St. Teresa
See the colour of my skin? I was standing on top of a windy hill in Scotland in January wearing just a long-sleeved tee, jeans and my finally-finished grey jumper. Don't tell me that I don't suffer for my blog.
I finished the jumper on Tuesday. Wednesday I wore it outside and found out my neck itched like crazy (and the collar looked silly). Friday I took the scissors to the neckline, got a little over-enthusiastic and had to fool around with lifelines and cutting out a fair chunk of the yoke. This morning I knitted the neckline and decided to nick the idea of a tied bow from St. James. I just had had enough of my own ideas at that stage.
So, we went out for a walk, shot some deeply unflattering photos and then walked past this amazing church which promptly lent its name to the project.
Note to self: get better photos (and shoot them INDOORS). And don't ever knit with grey wool during the dark, rainy winter months.
Snapshot
I'm baking a chocolate and beetroot cake; David's reading an advance copy of Mr Toppit. Later I will rip out the neckline of my now finished-but-unfinished grey jumper (the wool is tickling the upper part of my neck/chin).
I feel so middle-class.
Books 2009: Julian Barnes – Flaubert’s Parrot
Perhaps the real question is not why you read, but how you read. This observation was brought to you from me having finished Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot just an hour ago. I was certain I had read the book before - but I'm not sure. I recognised the opening chapter. It is entirely possible I had read the opening chapter and then put the book aside. This is one of the ways I read: I flirt with books.
So, the much-fabled, oft-taught and already-classic Flaubert's Parrot which I may or may not have read previously but which I have definitely read now?
How did I read it?
Well. I felt tempted to make a check-list of post-modern fiction trademarks, so I could check them all: fragmented self (constructed out of texts); history understood and recast as fiction (as the past is inaccessible to us except through texts which by their very nature are linguistic constructs and thus unreliable); the text as bricolage (assembled by quotations and various types of texts); no such thing as Truth but only truthS; &c.
In short: it read like a lesser Pale Fire (true to his metier, Barnes does keep name-dropping Nabokov) but without Pale Fire's mania and fevour. My head placed Flaubert's Parrot next to Graham Swift's Waterland. Barnes' novel is a textbook case of post-modern fiction, just like Swift. I did not particularly care for the book - to me, it reads old in way that much older books do not. Because it is such a full-blooded second-generation English post-modern book, it feels very dated to me.
That's how I read. My head assigns books their place in the literary canon based upon their kinship with other books/authors. I measure them against similar books I have read (and often against unrelated books). How does the writing hold up? Does it surprise me anyway? Does it make me work hard or does it lead me gently through the pages? Will it make me reassess books I have already read? Does it point me towards books I need to read in order to fully appreciate the book I hold in my hands?
Next: a post on things I find in secondhand books. It was my intention to post this today, but someone has not charged the camera batteries. Boo.
Monday Linkage
- Bow down to the master: How to Read 462 Books in One Year. I feel like such an underachiever.
- The Book Cover Archive. Exactly what it says on the tin.
- Reason #1 why I'm happy being a crafter: "An evening gown that has champagne taste on a beer budget. Cheap champagne, but champagne nonetheless."
- Reason #2 why I'm happy being a crafter: Steal This Sweater - "stop making scarves; start making trouble."
- Reason #3 why I'm happy being a crafter. I only have the collar to go on my grey jumper and I'm taking the easy option.
- The Axis of Awesome: 4 Chords (youtube link). "The song that proves that all you need to be a pop star is four simple chords." Yes, The Crowdies' "Fall At Your Feet", A-ha's "Take On Me" and, er, Banjo Patterson's "Waltzing Matilda" are all the same song.
- Inauguration Day from Space. "The world’s highest-res Earth-imaging satellite zooms in on President Obama "
- "Cooking doesn't get TAFFA than this!" Yes, it's the Gregg Garbbler (also known as the MasterChef Automated Quote Generator). Will only make sense if you watch BBC's MasterChef (Other Half is a devotee). "God, you've got some big flavours, boy!"
- I recently got invited to Spotify and since I'm on the wrong side of thirty, I immediately began catching up with New Music That Kids Today Like (gosh!). Fleet Foxes are really lovely, Vampire Weekend don't do it for me and Lady Gaga leaves me absolutely cold. I'm so old. Spotify also has a vast collection of 80s Swedish boybands and Russian folk songs. Ask me how I know. Anyhow, I have seven Spotify invites for anybody in the UK, Estonia or Sweden wanting one. Leave a comment (your mail addy won't be published as per usual and I'll mail it to you).
Have a lovely Monday, everybody!
The Hidden Cameras – Boys of Melody
This is one of my favourite songs of this past decade and this live performance tugs at my heartstrings. Enjoy.
On the Town
Oh, my Glasgow. She is pretty even if we do not see the sun all that often and it rains a great deal. She is pretty.
We went into town today, to the Lighthouse (not as in Virginia Woolf, but as in The Lighthouse, the Scottish centre for architecture, design and urbanity).
Other Half wanted to see the Donna Wilson exhibition as he went to art school with her. We also fancied some free books.
