fourth edition

One of my favourite places in Glasgow has to be the Botanic Garden. When I first moved here, we lived less than three minutes away by foot and I always made a point of walking through the Botanics whenever I was walking to or fro work. Nowadays we live slightly further afield and my journey [...]

J.D. Salinger has died. I wonder what unpublished works he has left behind?

Just a little peek of my just-off-the-blocking-board shawl. It’s beautiful, it’s warm and it’s mine. Sorry. I notice how my projects travel by colour. I had a green phase last spring/summer, then recently I have knitted a lot of blue-ish purples and pink fuschia, and now I appear to gravitate towards rich reds. I hope [...]

When I cast off a shawl last night – more on that later – I noticed that my left wrist was acting up. I have hyper-mobile joints and sometimes I forget that I have to “stiffen” my wrist when pushing against or carrying things. These past few days I have been doing a lot of [...]

I am very bad at receiving compliments, but am very good at taking criticisms to heart. Yesterday I was called something Not Very Nice by a random passer-by at my workplace. It was completely out of order, had no basis in reality and all my colleagues were stunned into silence (which does not happen often). [...]

I have somehow managed to sign myself up for a “10 Shawls for 2010″ challenge on Ravelry. By doing so I have completely ignored that I want to knit more small accessories in 2010 as I have cold fingers and a cold head most of the year round. However, the shawls challenge does fit nicely [...]

Just a quick little link dump today as I have managed to pull a muscle in my back/shoulder region which makes typing a tad uncomfortable.

I bought Elephants On Acid & Other Bizarre Experiments as a Christmas present for a good friend of mine. I based my purchase entirely on this line from an Amazon review: [...]

When I first wore my new shawl on a shopping trip to some local shops, I was approached twice. A drunk man outside the butcher’s informed me that I was “the most beautiful woman in the world” and shortly afterwards a toothless shouted an indecent proposal after me as I was walking home with shopping [...]

Something about early twentieth century arts and culture fascinates me. I like my so-called high culture as much as my pop culture and early twentieth century arts and culture loved to combine avant-garde ideas with popular culture. Some years ago I read Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. It told the tale [...]

For many years I preferred crochet to knitting. As a child I crocheted blankets for my Barbie doll’s bed, later I ventured into bigger projects such as pillow covers before making my first (self-designed) jumper when I was about eighteen. I made it during a stint in bed and I used all the scraps of [...]