The Other Things In Life
First of all, a huge thank you to Fineskylark and Paula. Ms Fineskylark sent me these gorgeous oak buttons (made in her part of Canada) and Paula has given me the official (and very cute) Ravelympics 2010 pin starring Ravelry's mascot, Bob the Boston Terrier. Thank you, ladies.
I wish I could say that I knew exactly which cardigan calls for those oak buttons, but my knitting mojo has gone AWOL. I'm about to graft the toe of the first Monkey sock, but my Frankie Says .. pullover is languishing in my knitting bag. I love the pattern, I love the yarn but I'm beginning to have second thoughts regarding the shape of the pullover. I'm, well, "top-heavy", as the professionals say, and I'm unsure whether a cropped pullover in quite heavy silk/cotton will do my figure any favours. I'm beginning to eye Blithe from Rowan 47, but I'm not quite ready to change my project just yet. I might need to talk this over with my knitting group.
Moving on.
I was disappointed in humanity when I came across this MetaFilter post about a recently discovered mass grave in England discovering during work on the 2012 Olympics site. The grave contained over fifty beheaded Vikings, possibly killed during the St. Brice's Day massacre in 1002AD. My disappointment arose after reading several MeFi comments of the "Vikings, LOL!" variety. I know this may come as a surprise to people who generally know Vikings as bloodthirsty barbarians from films, comics or Christian monks' annals, but, hey, they were actual human beings. Actual human beings who were my ancestors and I fail to find the funny side in beheadings or mass-graves. Show some respect, please. The only good thing that came of the entire Viking thread on MeFi was a link to Star Wars re-written as a saga .. in Old Norse. Now that's hardcore.
Finally, I'm trying to decide whether to go see A Single Man or, ahem, Legion. I need to make my mind up quickly as I suspect neither will be shown in cinemas for much longer..
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.
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)
The Queen Susan Shawl
I was rummaging around various knitting sites for an unrelated reason, when I came across the story of the Queen Susan Shawl.
The Queen Susan Shawl is a collaborative project on the Heirloom Knitting forum on Ravelry. Several knitters had noted an old photo of a lace shawl in the Shetland Museum photo archives and together more than thirty knitters have recreated the pattern based solely upon the photo. The Queen Susan shawl pattern will be released early 2010 - and it will be free.
Meanwhile, the Shetland Museum has been very enthusiastic about the project and even has included the Ravelry group in their Call For Papers for a forthcoming knitting conference in the Shetlands.
I always get slightly misty-eyed whenever I come across stories like that. Am I going to knit the shawl? Probably not right away as the scale of the project is quite daunting, but someday I would like to try my hand at a proper heirloom-quality Shetland shawl.
Right now, though, I've realised that we are off to Denmark NEXT WEEK and David's sweater is still not done.
Twenty Years Ago Today
Twenty years ago today my mother woke me up early. She was crying. Last time she woke me up crying, Olof Palme had just been assassinated. This time, though, my mother's tears were not angry, horrified and sad tears. She was crying with joy. The Berlin Wall had fallen.
I went to school that day. My teachers cancelled all our scheduled classes and were bust talking amongst themselves. My German teacher - the great-grandson of Paul Gauguin, by the way - sat us down to watch news reports coming in from West Germany. I still recall another teacher crying in the school yard. She was part-German. Today I suspect her German family might have fled here from the East as they never visited any of their relatives until the early 1990s.
Today it is difficult to explain what life were like before the end of the Cold War. I lived in Denmark, a small country just north of both East and West Germany. Occasionally you'd hear stories about people escaping from East Germany across the southernmost Baltic Sea to southern Denmark. Occasionally you'd also hear about people travelling the opposite direction. Swedes were paranoid about Soviet submarines and Danes were paranoid about East German spies within Danish political ranks. I was just a child when it all changed but I could definitely tell something had changed. At school they stopped teaching us how to react in event of a nuclear war, for instance.
Twenty years ago today.
