Knit my Year

Life's irritation number 10

Don't you just hate it when the years fly by (and your mother tells everyone how old you are!)

I have been very remiss, I haven't posted a blog for a month and you, lovely readers, have kept visiting so now my view total is up to 1200 which is amazing! I have done what I promised myself I wouldn't do when I decided to write a blog and that is be inconsistent, I promise to try harder in the future. I have a number of unfinished posts, include a half rewritten one which previously disappeared into cyberspace, but I just haven't been able to get down to posting any of them and my only excuse is that it is my birthday on Monday. You all know the sort, one with a zero at the end and I am being dragged kicking and screaming towards it.

In the past I haven't worried about saying my age but this is the birthday I am not admitting to. Others have often been surprised when I've told them how old I am, most people say I seem much younger. Having a child in my late 30's probably helped, mixing with other mums who were younger it is easy to be thought to be the same age as everyone else. Keeping up with a toddler, coping with the school run while working and going through the teenage years also keeps one young. I am also lucky to have inherited good female genes from my mother (who is now 88) and my grandmother.

I have never managed to do things at an 'age appropriate' time, I had my tonsils out in my late 20's and a few years ago I had grommets fitted and booked cataract surgery in the same week, too old for one and too young for the other.

1967 Guide Camp

At 13 I was a skinny tomboy, much later to 'mature' than the rest of my class mates and even when I did get my first bra there really wasn't much to put in it. Even in my 20's, when larger busted friends complained of laying on their back and it flopped into their armpit, mine only went concave!

This late start to womanhood also meant being late crossing the finishing line. That was another thing my mother went round tell people and my GP claimed that I was the oldest patient he had ever seen whose hormones were still moaning!

So you see, my body (and my mind) are not in agreement with my mother or my birth certificate who are insisting that I was born sometime in the 1950's.

The Government no longer think that this particular birthday is 'special' as they have taken away most of the presents they used to give women at that age and will not give them back until they have worked another 5 or 6 years, which is the average time people stay in a job so could be a whole new career if employers were open to taking on workers who are over 50. They do still give free prescriptions but that could be a cunning plot to keep you well so that you can carry on going to work and, along with your birthday cards, the NHS will send a little screening kit!

Am I odd in my reaction to my birthday? Have others felt the same way or have you all welcomed and embraced this formerly 'special' age? Is it just a sign of changing times? Please leave a comment to let me know if I am totally out on a limb on this one.

Courtesy of Jean Paul Gaultier

So you see, in this centenary of Dylan Thomas birth, I will not 'go gentle into that good night' I will 'rage against the dying of the light' and when I feel old and need to use a shopper to carry my weekly shop home it will be one like this!

And I will probably wear purple!

And what's on my needles right now?

Or rather what will be on my needles in the coming months.

I saw something somewhere about this very interesting project Knit a Year and I thought what better time to do this than at the start of a new decade.

I have kept diaries on and off during years of my life and it is interesting to look back and see what I was doing and thinking at the time.

So every day for the next year I will knit a few rows in what ever colour, yarn or pattern that I fancy that day, I will also keep a brief log with a sample of the yarn and any pattern notes. I will also let you see how I'm getting on.

But I won't start it until Monday!