Using site-specific materials I have created a piece asking how we understand ourselves, how we become who we are, and how big a part gender & geography play.

I was inspired to make this piece by my own journey as a knitter, as a woman, and as an immigrant. I am myself but I am also previous generations of ordinary women crafters. My mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother and my great-great-grandmother are all represented by this piece.

My "momse" - my great-grandmother Lilly.

It was important to me that I only used yarn I already owned and which was tied to specific geographical areas. I used yarn from a farm just a few miles from where my great-great-grandmother lived. I used yarn from the Faroe Islands because my paternal grandmother is Faroese. I used yarn spun locally to Glasgow because I live here now.

I used undyed Aberdeenshire yarn for the hand. I have family living in Aberdeenshire now and I wanted to include them in the piece.

The hand is very significant to me – and my partner helped me construct the hand, so he is included in this piece too – as it is the giver and holder of identity. Not only does it hold all the strands together but the strands also spring from the hand. As a crafter I make things with my hands; my hands turn ideas in my head into reality. People much cleverer than I would be able to tell you about the notion of creation. The hand holds that concept for me.

As you can see, photos are included. I have found photos of all five generations.

As I was looking through the photo albums I was struck by how gender-segregated my family seemed. The women were all pictured holding babies or wearing nice dresses or cooking. The men were all pictured sitting at tables drinking beers or playing football or standing next to cars. I rarely found pictures of women and men together – except wedding photos or pictures of couples dancing.

I found several photos of both women and men wearing knitwear. I could only find two photos of anyone knitting. One of them was of me.

Finally, the title. I chose Homebound because while it means two mutually exclusive things (travelling//constriction) my project suggests there is an additional meaning lurking within the word, a meaning linked to the notion of creating. Home-bound – to bind or to tie or to make within the home.

I am really excited about this piece and I want to thank the people behind Loop: Garterstitch100 for giving me the opportunity to be a part of their amazing event. It has been an incredible journey for everyone concerned – me included.

Late night stitching effort at Glasgow's Tramway arts centre in preparation for Loop: International Women's Day Centenary.

I’m so excited about tomorrow! The Tramway was heaving with activity today: stitching, story-telling, music , and beautiful people creating beautiful things.

I spent most of Friday at the Tramway stitching together blanket squares. It was a hugely inspirational day.

One old lady was busy stitching together crochet squares but found time to sing us old Glasgow songs from her childhood – songs about the old Govan cinema and “oor baldy heided maister”. Women from a choir sang us Matt McGinn songs. Women from a local immigrant group came by to watch us stitch and some ended up wanting to join in despite initial shyness. Later a cellist started playing Bach.

Generations of women showed up – grandmothers with their grandchildren; mothers with their children. Many different nationalities were there. Many different parts of Scotland were represented. Even a few brave men showed up to stitch – my partner was one of them and he proved very adept with a needle and thread! I was rather proud..

However, help is still needed.

You do not have to be greatly skilled with a needle of thread. You do not even have to know how to thread a needle as plenty of of volunteers will be on hand to show you the ropes.

If you can spare thirty minutes of your day (or more!), please come down to the Tramway tomorrow between 10am and 11pm.

You won’t regret it. You will meet some truly inspirational people with wonderful stories to tell, you’ll be surrounded by beautiful art, and your help will be hugely appreciated.

I will continue to be busy these next few days, but thankfully I have a few blog posts in hand so stay tuned..

I will write more about my actual piece and take plenty of photos once the exhibition opens, but right now I’m just rather happy to have finished making it. Today has been a ten-hour odyssey of adding-editing-adding-editing and some more editing (I’m a big fan of less is more).

Leisure knitting, sewing, and blogging are all on the agenda for the next few days. I have signed up for a quilting course alongside some familiar faces which should be fun (although the quilting tutor might not agree after being subjected to us!). I have been practising the lace pattern for Fancy and I think I have cracked the secret code. I also have a halfway-done muslin for my Simplicity 2501 top which I am itching to finish..

.. maybe I shall start by having a quiet night off from making things.

Along the way I passed one of my favourite pieces of street art. Seeing this little happy seal never fails to cheer me up. Look at his wibble face!

Usually any graffiti or street art gets removed rather swiftly, but this little fellow has graced the side of the bridge for as long as I can remember. Maybe he cheers up the park wardens too?

Leaving the footpath running through the arboretum, I entered the actual Botanical Gardens. Snowdrops, croci and this almost-in-bloom tree. The sun continued to shine. I saw students curling up on benches trying to focus on their books (and failing miserably).

I honestly felt tempted to buy myself some coffee and a croissant, and join the students on the benches but I’ve been down this road before and know the Sore Throat and Blocked Nose consequences far too well.

