapes last night left me wondering if there was some technology that would allow me to digitize my old mix tapes. Silly question. Of course there is.

I have everything I need to accomplish this task except, possibly, the Walkman, which may have gone during one of my we-have-way-too-much-stuff purges. Yet, having thought the matter through, I’m less inclined to pursue the process of digitization than I was during my initial Google. There’s a lot of good music on those old mix tapes, and I am looking forward to listening to them again, but I suspect the mix tapes have had their moment, and that moment is no more. I’m leaning more towards digging the tapes out of the attic, and simply listening to them in the car, while we still can. Listening until they degrade, or the player eats them, or I become bored with them, whichever comes first.

The mix CD, however, I am willing to embrace and, frankly, I wonder what’s taken me so long. The experience of pulling together a meticulous compilation, one that speaks perfectly of time and place and emotion, will have changed, no doubt. But, as Felix’s delightful mix CD taught me again, the experience of listening will always remain the same.

Draconian licensing laws prevent me from making you a mix a tape but, if I could, the track featured in the embedded video would be part of the mix. You have to be somewhat familiar with Welsh culture to get a few of the visual jokes, but the lyrics are priceless, and you don’t have live in Wales to get those.

I flashed back to one of my former possessions today. My vintage sterling silver western saddle ring; a gift from my best friend, Katie, in junior high. A small but perfectly formed little silver saddle that sat on my finger, which featured hand tooled details, just like the leather on a real saddle, and a tiny little rope hanging off the pommel, and a wee little turquoise chip set into the horn.

The pommel is the rise at the front of the saddle and the horn is the sticky up bit at the front, for those uninitiated into the ways of western tack. I used to ride with a western saddle, way back when I was young enough to wear a silver saddle ring, and getting thrown from a horse didn’t hurt so damned bad.

When I remembered the ring today I went looking on US eBay because I knew, if there was a silver saddle ring to be had, that’s where I’d find it. You can find anything you want these days on eBay, pretty much. I did actually find a couple of saddle rings, but none of them could hold a candle to the memory of the one I used to own. Though this one came close.

I held on to my saddle ring for three decades, even when it became too small for me and I had to stop wearing it. I loved it. I have no idea where it is now. Somewhere along the way from there to here I lost it and today I am having a little nostalgia fest for my old saddle ring, and I decided to invite some friends.

I know we’re only talking about stuff here, and stuff isn’t really important, but I wonder if there’s something you once had, that you loved, and managed to lose somehow? Something you’d like to have back, if only you could? (No, your misspent youth does not count.) If so, just set it down there amongst the general splendour of my missing saddle ring, where it can be admired by all.

PS: The contest announced in the last podcast now has actual winners whose names will be declared in the next podcast, which is the one I’m currently working on. Thank you for playing along if you did.

PPS: There will be more words here again soon. I’m using up the words in another place right now, but as soon as I have a few to spare, I’ll be back.

Setting up a new computer is a royal pain. It goes like this: Try to install zipped app, Winzip launches asking if you want to buy it, realize you don’t have anything installed that will unzip things, look for free unzipper, discover ALZip no longer free, remember something you read about essential Windows apps on Lifehacker, search for and find it. Select a bunch of “essential” apps you probably don’t need but which sound good. Wait for exe file to download, launch, wait for essential apps to install. Occupy yourself while waiting by fiddling with taskbar, try to remember how icons were arranged on old machine, boot old machine, realize you still have a lot of apps to install, shuffle icons around for 20 minutes, realize you forgot something, install it, create shortcut, pin to taskbar, delete shortcut, shuffle some more, realize you forgot another app, shuffle, give up and chuck everything up there, realize this makes the taskbar too full and you can’t tell what’s open, and also, you forgot xamp. Get up, make coffee. Come back and try to remember what you were doing before you made coffee. Give up. Write blog post to complain about how hard and time consuming it is to set up a new computer.

On the up side, I have a new computer. It’s a quad core PC that was surplus to requirements for one of Tonia’s co-workers, who gave us a really sweet deal. It’s running Windows 7, and is so much faster than my old laptop, it makes me dizzy. Rejoice with me.

I’ve a very full Sunday planned, and an even busier week ahead, so I thought I’d pop in and share this week’s M3 video with you a little earlier. This one’s from Etsy, and it’s about natural dyeing.

As you know, I have not had much in the way of success with natural dyes. Unless you count flesh colored yarn a success, which I don’t. My last experience with natural dyeing was enough to put me off it for a good long while. After seeing the results of Felix’s gorgeous walnut-dyed sweater a few weeks ago, however, I was inspired to give it another go. Fortunately, I had onion skins on hand, which soon found their way into a simmering pot. After a hour or so on the stove I strained the liquid, poured it into my trusty Burco boiler, added un-mordanted yarn, and crossed my fingers.

I have mordants on hand – alum, as well as some of the more noxious heavy metals – but I read somewhere that dyeing in an aluminum pot works as well as alum. The Burco is lined with aluminum, so I decided to chuck everything in and hope for the best. As you can see, it was a good strategy. Natural colored yarn became soft orange-y yellow yarn. The color in the Crayola box called “bitter-sweet.” I love that color. And I achieved it in under an hour. Well, a year of saving onion skins, and an hour.

As luck would have it, I only had time to simmer the one batch before it started to rain. I had lots of dye stock solution left, so I drained the Burco and brought everything inside. I used my stainless steel jam pan. I know, I know. You’re not supposed to mix dyeing things with food things. Onion skins being non-toxic, I made an exception.

