Self-Awareness is Good, Right?
At times our Domestic Bliss feels a lot like this cartoon:
The Threads That Bind Us Together
Knitting is in my blood. My great-great-grandmother knitted socks, my great-grandmother taught me to knit, my grandmother has never been without a project in her knitting basket and my mother loves knitting socks although she prefers to crochet.
According to my grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, Ingeborg, "threw" her knitting and it was not until I moved to the UK I understood what she meant. Ingeborg knitted in the English manner. I continue to wonder about Ingeborg throwing rather than picking (i.e. the Continental way). Where did she learn a style which is not used in Denmark? Who taught her? I wish I knew more about her.
Now my grandmother has expressed a desire to get "something knitted" from me for Christmas. Gran used to knit sample sweaters for a local yarn shop and you should see the fair isle sweaters she used to knit for me. Of course I cannot find any photos of them (and she gave them all to charity at one point, annoyingly), but I remember them as being stunning. My particular favourite was one knitted in Faroese colourwork (two colours, geometric patterns) in bright red and dark green. I know she still has the pattern and I harbour dreams of recreating it.
On the photo above you can see me aged five or thereabouts. I'm wearing one of Gran's creations: it looks like brioche stitch to me with set-in sleeves. I'll spare you the other photo I found. It was a zipped cardigan with a hood done in lilac. I've always hated zips in knitwear, wearing a hood and the colour lilac. Now I know why. A childhood trauma, clearly.
But what do you knit for a woman whose knitting I have worn since I was a baby?
The obvious answer is lace.
Gran has never knitted much lace, much preferring cables, brioche stitch and colourwork. When I knitted a scarf for my mother last year, Gran kept talking about the fine detailing and the delicate stitches. My family does not do "subtle" very well.
I looked in my stash and uncovered a beautiful hank of Old Maiden Aunt merino/silk in "Gothic". Then I looked at a gazillion lace shawls on Ravelry before deciding to go with a pattern I have used before: the good, old Swallowtail shawl by Evelyn A. Clark. It is one of the prettiest shawl patterns available, I've knit it twice before and know its pitfalls, and I know I can get it done in plenty of time for the holidays even if I'm going to enlargen it slightly (it is a bit dainty).
Think my Gran will like it? I think so.
FO: Autumn Ishbel and Introducing Paprika
My third (and arguably last) Ishbel shawl. This time I am keeping it for myself. I have previously waxed poetically about the yarn and the start of the project, so I'm not going to repeat myself. It suffices to say that a) the yarn drapes beeeeeautifully and b) I shouldn't ever bring lace knitting to my knitting group.
Ishbel is a pretty easy pattern, but it still requires you pay attention to where you are in your pattern. Knitting group does not encourage silly things like "attention" and "concentration". And so I had to rip back, pick up stitches and knit on. Obviously my Ishbel has a row of arty little holes where I didn't pay attention to picking up stitches properly. My shawl is so soft and warm that I don't mind, but no more knitting lace at knitting group!
Fortunately I have just cast on a very mindless knit that should be impossible to mess up - even at the most raucous of knitting meetings. Francis Revisited is the simplest of pullovers: top-down, raglan, knit body in round, sleeves in round and then pick up stitches to knit a cowl. It'd be a perfect first big project for any beginning knitter, in fact.
I cast on last night and was able to separate for sleeves six hours later (with many interruptions), so this might be the fastest project ever. Being really quite hobbit-like, I'm thinking Francis Revisited Paprika will be my comfortable go-to pullover this winter (although I'm currently wearing Snorri non-stop). I'm going to lengthen the sleeves and the body - and the edgings will be different too. With a pattern this clean and simple, the tiny details really do make all the difference.
The yarn is Sirdar Peru, a woolblend, and I chose a lovely paprika red colour which I hope will brighten up those dark winter days ahead. It has a definite "acrylic" feel to it (which I expected) but Peru knits up very well with good stitch definition. It is loosely spun and almost feels like a single ply, but I'm hoping the acrylic content will keep it from pilling. The colour sequencing could have been more subtle, but that is a minor concern.
