Why It’s Bad To Know Other Knitters
I blame Bells.
I was sitting here enjoying a cup of coffee, having a spot of lunch and then I began reading Bells' love letter to Ishbel (a shawl pattern by everybody's favourite Scottish knitting pixie, Ysolda Teague). Bells' paen to Ishbel wore away at me and before I knew it I too had purchased the pattern. Shock, horror.
I'm totally justifying the purchase to myself by saying "Well, I need a portable project to take with me to Denmark" and the project would also be a stash-busting exercise, as I am the proud owner of a great deal of laceweight and fingering weight yarns. I have singled out two different yarns which would work perfectly in each their own way.
The top cake is Fyberspates Faery Lace in a one-off colour way purchased at a Fyberspates trunk show last year. 1200 yrds of soft turquoise, sea green and cream. The bottom cake is is 2ply merino which I bought in Copenhagen last year. 440 yrds of rich chocolate brown softness. At the moment I'm leaning towards the latter, although the Faery Lace continues to haunt my imagination.. Every time I open the storage box, I look down at it and think "Oh, turquoisey cobweb .. whatever am I going to do with you?".
I have completely omitted to talk about what is currently on my needles. Geno is no more: it was a case of the right yarn and the right pattern in the wrong colour being knitted up at the wrong time.
I'm knitting up the Cafe au Lait mittens in Rowan Wool Cotton to match a beret I made from the same yarn. Not only am I deeply in love with twisted rib - it looks so elegant! so crisp! - but I'm also in love with Wool Cotton - the stitch definition! its softness! the marled grey!
I'm also working on my handspun yoke cardigan. I'm almost done with the first sleeve, which means I only have one sleeve and the button band to go. I'm thinking I should be able to finish that before my fabled trip to Viking Land.
My fellow knitter-in-crime and good friend, Kathleen, is churning out one inspirational project after another at the moment. She recently finished a stunning, stunning hap shawl in plant-dyed cashmere/wool from a indie dyer on the Isle of Skye. A few weeks ago I tried on the hap shawl and I had to fight my urge to just run away with it. I have been taking a long, hard look at my stash and I think I can make myself a hap shawl out of my amassed collection of New Lanark (I might have to order an additional skein or two - what hardship!). I have also been eyeing Kathleen's striped shoulder shawl (rav link) and her Girasole. Seriously inspirational stuff, I tell you.
Why it's bad to know other knitters? Too many ideas, too little time.
Random Is the New Black
We have found more clay pipes by the Forth and Clyde Canal - here is one of the nicest pipes, if not exactly the most intact..
Notice also the rather interesting shards of china in the background. We've identified one piece with the Willow Pattern but the rest remain elusive. Interestingly we've found tiny bits with lettering (be still my beating heart!) and other bits with what looks like fishing huts.
Swine flu has been confirmed around 12 miles from us. I'm expecting an outbreak of panic here which will involve people looting tissue paper, tinned soup, hand soap and cans of lager from our local supermarket. In other words, I'm not worried, although my mother might be once she realises how close I live to Monklands Hospital (i.e. not very close but in the same country). As a Dane I feel obliged to inform you that pork products are perfectly safe to eat. Mmmm, bacon.
Only one random link today: Vidders Talk Back to their Pop-Culture Muses.
"For decades, Americans sat in front of their televisions and watched — just watched — their favorite shows. (..) But one group of fans has interacted with their favorite television shows for more than three decades. Vidders, as they're called, make unauthorized underground videos using clips from the shows. Each vid compiles dozens of clips from various episodes, all set to a song."
To be perfectly honest, I've seen a handful of these fanmade vids and most of them are .. not very good. The formula goes something like this: one plaintative love song - say, Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love". Then take the lyrics and pair with with your fandom of choice - so, when Leona bleats "Time starts to pass.." you insert pictures of Captain Kirk/the Doctor/Six looking at a watch. Lather, rinse, repeat .. But unsurprisingly there are some mindblowingly good vids out there. This is the best I've seen.