Besides, I had errands to run like a proper grown-up. Well, if you saw my errands you’d refuse to believe I’m a grown-up but I’ll save that for a later post..

Needless to say, I was also cheered by my lovely sunshine-yellow beret that I am wearing a lot at the moment.  My beret matches the yellow crocus flowers, I discovered, which pleases me no end.

Then I came home to find my postie had left a parcel for me. I had ordered some African wax print cotton off eBay and it arrived today! Hooray!

My fabric is lovely and I had a very, very pleasant transaction with the eBay seller (who I recommend wholeheartedly – how often can you say that about eBay sellers?). The fabric is earmarked for the Crepe dress which I have a notion to make many, many times. I just need to find fabric for the sash (maybe do the sash out of the same fabric? It is so busy it doesn’t need to be broken up by a solid colour) and, of course, find the time..

.. because right now I’m really, really busy trying to make my piece for the Tramway exhibition work. Right now I have a bucket wallpaper paste and a bag of old newspapers lurking in my bathroom. No prizes for guessing what we’ve been up to tonight.

Collograph by Preben Andersen

Christmas came early this year. I just received this beautiful collographic print in the post. The sender? My artist uncle, Preben Andersen.The photo does not pay it justice as you don’t get the wonderful play between print and paper so evident in real life.

I grew up in a working-class family in rural Denmark, but ours was a weird family. Everybody seemed to be creative one way or another. Some of my uncles set up their own ‘beat combo’ in the mid-1960s which led to much heartache among the local teenage girls. Others became more interested in visual arts and crafts: murals, collages, sculpture, pottery.. Of course my family still obsessed over football results and popular music, but there was a definite and pervasive sense of self-expression and creative exploration which I recognise in myself.

One of my uncles painting in a field late 1950s/early 1960s.

I grew up with paintings on the wall and frequent visits to galleries exhibiting works by members of my family. I inherited a big pile of art history books from my great-grandmother’s brother (who had been a farm labourer as well as a painter). I recall one summer when I spent days in my great-grandmother’s backyard trying to use a hammer and chisel so I could carve out a sculpture from a cheap piece of concete.

I never knew my upbringing to be different from everybody else – that is, until I started school and other kids did not make their own Christmas decorations, their mums did not knit them jumpers in mad colours, and their parents much preferred reproductions of famous paintings (Monet’s water lilies, in particular) to no-name oil paintings by weird uncles. It was a rude awakening but thankfully I did not reject my unusual upbringing. I just .. well, I’m still a crafty, creative, slightly odd person, am I not?

One of my paintings - circa 2002?

I paint too.

Well, I used to paint. I have sold a couple of paintings over the years, never made enough decent paintings to stage a real exhibition and currently I live in a space which does not lend itself to splashing acrylic paint around. I miss it, though I know I am not particularly gifted; I just love colour – one of my first art loves was Wassily Kandinsky unsurprisingly. I am also shacked up with an art school boy who is a creative, slightly oddball and colour-obsessed man. They always say you end up marrying your father – I did not have a father but I had a huge number of creative, slightly oddball, and colour-obsessed uncles. Draw your own conclusions.

Finally, just two quick links to two of my favourite artists/paintings. I grew up with figurative art but I fell in love with abstract art very early on in my life.

• Joan Eardley. Her Two Children is at Glasgow Kelvingrove Art Gallery and it is a punch to the gut every time I see it.
• Kasimir Malevich’s Suprematist paintings.

The tebirkes (teh-beer-kes) is on the left whilst the raspberry-jam filled spanduer (i.e. traditional Danish pastry) is on the right. Not pictured: the two other tebirkes I had. Hey, I don't get to eat any on a regular basis..

In Copenhagen, the Nørrebro neighbourhood is my favourite. It is bohemian, multicultural and vibrant. The streets are filled with small ‘ethnic’ eateries catering for small immigrant groups and niche culinary interests. My taste buds really came off age when I lived there. Today we went to Edinburgh and visited Jo Jo’s Danish Bakery & Cafe. As I sat there munching my tebirkes (think a croissant filled with a marzipan/butter concoction and topped with poppy seeds), it struck me: now I’m the ethnic minority with niche culinary interests.

If you are in Edinburgh or thereabouts, I thoroughly recommend Jo Jo’s place. Jo’s got the recipes just right and she’s a lovely person too.

Alasdair Gray: the real reason why we went to Edinburgh.

And then that big exhibition on Alasdair Gray and his images for his books: Gray Stuff was good stuff.

I was particular taken with the process shown in-between the works: the process of taking complete control over every little aspect of his Book.