The Staffordshire Hoard
"This is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England… as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries. Absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells." - Leslie Webster, Former Keeper, Department of Prehistory and Europe, British Museum
The UK's largest haul of Anglo-Saxon treasure has been discovered buried beneath a field in Staffordshire by an amateur metal detector enthusiast. The Staffordshire Hoard comprises of more than 1,500 individual items and most objects appear to date around the 7th century. You can read the entire press statement here.
I am incredibly excited by this hoard. One of the items which really intrigues is a strip of gold bearing a Biblical inscription. I'm excited because we don't often see examples of handwriting from this age as most writing would have been done on (easily perishable) wax tablets. The Lindisfarne Gospels date from around the same period, of course, but seeing writing employed outside a manuscript page is just really, really fantastic - particularly as you are seeing a religious inscription on an arguably secular item.
You can see beautifully detailed photos of the hoard on Flickr and while the Staffordshire Hoard website is currently struggling to cope with the number of visitors, I encourage you to seek it out.
Music and Silence
Yesterday I picked up a friend from hospital and, whilst waiting, I began and finished Rose Tremain's Music and Silence. Full disclosure: while I would rather see Denmark become a republic than remain a monarchy, I do have a favourite Danish king, King Christian IV, and Tremain's novel is set in his court.
It is always interesting to see my heritage interpreted by foreigners. Recently I went to Largs on the west coast of Scotland and visited their Viking exhibition. I was unsure of whether to laugh or cry at the incompetent and sometimes plain wrong presentation. Tremain has a firmer idea of what she wants to do with the source material, thankfully. The book is well-researched and coherent. I was quite impressed by Tremain's use of personal names as I've often seen otherwise decent historical novel fail by using anachronistic names. I did wonder about inconsistent orthography ("ø" is rendered faithfully but "å" isn't) but it is a minor quibble.
So Music and Silence is a well-researched novel about the Danish King's court in 1629/1630. You get the full meltdown of the King's relationship with his infamous mistress/Salic wife, Kirsten Munk, and you are also privy to the disastrous economic situation in Denmark following years of warfare and overspending. The book is well-written literary fiction. You would think I would be all over this, wouldn't you? Sadly the book left me cold.
I wanted to spend more time with the King who actually had a larger-than-life personality. I wanted a more nuanced take on Kirsten Munk who becomes Evil Carnated in Tremain's version. I wanted to hear about the King's children (some of whom led incredibly colourful lives). I wanted to know about a country in transit from European superpower to European ruin. I wanted to read about a country where the monarch had continuous problems controlling his own noblemen. Tremain had so much interesting material available to her and I was stuck reading about two dull original characters and their insipid backgrounds. Moreover, I was left feeling that her literary-visual take on a Baroque royal court owed far more to Sally Potter's film adaptation of Orlando than anything else.
Anyway.
This week has been a real beast and I'm yet to send out any of the blog giveaways. I am very sorry. Bar more unforeseen disasters (you don't want to know), I hope to send things out by Saturday. And please cross your fingers that the few remaining days of this week will pass uneventfully.
Saturday Link Dump
I haven't done one of these in ages. Also: insomnia has struck.
- This is my new favourite cartoon. Strong words lurk within, beware.
- Robert Barclay Allardice - The Celebrated Pedestrian: "His most famous feat was the walking of 1,000 miles (1,600 km) in 1000 hours for 1000 guineas in 1809."
- Fancy Fast Food: "Yeah, it's still bad for you, but see how good it can look!" This one is particularly disturbing.
- How To Speak With A British Accent (youtube) is a series of educational videos teaching non-Brits how to perfect their British accent. Well, except that the videos are unintentionally hilarious. I've linked the "Unique Words" video but there are several other gems.
- My mum's local paper had a "best summer photo" competition. This is my absolute favourite entry. Nothing says "Danish summer" like a wheelie bin.
- Via John, the Armenians may be taking Eurovision a tad too seriously..
- The Beauty of Accidents. When a potentially ruined photograph turns out to be strangely beautiful and even better than what you had in mind. Something to keep in mind in these Photoshop days..
- Finally, it took a long time while for Casa Bookish inhabitants to notice but now we're all about Plants vs. Zombies. Pole-vaulting zombies! Dolphin zombies! Pea-shoots! It's maddeningly addictive.