PS. Happy birthday to regular commentator and offline compadre, Darth Ken. I love you, man.
Relationship Status: Good (Once More)
If you subscribe to my Twitter feed you will already have been privy to a major relationship crisis. Last night I was not talking to and was close to breaking up with knitting. It was bad. Seriously.
Looking back it was inevitable: it was late, I had been snappy most of the day and then I stopped paying attention. I stopped paying attention to stitch count, I didn't read the pattern and when I realised something was wrong, I began using foul language. I ripped back, ripped back much too far, tried picking up stitches, saw stitches drop, ripped back further and ..
.. then I had a Boyfriend Intervention. "Listen, I think you should head off to bed because this is not working and I don't think you can make it work tonight, okay? You're getting upset and you really shouldn't get upset over knitting."
Knitting and I are now back talking to each other. Actually, we are more than talking to each other. We're back being soppy and gooey. I have knitted the rows I ripped back and I'm also paying attention to the pattern once more. It's not that complicated, really. I just missed the bit where I'm supposed to do yarn-overs a row earlier than I thought I would. No biggie. I love knitting lace. Doing extra yarn-overs is a pleasure.
Sleep definitely helped as did a healthy dose of relationship therapy (i.e. several episodes of knitting podcasts) and tea. Life's too short to bear grudges - escpecially against something as incredibly lovely and rewarding as knitting.
AS Byatt & Contemporary British Fiction
There was a marvellous inteview with AS Byatt in yesterday's Guardian Review. I particularly loved the following quote, but you should really read the entire interview. So enlightning and so clever.
What distinguishes her is a sort of grounded curiosity. She has been a visible admirer and encourager of younger writers including Hensher, Lawrence Norfolk, David Mitchell, Adam Thirlwell and Ali Smith. Her advocacy is "not entirely disinterested, because I wish there to be a literary world in which people are not writing books only about people's feelings. If you notice, all the ones I like write also about ideas. You know, there's been that sort of clonking account of what was good about British writing which was McEwan, Amis, Graham Swift and Julian Barnes - but there's all sorts of other things going on. In fact I admire all four of those writers . . . and they don't only do people's feelings but nevertheless it's become ossified.
Reading "..I wish there to be a literary world in which people are not writing books only about people's feelings. If you notice, all the ones I like write also about ideas..." made me very, very happy as did her insistence that contemporary British fiction does not begin nor end with McEwan, Barnes et al. All my literary rants of the past decade summed up elegantly by someone vastly more intelligent than me - isn't that just splendid?
Do Not Feed the Culture Vultures?
Glasgow does visual arts so very, very well and every year we get the added bonus of a four-day art fair. Guess what? It's that time of year again.. Today we went to the Glasgow Art Fair and enjoyed ourselves tremendously.
Last time we went, we nearly ended up buying a Lucy Campbell painting (specifically one extremely similar to this one). We both liked its fairytale qualities and I felt strangely comforted by its Philip Pullman-ness. Today I'm glad we didn't buy it. I think Campbell has her definite strengths but I think they lie within the realm of illustration rather than painting.
This time the Art Fair was visibly affected by the recession. Saturday afternoon was simply not that crowded and quite a few vendors confided that they were having a tough time shifting anything. Interestingly this year also saw galleries from Spain, Vietnam and the Czech Republic trying their luck. Diversifying or maybe the stands came cheaper this year? The Vietnamese stand was spectacularly crap, incidentally.
Ever the pop culture aficionado, Dave spotted Carl Moore's work immediately and was very, very taken with his Animals Who Want To Be Other Animals series as well as the Robot Dreams series. I'm not sure about the robots, but I loved the Animals series too.
Proving that I have way more taste than money, I headed straight to Jonathan Wolstenholme's watercolours (the cheapest one was £2,900 - that's a lot of sweaters!). The website does not do them justice, but try looking at The Descent of Books with its clever, humourous details or Murder in the Library which ticks all my boxes. Wolstenholme's watercolours may not be cutting edge or setting the art world on fire, but, gosh, they'd look nice in my imaginary library.