In the end, we got away with eleven free books on a number of topics: food design, twentieth century architecture, re-imagining Scottish cities etc. Some very cool, interesting and useful stuff. I somehow also managed to buy a book on the Wiener Werkstätte because I'm a sucker for early twentieth-century design. Ahh..
Che Camille is not far from The Lighthouse. I like the place a lot and right now it feels like one of Glasgow's best-kept secrets. It won't stay that way. The boutique/design workshop takes up most of the upper floor of one of the many Victorian buildings lining the shopping street - and getting up there to see what they have done with the space would be enough of a reason, but they are also featuring fabulous, quirky clothes/furniture from young designers. I cannot afford anything (except tiny handknits which I obviously prefer to create myself), but I do surreptitiously feed off the fantastic sense of synergy created by its owner, Camille.
Tomorrow Other Half and I will be off to Che Camille's Clothes Swap/Customise Yr Clothes workshop. Should be fun.
(this is the staircase in the Lighthouse Tower. pretty, no?)
Thank you for your advice on what to do when the knitting mojo just isn't there. I have finished one sleeve of my grey jumper and will embark on the other tonight. I just think I hate knitting sleeves, to be honest. Then I'll be knitting the collar which is the bit which really interests me with this jumper.
I have two different types of collars in mind. One is an asymmetrical bow-like construct (vaguely reminiscent of half-a-fan neckwarmer (thank you, mooncalf, for the lovely example) for which I have no pattern plus I'll have to turn the construction around ninety degrees. I'm either going mad or am stretching my knitting abilities. Possibly both). The other idea revolves around a tube-like construct which I could attach with buttons. The latter is not half as elegant as the former but will not involve me trying to reverse engineer an unknown pattern and then turn it on its side.
Le sigh.
Next time I'm making a jumper, I'll use a pattern.
A Knitting Confession
Hand on heart: I am so tired of knitting my grey jumper.
My problem is two-fold. Firstly, I need a colour injection in this dreich weather. Secondly, I made half a cardigan using the same wool before realising I wasn't happy with the outcome and that I'd rather do something else. It now feels like I've been knitting my jumper for months. And, full disclosure here, I have knitted bust-shaping short rows for the first time and while one side looks fine, the other side looks slightly wonky. I have one-and-a-half sleeves and the neckline to go. Oh, botheration.
I still have my colourful triangular shawl that I can work on, but I'm doing the edging in Kidsilk Haze.
What to do when both your projects are driving you slightly batty and you also prefer to finish something before starting something else?
No Sense of Direction
Having recently looked through one of those "book you must read" lists, I have chartered my own reading throughout the years.
I am particularly well-versed in contemporary British fiction, can find my way around the contemporary American literary landscape but generally opt out (bar one or two novelists whom I admire) and I know my early twentieth century poetry/fiction very well. I know my nineteenth-century British novelists and poets, can muddle my way through Enlightenment literature but really do prefer sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English poetry. Some would say that I'm well-read, whilst others would point out that, for a Dane, I'm unusually Anglophone in my reading preferences.
Kimfobo of Reading Matters ponders her reading choices for the year ahead. Looking at my bookshelves, I can see Books I Really Ought to Read (Djuna Barnes, William Faulkner and James Joyce) because they fit so well into what I have already read and would fill up curious gaps on my literary map. I can see Books Waiting to Be Read (Alasdair Gray (signed first edition!), Jonathan Coe and Margaret Atwood). Curious books, whimsical books, flirty books and serious books. Hardbacks, paperbacks, graphic novels and proof copies. Books in Danish, Swedish, German, English and even one in Russian.
How do I choose? Sadly I'm not very good at keeping to To-Read lists. I would quite like to read more pre-1950 novels this year. I have a vague notion about reading some Ivy Compton-Burnett but it is hardly a radical idea. I fear I'm a literary flaneur, really. So I will continue to read without any real sense of direction. Perhaps I will detect a pattern when I look back some eleven months from now.
A vaguely topical link: Can you name the 100 most common words in English? A rudimentary grasp of syntax might come in useful here, actually. I got 61/100 and I'm sure you can do much better.
“We encounter each other in words..”
Unsurprisingly the poetry reading was one of my favourite parts of the Obama inauguration ceremony (another being Aretha Franklin's awesome hat). You can read the entire poem by Elizabeth Alexander on the New York Times website right here.
Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."
Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.
What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.
Hope in my Hands
Image by Shepard Fairey.
It seems to me that today contains multitudes (to misquote the great American poet, Walt Whitman).
Today marks History in different ways.
To some, it is about George W. Bush leaving office after what I would politely describe as a shambolic, histrionic and incompetent presidency.
To some, it is about the first African-American man becoming president.
To some, it is about the advent of the Anti-Christ, and if you think I am joking, try googling "obama + antichrist" (I'm not going to honour any of the nutjobs with a link). It is a mixture of bittersweet emotions, joy and bemusement.
To me, personally, today is all about Hope. I once said that the worst feeling in the world is hopelessness. I don't know what the future will bring but today I am holding hope in my hands. It feels damn good.