And the Award For Best Knitwear Goes To..
First of all, it is time to announce the winners of my little blog giveaway. Thank you so much to everybody who left me a comment. I really enjoyed looking at everyone's favourites - some very familiar and some very unfamiliar projects among all your suggestions!
The skein of Old Maiden Aunt DK yarn has been won by .. Birgitte.
The Ishbel shawl in Kid Silk Haze has been won by .. Meg.
The three crocheted flower brooches have been won by .. Katherine, Laila and xtiand.
The vintage button earrings will adorn Anne.
And the vintage button selection has been won by Anna.
Congratulations to all the winners - I will be in contact with you by either Rav message (if I know you on Ravelry) or by email
Secondly, the illustration and the photo come from one of my secret vices: vintage knitting patterns. Most of my local second-hand shops stock patterns from the late 1970s until the late 1990s, which can be vaguely interesting on occasion, but I much prefer patterns circa 1930 to 1950. The patterns flatter the female figure, are elegant in a timeless manner, and have clever little details you don't get with much later patterns.
Last I visited Denmark I found a pattern book from around 1941 filled with knitting patterns. As it is a wartime publication, you only get a handful of photos but a healthy helping of beautiful illustrations.
Interestingly, the patterns draw inspiration from Scandinavian folklore - reindeer, stars (familiar to many from Selbuvotter), merry dancers and Faroese geometric patterns - and many of the patterns are knitted in very patriotic colours. A little girl is even styled to resemble the little princess Margrethe ( born just five days after Denmark was invaded in 1940). Wartime patriotism, ah.
Most of all I am intrigued by the way instructions are given. A pair of very intricate gloves with embroidery are described thusly: "Start knitting the cuff in the usual manner; 7 centimeters long; divide for hand and start thumb gusset; knit hand until it measures 7 centimeters; divide for fingers; finish each finger; reverse for other hand." The embroidery is described in less succinct terms, thankfully, but there is little doubt that Danish ladies of the early 1940s knew a thing or two about knitting. A little chapter is devoted how to darn socks too. I still remember my great-grandmother darning socks.
I picked up another vintage knitting pattern the other day, an old Patons pattern, which includes instructions on how to knit helmet liners for brave RAF pilots fighting in World War II. The cover features a Hawker Typhoon and one of those brave pilots looking very dashing.
Knitting is social history and I love it.
Magic Tricks and Music Halls
Yesterday I found a new favourite place in Glasgow. Walking into Tam Shepard's Trick Shop is like walking into another world, another era. The shop could have been straight out of the 1930s - except for the Obama masks and the nu-rave-esque wigs. It is a place where the owner will start a Victor Borge routine when he learns you are from Denmark, where a shop assistant will disappear through a hole in the floor, you can choose between twenty different kinds of fake moustaches, and tiny kids stare with much fascination at plastic spiders. Tam Shepard's Trick Shop is a family-run business and it has been going since the 1880s. You can see faded music hall posters bearing the names of ancestors and old photos of dishy dames performing magic tricks. "That's my great-grandma," the woman behind the counter informed me.
Glasgow has a very proud music hall tradition, actually, and tomorrow we are off to The Britannia Panopticon Music Hall for a steam punk craft show. The Panopticon is the oldest surviving music hall in Britain - the place where Stan Laurel of Laurel & Hardy made his stage debut, no less, and where a young Cary Grant performed while he was still Archie Leach - and it is a beautiful, almost derelict building. The Panopticon Trust has been trying to save the building for about a decade now but it is still fragile. For more information (and a bit of singing), this youtube clip from the AyeWrite literary festival features Judith Bowers, local historian and secretary of the Panopticon Trust, talking about the music hall. If you are local and you have never been, you can visit the building during the Glasgow Doors Open days in September.
Finally, I recently subscribed to My Vintage Vogue which is a tumblr feed featuring glamorous photo shoots from the Vogue archives. And I refuse to believe there has ever been a woman quite as beautiful as Cyd Charisse..