Geek Overload
Today we went to the Doctor Who exhibition at Kelvingrove. I had my photo taken with a rather short reincarantion of the Fourth Doctor (and Other Half rather worryingly said he fancied a Doctor Who scarf clearly not knowing how long it takes to make) as well as a very cute K-9. Loads of things to see, touch, go "woooh!" over and all that.
Gallimaufry
Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers have teamed up to make an adaptation of the children's classic Where the Wild Things Are. Growing up in Scandinavia, I confess I had never heard of this book, but the trailer looks stunning (and turn the volume up - the chosen song fits perfectly).
Via John, aquarists at the Blue Reef Aquarium in Newquay have uncovered the identity of a mysterious coral reef killer. Like John says, the accompanying picture really sells the story. It looks like really bad CGI from a D-list Monster Movie of the Week .. but it is not. Ew.
io9 lists The 7 Deadly Sins of Religion in Science Fiction which feels a bit lazy as they mainly focus on Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who with a bit of Heroes and the odd Star Wars mention. What? No, X-Files with their beatification of Dana Scully? I'm also rather unsure about the attack on the use of cargo cults.
On a similar-ish note: what do you get if you divide science by God is a strange little article:
The bizarre nature of quantum physics has attracted some speculations that are wacky but the theory suggests to some serious scientists that reality, at its most basic, is perfectly compatible with what might be called a spiritual view of things.
And so the journalist proceeds by asking random scientists about their spirituality and we are all somehow supposed to jump to startling conclusions about quantum mechanics, the existence of God and what not.
Oh, let's just end with a BBC headline which I first saw thanks to Anna: "God will not give happy ending!" Oh damn.
Neverending Story
Suffice to say that I did not appreciate Let the Right One In. Despite liking little nasty books, I am definitely not a horror reader. It was also very, very wordy.
From one of the programmers behind Etsy, I give you Orbital B. It is "a collection of particles operating on one simple rule: choose another particle in the system and orbit it with a fixed radius at a constant velocity." In other words: you get to play with little aplets and create really gorgeous art vaguely reminiscent of Umberto Boccioni (Italian Futurist whose artwork I admire).
If Orbital B isn't your thing, how about NewScan. You select your favourite newspapers and, hey presto, you get to read the news. It's pretty if a bit impractical.
Finally, some things once seen cannot be unseen; some things once heard cannot be unheard. So, keeping that in mind, here is Limahl and His Swing Orchestra. You can thank/threaten me later.
Confessiones
I know I said I'd never knit a sock and suddenly I'm sitting here with the first twelve rows of Cookie A's Marlene socks knitted in The Yarn Yard's Bonny on Knit Pro sizes 2s. Gosh, just typing that made me feel like a real knit blogger.
Honestly? I love the intricate nature of the pattern: lots of twisted stitches and clever decreases. I'm not too hot on the colours, so I think I'll rip it all out and begin over with some green merino I bought in Copenhagen last year. If I am to knit a sock, it might as well be in a colour I'd potentially wear.
To the right you see my actual current project. I decided to go for the Garter Yoke Cardigan (incidentally from the same magazine as the sock). The yarn? Ah, the yarn.
Seeing as I am currently knitting from stash in a desperate attempt to downsize it a tad, I dived deep into my boxes and unearthed some of the nicest stuff I own. About a year ago, a very dear friend sent me some of her handspun yarn. I am using her green handspun in the yoke (and also as a delicate accent to cuffs and buttom band). The rest of the cardigan is in Berroco Ultra Alpaca. I have a mind to take my time with this cardigan because I'd hate to rush it and mess up the detailing. The design is so minimal that I want the finishing to be exquisite (or as close to as exquisite as I can get).
When I'm not knitting, I'm reading Let the Right One Come In by John Ajvide Lindqvist as Other Half was insistent that if I liked Faber's Under the Skin (oh yes I did), I'd really enjoy this one. So far I'm not so sure but I'm only 120 pages into a long-ish novel.
(In other words, yes, I'm still under the weather. I'm bored out of my skull, miss Denmark immensely and Chez Bookish is an absolute mess. Woe.)
