Waiting For the Ravelympics 2010
Funnily enough I finally feel like my knitting year is starting. I have been planning my Ravelympics project for a long time and I have been holding back on various projects because I knew that mid-February would be busy in knitting terms.
I have chosen to knit my first pair of socks and right up until a few hours ago I was unsure about which pattern to choose. I had almost decided upon Bev Elicerio's Hourglass socks, but then I could not find my 2.5mm dpns and the pattern was known to have some flaws, so I decided against it. Komet became a contender as did Crystals 'Combs & Cables, Snickets, and the Dream Twister Socks. Tweets flew back and forth with me seeking advice and inspiration from seasoned sock knitters.
I do not expect to get bitten by the sock bug, to be honest, so with that in mind I decided to knit something that was clearly a ca-pi-tal let-tah Sock designed by someone who herself is a ca-pi-tal let-tah Sock Designer. For my first and only pair of socks I might as well go all out and so I am going to knit Clandestine by Cookie A in Araucania Ranco.
I cannot wait to cast on.
My birthday turned out to be lovely. I am yet to receive all my presents as my grandmother may have tried to ship inflammable substances to the UK and gotten herself into a bit of bother with the Danish authorities over that.. but I am sure it will all be just fine. My mother gave me beautiful buttons (among other things) which is almost as close to crafty gifts as I got this year. I am trying hard to destash, you see, but as my destashing attempts somehow end up with me getting bags full of Kidsilk Spray and Kidsilk Aura, I asked for no birthday yarn. Gasp, horror.
Next project (after the socks): my Summer Tweed top. After that one I shall have to cast on for Clothilde which a certain blogger gave me as a surprise birthday present. Yes, the knitting year has finally begun.
Something of Beauty
"..there is beauty in everything. What 'normal' people would perceive as ugly, I can usually see something of beauty in it" - Alexander McQueen
British fashion designer, Alexander McQueen committed suicide today. He was only forty years old. McQueen was one of the very, very few who deserved to be called a genius in his chosen field. I am deeply saddened by his death.
"There was always some attraction to death, his designs were sometimes dehumanised. Who knows, perhaps after flirting with death too often, death attracts you."
Karl Lagerfeld on the untimely passing of McQueen.
In My Arms
My first birthday present was given to me today by David (a day early!). I was so thrilled when I realised it was a ticket to see Mr Rufus Wainwright live later this year. I have seen Rufus on three earlier occasions, but this one will be just him and a piano. Cor.
Now to wait a few more hours before I can start to unwrap the rest of my presents. Whee.
A Long Post About You Know What
Someone brought the camera with him to work, so I cannot show you all the things I have been working on lately.
I am playing around with a few yarns: Rowan Lima (a great review by Clara Parkes), RYC Cashsoft DK and Rowan Felted Tweed. I'm knitting up a small sample of Lima just to see how it responds to textured stitch patterns, while the Cashsoft DK will be given a test-knit to see how it works with 'everyday' stocking stitch. I started some mitts in Felted Tweed some weeks ago. I was particularly intrigued by how the Felted Tweed responded to being knit on 2mm (US 0) needles. It is a real treat swatching and playing with these yarns - just figuring out how they respond to needle sizes and types of stitches. I may finally have become a real knitting geek because at the end of it all I will have very little to show despite all my efforts.
I can, however, give you a little glimpse of yet another shawl I am working on. The photo was taken last week when we still had snow. This will be my fourth shawl since 2010 began and I am a bit .. shawled out now. I am knitting Kiri which is a top-down version of the lovely Birch shawl by Sharon Miller. I would have knitted Birch except it calls for 2-and-something balls of Kid Silk Haze and I only have two balls of KSH Liqueur. The shawl is working up really well. Just one more repeat and then the edging.
I sometime wonder where I fit in. Am I a Danish blogger due to my nationality? Do I qualify as a British blogger because I write in English and live in Britain? I read many Danish knitblogs, but I do not really feel part of the Danish knitblog scene because I do not meet up with anyone at Danish knitting events nor do I knit any of the popular Danish patterns in the yarns currently de rigueur in fair Denmark. But Lisbeth K obviously thinks I qualify because I was given this little "creative blogger" insignia by her. Thank you, Lisbeth! I am not usually one for internet memes, but this is delightful.
The little award comes with obligations. First I am to share seven facts about myself and then I am to pass this award to seven others.
- My favourite colour is somewhere between peridot green and moss green.
- Peridot is also one of the very few gem stones I wear (along with amber, moonstone and pearls). I rarely wear jewellery, though.