The second batch was a bit of a surprise. I decided to mordant with alum (also non-toxic) as I knew the stainless steel pan would not have the same effect as the trusty aluminum lined Burco. It was getting dark, and the light above the stove isn’t great, so I couldn’t really see how dark the wool was getting, or if it was the same color as the first few skeins, or lighter. I really didn’t know what to expect.

In the cold light of day the following morning, I discovered that I’d created an entirely different color with that second batch. Mordanting resulted in the gold you see at the bottom of these images.

It’s not a bad color, this gold. But I don’t like it as well as I do the color of the first batch. So today I’m heading into the woods with Tonia in search of bracken fiddle heads that, I’m reliably told, are an excellent source of yellowy green. The plan is to over dye the gold I don’t like, and throw some un-dyed yarn into the pot as well, and hopefully maybe get two greens. We’ll see.

As if turfing Tonia out of bed early and making her collect bracken before the day gets too hot isn’t enough joy for a Sunday morning, I’ll be taking my trusty AKG C1000 into the woods, to record the process. Yes, that does mean I’m working on a podcast. I’ll talk you soon.

Simon, a retired policeman, and one of the four farmers down at the end of our lane, is our closest farming neighbour. Well, he used to be a farming neighbour. Now he’s just a neighbour.

Simon only ever kept cows, and he stopped keeping those a few years back when changes to Ministry of Agriculture rules made cows too expensive. Not to keep, but to dispose of. What used to be free – the carting away of dead cows, of any age – now costs several hundred pounds. Young cow carcasses are still carted away for free, but Simon’s middle-aged herd of breeding stock were going to cost him dearly when they shuffled off this mortal coil. This change in policy meant the end of hobbyist cow farming, as far as Simon was concerned, and the end of cow watching in the pasture behind our garden.

I always had a soft spot for Simon’s cows because they were in the field on the day Tonia and I first viewed our house. We leaned over the back fence to watch the cows one afternoon, and Gerta, the previous owner of our house, opened the window and asked, “Can I help you?”, which is British for “What the hell are you doing?”

“We’re interested in buying the house,” we said, and Gerta kindly invited us inside to have a look. It was high summer, and cows could be heard in every room, through every open window. Cow munching provided the soundtrack for our tour of the house, and from the terrace it sounded as if they might be eating their way through much of the back garden. We liked the little house well enough, and were blown away by its view across the valley, but the cows were also one of the main selling points.

I know. It doesn’t seem like having cows for neighbours would be a selling point. They don’t do much beyond eat and shit, loudly. Which means that in the summer, with our windows flung wide, we are blessed with not only an abundance of cow noises, from both the front and back ends of cows, but also the flies which inevitably follow the latter. These come in two varieties. There are the large horse flies or, I suppose in this case, cow flies, that dive in through open doors and windows, Kamikaze-like, and leave just as quickly. We think of them as the “smart” flies, because they usually manage to find their own way out. The second, smaller variety are dozy little “idiot” flies that circle aimlessly around the ceiling light, or hurl themselves uselessly against open windows, to die beaten and baffled on sunny window sills.

We always assumed Simon’s organic beef had to be tasty, what with the satisfying lives his cows seemed to enjoy. We never actually bought any because after a few summers of watching adorable calves grow quickly in the pasture out back, we had neither the heart, nor the stomach, to eat any of them. They were endlessly entertaining to watch, moreover, we began to think of them as friends. As everyone knows, one doesn’t eat one’s friends.

We’ve been saddened by the empty pastures, just as we were at the news that Simon would no longer be keeping cows, though other farmers in the village say it’s a mercy, really, that Simon’s fields contain naught but grass now. His cows were, according to some, “half wild and largely unmanageable.” Their own cows are, naturally, so perfectly behaved you could invite them to tea. Farmers are nearly as fond of pointing at each other’s gates, and saying, “They don’t look after their beasts there, you know,” as they are of their own methods for farming.

The field out back is full of cows this week. Though I haven’t asked, I’m fairly sure they’re not Simon’s, as his cows were always so pretty, and these new cows are not a wholly attractive bunch. They are rough and ready cows that I’d put at somewhere between one and two years of age. A teenage gang of cows, several of which sport wicked looking horns, they’re fiercely territorial, for all that this is a relatively new ‘hood in which they live. I’ve seen cats fleeing across the pasture, pursued by these young thug cows, and they mass at the hedgerow, glaring, whenever Ruby is the garden. Lean and curious, they’ll come right up to the fence when I’m out back, to noisily munch, and gaze, and wonder what the hell I am doing. They seem placid enough where humans are concerned, but there’s something about their eyes that warns they’re not to be trifled with.

I’ve been watching the herd for a week now and though I’m used to looking at cows in the field, I feel as if I’ve never before seen cows in my life, probably because I haven’t. Painting has me seeing everything, including cows, with new eyes. Beginner’s eyes, Ruth called the process, on Twitter last week.

Beginner’s eyes are why, when I stare at cows lying across the field in the early morning sun, I don’t see a field of green dotted with bovine black and white, but masses of yellow and orange bodies, and purple and green shadows. I may not be able to paint cows yet, but I can see them with my new eyes. Beginner’s eyes are responsible for what I’m sure is a vacant expression on my face as I stare, slack jawed, at spectacularly back lit grass and amazing light falling on cow shaped bodies. I’m sure I look like an idiot, standing, staring at cows. You will tell me, won’t you, if I begin to drool?