I’m A Professional Cynic (But My Heart’s Not In It)
It is fair to say that the last week or so has been a bit of a blur. I spent it recovering from two days in Kraków(!) which meant painkillers, getting up only to need a long nap two hours later, and spending my awake hours on the sofa either looking out on the sunshine or reading. My partner, David, took over cooking duties for most of the week, bless him, but I still feel vaguely guilty about leaving it all to him.
I've read three books this past week: Anne Donovan's Being Emily, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Michel Faber's Under the Skin.
Donovan's book was a letdown after her excellent Buddha Da or perhaps I am just not very good with emotional, comic and heart-warming family tales. Satrapi's graphic novel proved an interesting, clever and often funny look at growing up a smart woman in 1970s and 1980s Iran. I still struggle with the actual graphic novel format, though. Finally, Faber's Under the Skin. A fascinating, horrifying and absorbing read. I wonder what it says about me that I cannot get behind "emotional, comic and heart-warming family tales" but I fall head over heels for a strange, disturbing, genre-defying short novel?
Finally, I know I've posted a lot of YouTube links lately, but this one is an absolute cracker. A student at Glasgow's School of Art sat down to make a video installation about obsolete technology. This is the result. So strange and beautiful.
Post-Project Confusion
Dudes, I am torn.
- This in warm harvest yellow wool with red 1960s buttons
- This in either aforementioned harvest yellow wool or teal/turquoise tweed (buttons undecided)
- This in aforementioned teal/turquoise tweed. Selection of vintage buttons from button boxes.
- This in a dark purple cashmere/silk/wool blend with slightly more waist-shaping
I also have 1200 yrds of dark lime green tweed (aran weight) and 1700 yrds of purple/violet tweed (aran weight) that is currently not assigned any patterns in my head. And 1700 yrds of bramble-coloured wool too.
Also, the following projects lurk in my head but necessitates buying yarn:
- Crocheted cardigan for which I'd need to buy one ball of Kauni (approx. £10)
- A summer cardigan crocheted in cotton (which, yes, I'd need to buy. Approx. £17)
- An angora beret in lipstick red or turquoise (about £11 for yarn + pattern. Do I really need this or is this just because I want to look as Old Hollywood Glamourous as Ysolda does in her photo?)
- The infamous OWLS sweater (about £50-60, depending upon which chunky yarn I can find here in the UK. Sigh.)
And let's not begin to talk about the shawls I want to knit (currently Knitty's Aeolian shawl, the infamous Laminaria shawl, and the Fountain Pen shawl). I have enough laceweight yarn to see me through the recession, mind, so I don't have to worry about that...
Comments? Ideas? More patterns I should see and fall in love with?
It’s Almost That Time Of Year
Denmark is the oldest kingdom in Europe with a rich history of conquest, trade and culture. Regrettably, being lower even than the Netherlands, Denmark will be the first to disappear as the waters rise.
The 5.5 million people of Denmark speak a language they themselves do not understand, with a numbering system that contradicts all laws of Math. Its consonant-free nature did not stop Denmark from winning the Eurovision in 1963; they won again (in English) in 2000.
Facts
Capital: Copenhagen
Economy: Dairy products, beer, cookies, exploiting Greenland's natural resources and labour force, wind turbines
Famous landmarks: The Little Mermaid, Tivoli, Legoland, Birthe Kjær
I have found the essential guide to this year's Eurovision. The darlings at ESCnation has compiled a guide to every single competing nation (and Georgia). It is hysterically funny (and some bits are not safe for work - such as the description of Poland) even if you do not care a tuppence about Eurovision.
Speaking of which, I sat through a live-stream of the Swedish national final and sadly the best performance was a strange, beautiful version of last year's winner. I really didn't get the winning song, Malena's La Voix and, apart from a late 1990s-esque boyband and the ever discotastic Alcazar, didn't tap my feet at any stage. Hmph. Sweden, you disappoint me.
(And in case you are dying to know, Norway is emerging as the big favourite to win.)