And for any woolshop/yarn shop (however imaginary), what about a few David Blyth prints? We had a good natter with David M. of Peacocks Visual Arts (who represents David Blyth), which made a nice afternoon even better.
On days like these, I just love living here. I really do. Art and beauty nourish my soul.
Behaving as the Wind Behaves
Let the Right One In was a much better film than book. Everything which was overegging the book-pudding had been removed in the film: neverending subplots, irrelevant and distracting characters, and immense wordiness. The film was sparse, beautifully shot, and intense. While not the masterpiece it has been made out to be, the film was excellent. Also, it is always a joy to see a horror film where the real horror is found in everyday life rather than a supernatural monster. Recommended.
(Also: a joy to watch a Swedish film. Swedish is such a beautiful, poetic language and I adored the film's cheeky use of traditional Swedish symbols such as the Tre Kronor towel)
(Also, also: who plays Oskar's father? I swear he looks familiar but the actor's not listed in any credits I can find?)
Before the obligatory knitting update, a quick print culture geek link. Earliest known dust jacket found at Oxford. I might come back to that and explain why it's very cool.
Knitting, then. I am about 4 inches away from finishing the back of my Geno. I have a sort-of deadline for my cardigan early next month and it looks unlikely that I will make it. A 4-ply lace cardigan on 3mm needles in less than three weeks? I'm knitting like a woman possessed, but I am already behind schedule. Due to the small-ish needle size, my fingers tense up if I knit for more than three hours in a row. Also, yesterday my right shoulder began playing up (to the extent that my back started giving me problems) and while I am not sure if it is knitting-related, it does slow down the progress of Geno. Irritating.
Of course it does not mean I haven't begun pondering the next summer knit and I'm leaning heavily towards Flicker from Rowan Studio 15. Although not in beige.
Title: on the topic of horror.. well.
What’s In A Name?
The US has some very strange place names.
Bad Axe, Michigan: "While surveying the first state road through the Huron County wilderness in 1861, Rudolph Papst and George Willis Pack made camp at the future site of the city and found a much-used and badly damaged axe."
Climax, Minnesota: "The town briefly made national news in 2004 when school superintendent Shirley Moger refused to allow students to wear shirts bearing the town motto, "Climax - More than just a feeling"(..). The motto was picked following a contest. Some runner-ups in that contest were "No End to Climax," "Cling to the Culmination: Climax Forever" and "Bring a Friend to Climax.""
Cylinder, Iowa: "One story suggests that the name comes from a vehicle that passed over the creek and dropped a cylinder. "
Eclectic, Alabama: "Tradition has it that the town was named by a local resident who had taken an "eclectic" course of study at school and so named the town because of the various surrounding geographic areas."
Hell, Michigan: "After Michigan gained statehood, George Reeves was asked what he thought the town he helped settle should be called, and replied, "I don't care, you can name it Hell for all I care.""
Helper, Utah: "Trains traveling westward from the Price side to the Salt Lake City side of the plateau required additional "helper" engines in order to make the steep 15 mile climb up Price Canyon to the town of Soldier Summit. Helper was named after these helper engines."
Hygiene, Colorado: "This community's name stems from a time when it had a sanitarium to work with tuberculosis patients."
Man, West Virginia: "The name of the town is believed to have come from the last syllable of the name of Ulysses Hinchman, who was a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates."
Micro, North Carolina: "According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 0.4 square miles (1.1 km²), all of it land."
Muleshoe, Texas: "It is home to the National Mule Memorial. The mule is celebrated for his strength and sparse eating habits, traits which endeared him to the pioneers. In war, the mule carried cannon; in peace, he hauled freight. His small hooves allowed him to scale rocky areas."
Peculiar, Missouri: "The story goes that the annoyed Thomson wrote to the Postmaster General himself to complain saying, among other things, "We don't care what name you give us so long as it is sort of 'peculiar'," (with "peculiar" in quotation marks)."
