fourth edition - the blog formerly known as bookish

I Need Distractions

My great-grandmother's bedspread/blanket arrived today.

Every single square was knitted individually in moss-stitch and then sewn together before she picked up stitches, knitted an edge, cast off, and crocheted a decorative edge. (So much work. I can deal with the huge amounts of mustard yellow in the spread, in other words.) I wonder if I should drape it over our sofa.. We live in a rented flat, so some of the furniture is not exactly to our taste (particularly the pink-yellow chintz sofa).

Thank you for the comments on Becoming Less than a Magpie. After writing it, I went straight to Ravelry and started weeding out my queue. It has gone from 247 patterns queued to 77 projects queued. It feels very liberating. I know the new autumn/winter collections will be hitting the web soon, so I am prepared to see my queue get a bit longer, but I am keeping the following self-imposed rules in mind:

• Will it flatter my figure?
• Will it work with existing items in my wardrobe?
• Do I already have similar objects in my wardrobe?
• Will I get any use out of it?

In other words, I will assess concrete things like gauge and shape as well as abstract things like style and wearability. Also, I will no longer be queueing fifteen patterns when one well-chosen pattern suffices.

Style is quite abstract, isn't it? I am not fashionable (although for one brief month back in 1995 I was outrageously trendy) but I do think a lot about style. Being Danish I have grown up with a certain Nordic aesthetic - you might best know it from countless IKEA catalogues. Scandinavians like their simple lines, plenty of light and very little nonsense to their architecture/furniture/designs. A typical Danish knitting design would be something along the lines of Topstykke, Duet or Granite. Plain knitting with a little twist. On the other hand I have never been a very good Dane and I turned into an bit of an Anglophile when I was very young, cue the love of tweedy things with cables and fair-isle (or, in other words, everything Rowan). Add to that, an uncompromising love of Modernist art and design (and that pesky Scandinavian mid-century modern influence) and that is pretty much where "my style" is at.

See why my queue has shrunk so much? Yeah.

Now I'm off to wave a tiny Danish paper flag about. The Danish football team is playing their first World Cup match today and I'm slightly worried as they are meeting one of the top contenders, Holland. It is going to be tense and I still cannot knit.