On Families and Books
Many years ago I read A.S. Byatt's The Game - a novel about two sisters and the rivalry between them. The book asked questions about the rights of a writer to blur the line between fact and fiction: when could you use your family in your book and when did you have to start inventing?
I don't know if Julie Myerson has read A.S. Byatt, but I think she should rush out to buy The Game. Myerson is a British journalist, TV personality and novelist whose latest literary feat, The Lost Child, has been causing headlines this week.
Her book is about her son's addiction to cannabis and how this led to violent behaviour within the family. Myerson's son is angry at his mother for publishing a book about him against his wishes: "She's a writer and like a lot of writers she is wrapped up in her own world - even if the worlds they are creating aren't quite true, they become true to them anyway". Furthermore, it turns out that Julie Myerson has been writing anonymous (and intimate) columns about her children in the Guardian for years - without telling her children.
The Times has dubbed it "the chattering classes version of Heat Magazine". The Guardian is not sure Julie Myerson should have published the book. BBC's Jeremy Paxman interview with Myerson is perhaps the most damning: "You seriously thought you could publish a book detailing your son's drug use, and his identity wouldn't get out?" "Well...I may have been a bit naive about that..." Ouch.
Still, Julie Myerson has not written the worst book ever to come out of her household (maybe just the most thoughtless and self-indulgent) as her partner Jonathan Myerson wrote Noise which is one of the three worst books I have ever read in my entire life (and I have read Judith Krantz' Scruples; I liked Krantz better).
Speaking of books, I'm halfway through Anne Donovan's Being Emily. So far it is disappointing me somewhat.
Girlfriend in a Coma
Kraków is not a great place to shop if you are into your crafts. I managed to track down a couple of pasmanteria (I have no idea how to pluralise the word - it means "haberdashery") on Ul. Karmelicka, but the best one I found was on the corner of Ul. Królewska and Aleja Juliusza Słowackiego. I had to pass through a room of children's clothes and another filled with children's shoes before hitting the tiny pasmanteria.
I bought a few buttons using a lot of sign language, pointing at my cardigan's buttons and speaking a hybrid between Russian, German and the few Polish words I knew. I wish I had known that the Polish word for "buttons" is guziki.
Dave has uploaded a few Kraków photos, by the way.
I'm now on my third day of resting after our little Polish adventure. I do not mention my health very often, but I wasn't amused that I had to take painkillers yesterday just to get out of bed. I think today will be yet another slow day, but hopefully that means I will be back to normal tomorrow. Sometimes I really do regard my body as my enemy.
And thank you so, so much for the extraordinary response to my Heritage shawl.
FO: Heritage Shawl
This is one of those sneaky knitting projects that I have been working on but not really mentioning.
My heritage shawl.
My paternal grandmother is from the Faroe Islands. I am using Faroese wool. I now live in Britain. The wool has a touch of Britain’s Falkland Islands wool mixed in with the North Atlantic wool. Most of all, I am Scandinavian. The pattern by Sivia Harding is called Norwegian Woods which I cheekily, sneakily interpret as "Scandinavian Woods". I suppose I could have gone for a traditional Faroese shawl, but I had my reasons for choosing this pattern.
The wool is really strange. Snældan 1-ply is over-spun, uneven and its colour runs the gamut from very light grey to very dark grey. It is very sticky, yet easy to work with. It is rustic, yet soft. It’s absolutely fascinating. It blocks out very well too. My only criticism is that it is a teeny bit fuzzy which detracts a bit from the lace. You don’t get a crisp lace shawl with this wool. Instead you get a warm, hard-wearing shawl.
It is an easy lace shawl, comparatively speaking (although I would not recommend it as your first lace shawl) and I have not had any issues with it at all. I will be knitting it again. I also really enjoyed the story the pattern tells - the first third represents “bare branches” followed by “first buds” and then, finally, “leaves”. Knitting this shawl felts like I was knitting the end of winter and beginning of spring. It’s a powerful feeling for a Scandinavian lass like me, I tell you, and one of the reasons why I chose this pattern.
And now I have nothing on my needles! Oh no!