- I used to have fuchsia-pink hair. I was being very ironic in that special early-twenties way.
- I like my own company far more than I like being around other people. I am not anti-social (indeed, I am not) but I need a lot of solitude and quietness in order to be at my best.
- My perfect home would be an 18th C cottage with an open fireplace, bookshelves lining the walls, worn leather sofas with handmade throws and a sleeping dog. Unfortunately this sort of cottage does not sit well with my other requirements: a local Fair Trade coffee shop, a Mediterranean deli around the corner and excellent public transport.
- I would still really, really, really like a dog. And the handmade throws.
- My birthday almost always coincides with seeing the first few snowdrops/vintergækker.
I am passing this on to Paula (one of the most multi-talented creative people I know and a fantastic friend to boot), Ms Mooncalf (who is slowly taking over Scandinavia with her crafty blog and thus deserves a Scandinavian creative blogger award), Bells (for inspiring me daily both through her projects and through her words), my dear friend Kathleen (whose projects always fill me with awe and admiration - her Hap Shawl is my favouritest project ever), Anna (who thinks amazing thoughts about crafting and also conjures the most beautiful things out of seemingly nowhere), Meg (because she uses her crafty talents for nefarious things such as steampunk costumes and awesome jewellery) and finally Louise of Garn & Gammelt (a recent blog discovery but I love, love, love her style and creativity).
Reading the Past
The economic recession has claimed many victims. The first phase saw people losing jobs, companies going bankrupt and banks folding. Experts say that this first wave is over. Signs of economic growth are visible in the financial sectors. We are now living through the second phase: spending cuts have to be made. This is all very textbook Keynesian economic theory and I recommend reading up on John Maynard Keynes (quite apart from being a significant economist, Keynes was also part of the Bloomsbury group alongside Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster and Lyndham Lewis) if most of the current financial news leaves you confused.
Spending cuts hurt. Before Christmas, many of my physicist friends were shocked when spending cuts to the tune of £115m were made in the science research sector. When I graduated from university in Denmark some seven or eight years ago, I saw what huge spending cuts will do to scientific research. It was not pretty. My then-department went from being autonomous with at least six new PhD students every year to being yoked together with five other subjects and get one PhD student every other year. The departmental restructuring made for some interesting cross-pollination, but also for disastrous academic results.
And so I learn that Kings College London may have to shut down its Palaeography department in order to meet budget targets. No restructuring, no "let us marry you to Library Science (however awkward) or maybe History or how about Archaeology?" and no shuffling the cards. I am not just saddened. I am shocked. KCL is the only place in the UK to have a Palaeography department and, I believe, even the only place in Europe.
Palaeography, the study of ancient handwriting, may sound like a very obscure subject - and really it is an obscure subject - but it is also incredibly important to scholars. Printing being a very recent invention, most available written material was done by hand and scholars need to be able to decipher handwriting. You get different writing systems (think Cuneiform), different alphabets (think how different the Phoenician alphabet looks to the Latin alphabet) and then different ways of interpreting the alphabets through writing. Pre-printing, many European kingdoms would have their own way of combining and forming letters - Johanna Drucker is particularly good on this, if you want to read more - and some handwriting is only intelligible to specialists who have studied handwriting traditions of a particular area (South Germany, for instance). So much material is now being made available by library specialists, but now I wonder who will be around to read, understand and disseminate this material.
(If I had know that Palaeography existed as a discipline when I started university, I would have ended up in a very different place to now. As is, most of my knowledge is filtered through print culture, so I apologise for any glaring mistakes)
In Her Soft Wind I Will Whisper
Lady on the left? My great-grandmother. She would have been ninety-four today.
The photo was taken in the early 1950s outside her cottage and she is with two of her sons, K and T.
I have several photos of her; my other favourite is from the 1930s when she was approached by a travelling salesman who wanted her to become a hair model. I presume she shot him one of her withering glances. The photo shows her with long, gorgeous hair. I was told it was chestnut-coloured. The photo is black/white.
I was lucky enough to grow up around her. She minded me when I was pre-kindergarten and I spent most of my school holidays in her cottage. Her cottage did not have running water until I was maybe seven or eight and never got central heating. I can still envision her sitting in her chair in front of the kerosene-fuelled stove. She'd knit long garter stitch strips from yarn scraps and sew them into blankets. I think she was the one who taught me to knit. She was certainly the one who taught me how to skip rope.
Happy birthday, momse. We may not always have seen eye to eye, but we loved and understood each other. And I still miss you.
Title comes from this beautiful farewell song (youtube link). Post reposted from 2009 with Momse's age amended. I continue to miss her.