I'm also going to cast on a new lace project this weekend as my gran informed me she would love a shawl for Christmas. She is a knitter herself and I'm honoured. I just need to figure out which yarn to use (I have a sizeable laceweight stash) and decide on a suitable pattern. Pattern suggestions are, of course, warmly welcomed.
No Beginning No End
Hawksley Workman. One of my favourite male singers. And the video is so beautiful.
Man Booker? It’s Me, Karie Rantypants.
- Genre writers complain about chosen genre being ignored by the mainstream literary establishment.
- Mainstream literary establishment responds by saying that genre fiction is never submitted to major literary awards by its publishers.
- Genre writers sulk and go "at least we have plenty of readers unlike mainstream literary fiction"
- Mainstream literary establishment snarls: "[genre fiction] is in a special room in book shops, bought by a special kind of person who has special weird things they go to and meet each other."
- Blogs pick up on spat.
- And I weigh in with an essay-length comment on the history of the Man Booker Prize because I've been commenting on the Man Booker prize and its ways since the beginning of time.
My comment in expanded format:
Booker prize winners have had fantastical elements despite claims to the contrary. Keri Hume's the bone people (1985) springs to mind with its fusion of quasi-religion, magical realism and utopian vision. David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas got very, very, very, very close to taking the prize in 2004 while Atwood's The Blind Assassin took the prize in 2000. Both novels use science-fiction as part of their mise-en-abyme structures. Both authors have written other books which both arguably belong to the speculative fiction genre.
Personally, I am not a huge fan of the Man Booker prize for various reasons: I think it promotes a certain type of literary fiction which does not reflect the myriad of exciting literature being produced in the Commonwealth; I think it has become too focused on easily-marketed books (the Kelman win in 94 really was wretched for booksellers and the Man Booker has taken great care not to alienate the High Street since); I think too much importance is being given to the Man Booker over several other literary prizes; I think the idea of a literary prize is, by its very nature, somewhat dubious.
But the Man Booker does not exclude books with fantastical or science fiction elements more than, say, the Hugos ignore David Mitchell (who is one of the best young novelists working in the English language) or Margaret Atwood (who is one of the best novelists working in the English language, full stop). The Hugos have their Neal Stephensons, their China Miévilles and their Neil Gaimans just as the Man Booker has its Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes and Salman Rushdie. Same difference. Same sense of ghettoisation.
Now I'm going to go have dinner, curl up with the last rows of my Ishbel shawl and have a lazy Friday evening with my partner. But I'll probably rant about the Man Booker some other day. The award is rewarded shortly, you know, and I will have Opinions.
The Staffordshire Hoard
"This is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England… as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries. Absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells." - Leslie Webster, Former Keeper, Department of Prehistory and Europe, British Museum
The UK's largest haul of Anglo-Saxon treasure has been discovered buried beneath a field in Staffordshire by an amateur metal detector enthusiast. The Staffordshire Hoard comprises of more than 1,500 individual items and most objects appear to date around the 7th century. You can read the entire press statement here.
I am incredibly excited by this hoard. One of the items which really intrigues is a strip of gold bearing a Biblical inscription. I'm excited because we don't often see examples of handwriting from this age as most writing would have been done on (easily perishable) wax tablets. The Lindisfarne Gospels date from around the same period, of course, but seeing writing employed outside a manuscript page is just really, really fantastic - particularly as you are seeing a religious inscription on an arguably secular item.
You can see beautifully detailed photos of the hoard on Flickr and while the Staffordshire Hoard website is currently struggling to cope with the number of visitors, I encourage you to seek it out.
Here We Go Again..
I've dug out two skeins of Drops Alpaca in order to make a third Ishbel shawl. I have given the other two versions away and thought a third one would a) be an easy knit which is perfect for knitting group and b) I'd like one to keep my neck warm this autumn. I'm still not sold on the pattern - there is something about the lace repeats that doesn't give me that lace-knitting buzz - but it is a quick knit and it looks pretty. Most of my knitting pleasure is derived from the yarn and its gorgeous heathered orange colour.
