Sunnudagr
Life itself has caught up with me, so I am running behind on important things such as answering emails, sorting paperwork and, well, doing the dishes. This weekend I have allowed myself some time off and will be cooped up in bed with books, hot tea and a warm duvet. I have finally accepted this is a necessity, not a luxury, if I am to remain relatively sane, capable and congenial. It only took me some thirty years or so.
I finished reading China Miéville's The City & the City the other night, though. I had previously tried getting through Adam Roberts' Swiftly (which felt like a disastrous date set up by an online dating agency based upon our preferences and demographics, but the spark wasn't there and we disliked each other from the get-go) and Mark Slouka's The Visible World (which I'm pondering giving a second go), so when I flew through Miéville's novel, I was relieved. I'd recommend it - particularly if you like smart speculative fiction or want a detective novel with an added flourish - although it was a bit too plot-driven for my taste. Also, I liked Miéville's light writerly touches such as naming the border area between the two cities "Copula Hall" (grammar nerd alert).
I'm now awaiting the paperback releases of Colm Toibin's Brooklyn, Hillary Mantel's Wolf Hall and, of course, Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. What books are you looking forward to reading?
Knitting-wise, I have made some headway on my summer top (now forever known as "Frankie Says.." and I'm showing my age) and I have cast on for a second pair of socks(!) seeing as my first pair are lovely, warm and perfect for snuggling up at night (again, showing my age).
And now it is time to do said snuggling under the covers with a book. Have a lovely Sunday.
Now We’re Getting Somewhere
I finished my Ravelympics project on Monday night, but had to wait until Wednesday morning to photograph the result. I'm rather happy with my first pair of socks: they are pretty, the pattern was fun to knit and the finished object has already been used as bed socks (it gets cold in old Victorian tenements). I am not sure I will ever be a confirmed sock knitter, but I will admit that socks do make for a nice portable project. And that having a pile of handknitted socks will be very useful for someone who is always cold. So there is that.
I began my next project on Tuesday night - my Summer Tweed jumper from Rowan 47 - and the weather gods turned against me immediately. We have had snow the past couple of days. I am so tempted to cast on for a big, woolly jumper but I know I will cherish the Summer Tweed jumper in the months to come. Sometimes I am being too pragmatic for my own good.
Some random links from my "blogging" bookmark file:
+ Very, very, very pretty dustjackets for Jules Verne books. I doubt they will be put into production due to costs, but they are very charming and, dare I say it, toy with liminal aspects of paratextuality (that's my big, pretentious phrase of the week, then).
+ I met Ms Dirty Martini late last year here in Glasgow. She was affable, lovely and cheerful. I had no idea she was collaborating with Karl Lagerfeld (NSFW link). Six degrees of separation, my my.
+ Kathryn Grayson has passed away. She starred in some of my favourite Hollywood musicals - Anchors Aweigh and Show Boat. Here's a YouTube video of her with Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawson. Sniffle.
+ "Nobody Knows What the (BEEP) They Are Doing" - or how clever people feel like imposters and wonder why they are doing well. I wish I had seen this ages ago when I was a graduate student. The piece is admittedly a bit pop psychology-ish, but I found it an interesting read.
Bricking It
Wall behind the Hunterian Art Gallery and most likely part of the Glasgow University Campus
I have a real weakness for old bricks. They come in all sorts of colours depending upon where they were made; they can be handmade or marked with the manufacturer's insignia; and they tell stories. We have too many brick photos to mention. Thankfully my partner understands why I always just need one more photo of an old wall, a bricked-up window or even just an unusual pattern.
Embodied
Just a link to another weblog today, but it is a link I encourage you to click. A fellow knitter-in-Scotland, Kate, suffered a stroke some time ago and this is how she is experiencing the recovery process.
Without going into too many details, I can relate to her words and her post made me think quite unhappy thoughts about past events in my life. Then I began thinking about how we relate to our bodies, about how we define ourselves and about that strange link between our minds and bodies (a link it took me decades to accept for one reason or another). And how life is one continuous process of defining, discovering and accepting ourselves in ever-changing contexts. I know I am now very different from who I used to be but I also remain the same.
I wish you all the best, Kate, and I hope for your speedy recovery.
Warm and Fuzzy In Several Ways
For some odd reason I keep going back to the idea of a knitted dress. I found a machine-knitted dress in Monsoon (British clothes shop) which I absolutely loved (apart from the fibre make-up) and then I saw some jaw-dropping Briars and lengthened Dusty tunics. I just sit here in my cold flat and imagine how wonderfully soft, comfortable and warm they would be to wear. Then I remember how traumatised I get when knitting more than one sleeve or a slightly lengthy body. Maybe I would not go nuts knitting a dress or tunic, but the jury is definitely out on that one.
Plus, you know, I had the following exchange today: "Can I talk to the lady in charge of this?" - "That's me. " - "No, I want to talk to the slim one." Ouch. Maybe a soft, clingy knitted dress is a very bad idea, full stop.
Anyway. Finished object: my Kaiti shawl knitted in Rowan Kidsilk Haze (shade: Liqueur). I used just a smidgen over two balls (and you could totally get away with just two balls) on 4.5mm and although I really wanted to knit Sharon Miller's Birch, I used the top-down version, Kiri, to maximise the shawl-to-yarn ratio. This is a supersoft and very, very warm shawl.
(I'm not-so-slowly getting addicted to Kidsilk Haze - I'd love to knit a cosy jumper in KSH and have fallen in love with yet another Kim Hargreaves design: Veer from Rowan 32. The simple lines plus the quirky little details just stole my heart. )
Photo taken at the Kelvingrove Museum which is my favourite Glasgow museum, hands down. No matter how often I visit, I see something new and interesting. They even have a small, but exquisite collection of Early Modern Period art (one of my favourite ages). Afterwards we headed towards the Hunterian Art Gallery where, be still my heart, we saw a special exhibition on Albrecht Dürer in Italy and printmaking (including an incunabulum, phroawr). Seriously, seriously good stuff. I love my neighbourhood.