Gray’s need to take control over the visual impact shows up early (with Lanark, of course) but he gets more and more confident about his level of control as each book is published. I was sadly sad that the exhibition was not arranged strictly chronological (and I would have loved to have known how much say Gray had), but I was fascinated.

I particularly liked the collages making up the frontispieces in Lanark with marginalia written in Gray’s distinct handwriting pointing out how the images should fit on the page. And, oh, the notes written about the colour scheme of The Book of Prefaces (or The Anthology of Prefaces – the mystery of its real title has not been solved nor has the ‘is it/isn’t it’ mystery about the comma in 1982 Janine.. forgive me, I have been geeking out all day)!!

How I wish I had had access to some of this material back when I was an aspiring academic. Oh, the joy! the rapture!

Work by Andy Goldsworthy and log boats

Just along the street from the Alasdair Gray exhibition, the National Museum of Scotland. Neither of us had ever been, cough, and we arrived too late to see more than the first two floors (we only had three hours and we like to take our time).

The basement was particularly interesting: the pre-history and early settlements in Scotland. I’m a sucker for anything relating to the Picts.

Whilst in the basement I thought fondly of Erika and Lori who both recently referenced Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy is a contemporary British artist who makes .. some call it ‘land art’ because his pieces tend to be site-specific and employs exclusive natural materials .. I think of his art as being peculiarly ritualistic: fire, circles, traces and marks. The National Museum has commissioned him to create installations playing with and off archaeological finds and instead of detracting from the objects, I think his works added to them. It was a pleasant surprise.

Next time we are through, we’ll work our way through the second and the third floors. It’s a labyrinthine museum and that is awfully appealing in its own right.

Tomorrow: another trip to Edinburgh (it’s work-related) and Friday: another trip to Edinburgh (it’s flight-related). Today was all about indulgence.

Alasdair Gray is a Glaswegian writer and artist. I once spent a lot of time looking at how he imagines and uses the Book as a material object. Somewhere in this flat I have a opus magnum which details Gray’s use of paratextual elements in constructing and assembling his books (In case you care, his The Book of Prefaces really pushes these ideas to the very edge. I wouldn’t call it an interesting read; it’s a maddening exercise in finding a text. It’s fun.)

In short: I like Alasdair Gray a great deal. In a strange and roundabout way, Gray’s work in art and fiction was one of the reasons I moved to Glasgow and probably also one of the reasons why I connected with Glasgow so quickly. When you spend a significant amount of time living with your head inside books that write Glasgow, Glasgow herself becomes familiar.

I was watching BBC’s The Culture show tonight. Alex Kapranos was reading a passage from Gray’s Lanark whilst sitting in Óran Mór. The inside of my head was splattered across the television screen. To clarify: the frontman whose band’s first album was the soundtrack to my life circa 2003-2005; the passage the very one you can find in the sidebar on this website; the novel which spawned a thousand and one things; and my local pub which just so happens to be decorated by Gray himself.

I learned that Alasdair Gray is working on a giant mural for my local underground station, Hillhead. And there is an exhibition in Edinburgh (there are two exhibitions, actually, but I’m mostly interested in the first one).

Life is very odd and very good and very bitter-sweet and very perfect sometimes. I am amazed at where my life has taken me.

• Sketch to Screen – The Art of Hollywood Costume Design
• A knitted calendar - you rip out the days as they pass. Oddly poetic.
• I’m not a huge fan of television as a rule, but I love how this TV set is displayed.
• Historic Crafts currently looking at spinning, weaving and dyeing.
• The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.
• Ask A Real Musician: Five Metal Singers. A classically trained singer listens to five very distinct metal singers. A really interesting read.
• Is England the most overcrowded country in Europe? How to use statistics in a proper way.
• Heja Sverige - a really interesting editorial from a Swedish newspaper (warning: it’s in Swedish and deals with Scandinavian politics!)
• “No, You Can’t Pick My Brain?” – I found this via my mate Ras who works as pro photographer in Seattle and who is fed up with a certain kind of people asking for a certain kind of advice. I can really relate to both Ras and the brain-picked article writer. And I now identify as a popcorn machine. Pop. Pop.

Self-Stitched September round-up: the Haematite scarf/shawl worn yesterday. My Millbrook cardigan was worn today. It’s rather warm in Glasgow at the moment which makes SSS extra interesting..

PS We went to the Joseph Beuys exhibition today. I didn’t like it much – I thought it was simultaneously too masculine and too infantile and too tied to Beuys’ own myth-making. We then went upstairs to Aspects of Scottish Art 1860-1910 and whilst some of the art was too chocolate-box for me, I enjoyed it more than I did Beuys. You can try to lead this girl to Fluxus, but she does like her early 20th C art. Sigh.