Drops Alpaca is, of course, one of my desert island yarns. It comes in an amazing range of colours, has excellent yardage, knits up beautifully whether you choose to treat it as a fingering weight or as a light DK (!), is eminently affordable, and is deliciously warm and snuggly. I can't think of a single bad thing to say about it.
It's funny. I am very, very fond of so-called "rustic" yarns: yarns that feel like they've just leapt off the sheep and into your hands with very little work gone into them. I love that connection to nature - and yet if I were to select three yarns to bring with me on a long, lonely journey (or desert island), none of them would be particularly rustic. I'd select Drops Alpaca, Noro Cashmere Island and Malabrigo - all soft, commercial yarns with a high degree of processing gone into them. Go figure.
Also on the needles:
- My Pine cardigan is still with me and I have one sleeve, the yoke and the buttonbands to go. I can't consider it an unfinished object because I still want to finish it and wear it. I'm just dreading the yoke bit because the instructions leave a lot to be desired. Also still worried about my yarn amount.
- I have one fair-isle glove finished and should really get around to knitting the other. I was ready to give up on the gloves but was persuaded otherwise by my knitting group who thought they were lovely and Other Half who thought they looked "quite 1940s". I'm a sucker. I'm going to knit the second one. Soon.
I also tried casting on for Rosamund's Cardigan out of the recent IK, but the designated yarn did not work. I suppose that tells me that I should just get back to working on Pine..
Along the Canal
Alexander Trocchi's novel, Young Adam, is an interesting little piece of Scottish beat literature, if rather uneven. It tells the story of Joe, a young disaffected man working and living on a barge boat travelling between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The film adaptation, which stars Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton and Peter Mullan, is excellent and well-worth your time (if you like your films grim and existential). Nowadays I live a very short walk away from the Forth and Clyde canal where Young Adam is set - I still halfway expect to see Ewan McGregor in a fetching fisherman's sweater every time we walk along the canal.
Today we walked down to the annual Big Man event which seeks to get the local community involved in the area surrounding the Forth and Clyde canal. Local artist Andy Scott is hoping to erect a 30m steel sculpture-cum-footbridge (the Big Man) across one of the canal junctions - in Scott's own words: "the footbridge will be representational of the historic ironworks, boat-building and other industries that were found in the (..) area. I hope he becomes a symbol of the area's proud history and a beacon of hope for the future".
Anyway.
I've now embarked on the bane of my life: the Christmas wish list. Usually I get asked for it in August but this year my family managed to wait until end of September because we are going across to Denmark and so they do not need to post the presents. I'm wondering if it would be okay to ask for yarn seeing as I'm yet to knit up all the yarn I got last year.. Any good Danish knitting books just published? Any new Scandinavian yarns? Any good shawl pin vendors in Denmark?
Now to write the UK version..
Recharging Our Batteries
We went on a mini-break to the North-East coast of Scotland. I love visiting this particular part of Scotland - it reminds me of the landscape where I grew up (agricultural, close to the sea, small villages, cows) and yet this place is so startlingly different and dramatic (dangerous cliffs! fishing huts! waterfalls! lobsters!). We were really lucky with the weather this time, but this little place is just as beautiful in the depth of winter.
Now back to normality. I hope this little mini-break recharged my batteries because I have a feeling things are going to get hectic in the next few weeks..
Calendar Confusion
This is another week where I'm going "How can it only be Tuesday? It must be Friday! Thursday, late Thursday, then!" and then my Filofax pulls me aside and gently points out it is only Tuesday.
Oh my. Send me energy, adrenaline shots, copious amounts of coffee and a great deal of fortitude.
PS. Students are back. I can't stand students (therefore I must be a grown-up, I guess). I have a serious problem with students telling me I'm a freak for being very tired after a very long day. Ah, your youth will end too, dear student, and it will end sooner rather than later.