Confessiones
When I started university many, many, many moons ago I fell in with the wrong crowd. Looking back, I can see how it happened. The nice girl living next door to me in student hall invited me in for tea and soon after she was offering to "lend" me things. "Nothing bad was going to happen", I was told, "everybody's doing it and it's perfectly normal". And this is when I began playing role-playing games.
I had long wanted to play Dungeons & Dragons, but the only ones playing RPGs in my erstwhile home town were boys hanging out in the library basement, and they had a strict "no girls" rule. When my student hall neighbour, Liz, offered to lend me the Player's Handbook 2nd Edition, I felt vindicated. To this day, most of the D&D players I know are women. And they are hardcore, I tell you.
Eventually most of my Copenhagen social circle was composed of RPGers - this is not to say that we only hung out in order to slay orcs, but most of the interesting people I met also just happened to be gamers. Smart, interesting people from all walks of life with real jobs, real lives and actual social skills. They were interested in communal storytelling and in imaginary flights of fancy. I miss them. Sadly I have not been able to find a gaming group here in Glasgow - the ones I have found all meet on my knitting night! - but I keep toying with the idea of starting up a small group.
So, imagine my reaction when I read that a murder spree was linked to the perpetrator playing D&D.. yeah, I was not impressed. As someone in the comments remarked: "1989 called, and it wants its favourite baseless accusation back."
A few apt links:
- Dicey Knitting - let a d20 guide your knitting
- A Cthulhu dice bag pattern
- A d4-shaped dice bag pattern
- Impaler - "this battle helmet features bobble rivets and a pre-bloodied spike" (I felt this pattern name needed to be written in bold)
- The awesome Cthuhluclava
Picture Perfect-ish
This one's called "Green Sock On Concrete". My inspiration for this? Well, I wanted to address tempus fugit, the inherent pain of creation (note those needles: both the instrument of making and of maiming) and something about urban life versus nature which the concrete/foot constellation symbolises. Oh, and our living room carpet would have clashed with the green sock and Official Photographer was out, so I posed on our stairwell.
I'm about to graft the toe and I am delighted with this little thing, but something about socks still bugs me. Maybe it is my irrational dislike of feet. Seriously, I think feet are disgusting. So whenever I try on my sock, I have to get over the "omg, this thing I'm knitting has been on my foot and I have to touch it!" I wish I could wash that sock every time I pull it off my foot, but it's just not feasible for a work-in-progress.
I tried watching the Olympics today whilst knitting, but for some reason BBC thinks curling is more watchable than the men's short programme in figure-skating (something about Britain actually maybe possibly being able to win a medal at curling could have something to do with it, but still.)
She’s In Fashion
And on the fourth day of the Ravelympics I was too busy to knit because I was watching this on TV. So. Much. Love.
(Rumour has it she was seen knitting backstage at Glastonbury)
Ravelympics: Third Day Adjustment
Goodbye Clandestine sock pattern. Hello Spring Fern pattern. So much better. I'm now playing catch up.
Watching the Olympics here brings home that I no longer live in Scandinavia. The Finland - Russia ice hockey game was just mentioned in passing, the cross-skiing events barely gets a look in (Denmark has always been crap but we'd always show some support for Norway) and we do not get wall-to-wall coverage of the figure-skating events. I remember growing up and getting to watch all the figure-skating qualifying rounds; now I get edited highlights of the top three athletes. But, I do get to see events like speed skating and the luge which I have rarely seen before. In fact I stayed up very, very late last night just to see who won the luge. Ooh, the excitement (and subsequent day of tiredness).
I'll leave you with a little link I have been saving for rainy day like today: Hipster Puppies. Unsurprisingly I'm finding this photo absolutely hilarious and I may have said something like this when I was twenty-one and unbearably pretentious.
Ravelympics: Second Day Qualms
As someone I know would say: "That's a whole lotta sock you got going on there, girl".
Truthfully I am not happy with my first/last socks. The pattern, Clandestine, is really fun to knit from a knitterly point of view: twisted stitches, increases, decreases and wrapped stitches. I look forward to every new row and have that "just one more row" thing going on. But, really, the resulting fabric is busy. No, it is more than just busy, it is fussy. The dictionary definition of "fussy" actually sums up this sock perfectly: "filling with ornament what should be empty space".
I was just about to turn the heel last night after an evening of intense knitting and then I glanced at the heel flap, looked at the leg pattern and then looked at the heel flap again. The heel flap was everything that the leg wasn't: elegant, tidy and, well, pretty.
What is a girl to do? I did what any knitter these days would do (probably): I went to Ravelry and posted about my predicament in several groups. The Ravelympics Sock Hockey group suggested that I should frog my halfway-done sock and seek out another pattern. "It is not defeat; it is regrouping your troops and rethinking your strategy," one knitter said. On twitter, friends doubted it could be that bad. I decided to sleep on it and here I am.
That heel flap sure is pretty, isn't it? I wish the entire sock could be that like. At the end of the day, I would like a pair of socks that I am proud of - not from a knitterly point of view, because I do not need knitting validation, but from a "look how pretty my socks are!" perspective. I have suddenly turned into a project knitter, it seems.
So, I am regrouping and rethinking my strategy. We are off to a life drawing class today, so I will not have time to knit anything until tonight. This should leave me plenty of time to decide whether to frog or to continue. Funnily enough I think I have almost already made my decision.