Pillager, Minnesota: No word on whether the name relates to the Scandi-Viking stock of Minnesota's inhabitants, but "Minnesota State Highway 210 and County 1 are two of the main routes in the community."
Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico: "it took the name of a popular radio program in 1950, when Truth or Consequences host Ralph Edwards announced that he would do the program from the first town that renamed itself after the show."
Going through Wikipedia (as I did), I could not help but noticing major naming trends: Independence, Liberty and Union were three very, very popular names. Naming your town after presidents or the founding fathers was also common. You get many, many places named after geographical features or local animals. Interestingly, people also seemed to name their settlements after early 19th C thinkers such as Humboldt and, ahem, Byron or Greco-Roman philosophers or places. Homesick settlers were also quick to name their new homes after what they left behind (to the extend I'm tempted to do a US tour of Europe at some stage). Bold advertisement such as "Belleville" is less common, but you still get it.
But, honestly, who'd name a place after a dropped cylinder?
Gifted
This is the week of receiving gifts, it seems.
When Kirsten Marie visited, she offered to make me some bling out of materials we bought at The Bead Company. I don't wear much jewellery, but I do appreciate handmade things. And so a few weeks later these earrings arrived by post and I think they are very, very pretty. I'm not a Slytherin but I am a sucker for all things green and/or silvery. Thank you, Kirsten Marie!
And then Other Half gave me an abecedarium (of sorts) because he knows I love typography and lettering above most other things in life. And he got me a pop-up abecedarium! It's amazing. You can see how Marion Bataille's ABC3D works in this little YouTube video:
R.I.P. JG Ballard
The author J.G. Ballard has passed away. More at BBC.
While JG Ballard's seeming obsession with technology, disaster, sex and violence was not to everyone's taste, there is no doubting the huge impact of his work. He was an original, a man who spent most of his life charting hopes and terrors, and trying to make sense of the 20th century.
And he wrote Running Wild which I read at school and still consider one of the worst books I have ever had the misfortune to read.
And .. relax.
They have suspected it for a long time and now our neighbours are sure: Casa Bookish is a really weird household. Taking photos of brickwork? Yes, weird but it could be for an art project. Taking photos of rusty iron gates? Quite weird, but could just be interested in getting stuff fixed. Photographing a bit of knitting? Totally and utterly weird.
The project? Ah, I'm glad you asked. I have finally begun knitting Geno from Rowan 43 after procrastinating for about a year. I started it some days ago and have been knitting up a storm .. on size 2.75mm needles which means I have about 8 inches done. It is not exactly an instant gratification project, but it is gratifying nonetheless. I'm using Rowan Fine Milk Cotton in "Water Bomb" (a duck's-egg-blue) and the yarn is surprisingly velvety. It's a good summer project.
True to fashion I'm obsessing over which buttons to use. I have bought some bog-standard mother-of-pearl buttons from John Lewis, but they are rather .. bog-standard. So I began sorting through my vintage button stash and came up with various possibilities.
In the top-left corner you get some fake-ivory buttons, on the right you can juuust make out some carved mother-of-pearl(?) flowers with some nice staining and on the bottom you get some utterly adorable red plastic flowers (1960s?). I rather fancy the red flowers but I only have four of those and the pattern calls for at least six. I'm also very, very, very taken by these buttons found on Etsy (of course).
Maybe I should just keep knitting?
Maybe I should just do that and relax a bit seeing as the majority of this weekend has involved me poking about the inside of our PC. Long story short: what I thought was a relatively simply problem with overheating turned out slightly more complicated. I'm now extremely tired of computer parts salesmen ignoring me and talking to D. exclusively - just because I'm a woman. Unfortunately (for them) I'm also the computer savvy one, so their über-complicated "you need a new motherboard" sales talk with D. was all in vain. Anyhow, new fan-cradle and CPU fan has been installed and I resisted the lure of shiny new RAM.
PS. This entry has been written on-and-off whilst renegade kids, the Fire Brigade and the Police have been passing by our door. I am in dire need of relaxation now. Knitting, here I come.