I studied the bios on my Auckland Writers & Readers Festival yesterday, and there’s an amazing line-up of writers from Madhur Jaffrey to Ingrid Betancourt, Margo Lanagan (with whom I’m sharing a stage) and an incredibly rich variety of New Zealand poets, novelists, film directors and composers. One of the best things about literary festivals is the new people you meet and the books you might not have otherwise discovered.
But there’s a side-effect, which happens when you’re wandering around town during down-time. And you make some pretty great discoveries that way too.
I wandered into a local bookshop on Queen Street and found this:
Which may not be nearly as satisfying in the long run as some of the novels I’ve discovered, but did make me howl with laughter. From what I understand, the authors (Sally Muir & Joanna Osborne) are actually English, and responsible for the famous (young people, look away now) sheep sweater that a pre-princess Diana wore, and which started an unlikely trend for sweaters with 3-D sheep knitted into them. Ah, the good old days.
I bet Knit Your Own Dog is not a complex genre-smashing triple narrative with different points of view and a stunningly fresh voice, but I can live with that.
There is, however, no knit-your-own-lurcher pattern.
Which is a shame, for so many reasons.
You could also, apparently, knit your own Royal Wedding. Were I a knitter, I would have knitted myself an army of corgis and then forgotten why I was doing it in the first place.
This is so gorgeous that I have just bought it from Amazon. I’ll let you know how I get on…
Could you get a lurcher by knitting a whippet and combing it with a wire brush?
Now they need to bring out knit your own cats; I’d buy that one too.
I think there is a cat one…..if we could knit a lurcher AND a cat, we’d have pandemonium.
Made me smile.
Thank you. I’ve got to get that for the daughter (if it has a greyhound in it). As for me, I’ll hang on for the Knit Your Own Sheep version, because it’s more surreal.
I was just meandering through the internet this afternoon and came across your blog. Thought I would just say thank you for mentioning our book, cats out now and dogs 2 next year, including a much loved LURCHER – I have one, infact have only ever had lurchers. And I must mention that I am Jo, married to Orlando, Jamie Gough’s brother and have met you a couple of times over the years. . . . Love JO