My winter mitts? A fairly quick, uncomplicated knit. I used a pattern I found in The Knitting Book and yarn given to me by my mother. I have tiny hands, so went down a few needle sizes and I also added thumbs. The yarn matches a cowl and a hat I made earlier, so I’m all set for winter now. Bring it on.

I am spending today swatching for a future project/design. I played around with charts in Excel earlier and now I’m trying to figure out which texture I like best. It is always fun trying to strike a balance between my personal aesthetics, an imagined level of difficulty, and the actual purpose of the pattern.

I had a quick Twitter exchange with a few people after I came up with a true lace chart (i.e. lace knitted on both sides). I loved the idea of the pattern, but when I started to work it up in 4ply I knew it did not work in such a relatively heavy yarn. Twitterati consensus was that true lace is scary. I don’t think this is necessarily true, but I know that this is what many people feel. Honestly, this project is not one for ‘scary’ lace so that chart was shelved alongside many other charts. Hopefully I will find the right project for it at some point.

Meanwhile I have come up with another chart – or, rather, four different versions of the same chart. I am busy swatching trying to figure out which version works best. I’m using some leftover Old Maiden Aunt merino/silk for the swatches. I need more of this yarn, I really do. It’s beautiful to work with on my new Addi bamboo needles.

Finally, the soundtrack for work: I rediscovered this album this morning. The light is pale and thin. Like you. Has it really been 19 years?

Guess which type of brain I have.

Ten days in Denmark. The longest I have been back since my big move some four years ago. Today I was standing in my local supermarket wondering why an elderly couple was speaking Danish. As it turned out, they were not – but right now my brain automatically assumes background noise must be in Danish and I have to makes a conscious decision in order to recognise the language as Scots English. Likewise, I’m searching for words: what’s English for parabolantenner or ‘Bare på beløbet, tak’? I know these words, of course, but I have to dig deep before they pop into my head.

Interestingly enough, I only have these problems with spoken language, not written. I’m sure there is a perfectly good (neurological) reason for this.

However, I refuse to believe there is a valid neurological explanation for the way the Danish language is being mangled by people who really ought to know better. Danish is being invaded by English – and it is not even correct English in many instances. I have never been a militant language purist (the way I acquire and use language prevents me from being too holier-than-thou) but I think I am becoming an old grumpy lady. WHY write “den perfect carwash du altid har drømt om” when the correct phrasing would be “den perfekte bilvask du altid har drømt om“. WHY WHY did my gran‘s woman’s weekly write about “en crunchy banankage” when Danish already has several words meaning “crunchy” AND most of the magazine’s readers do not understand English in the first place? WHY WHY WHY would a major national newspaper gleefully write “livet er one long bundy jump” in the middle of an interview with a Danish designer thus mangling BOTH Danish and English? I nearly cracked when I was sitting next to a bunch of Swedish golf-buddies on the plane back to Scotland who kept shouting “EXACT!” but I’m told that is a valid Swedish expression which admittedly feels a bit deflating after I’ve been foaming at the mouth since Monday night.

Last day of my holiday today. I shall celebrate with some knitting and some tidying. I finished reading David Mitchell’s latest novel last night but I need to mull over it before writing anything about it.

Anyway. Knitting.

I am completely smitten with the new Kim Hargreaves collection, Touching Elegance. It ticks a lot of my boxes: sumptuous colours, defined silhouettes, 1920s/1930s styling and copious amounts of warm fibres. I was torn between Eleanor, Ella, Nancy, Mae, Nellie, Isadora, Patsy and Delores – I told you I was smitten – and have sort of hedged my bets a bit (more on that later when I figure out if I’m right in doing what I’m doing). The collection feels a lot more grown up than my usual thing, but I think the colour palette has a lot to do with that. As you can tell from the photo, I have chosen a less than sombre colour – Rowan Baby Alpaca in Cherry Red, kittens.

Also in the photo: fabric. It’s a long story but I have been roped into doing a public sewing demo next week. Don’t ask. I’ll be making an Amy Butler Barcelona skirt complete with lining and a hidden zipper. I’m petrified as I have not done any sewing for about two decades and all my sewing terminology is in Danish. Sewers everywhere, weep for your art and craft. On the plus side, I got to choose the fabric myself and I cunningly chose a design which matches my autumn knitting project. It’ll be fine but I will be poring over sewing instructions and blogs the next few days.

Also on the agenda the next few days: a Joseph Beuys exhibition (I’m not huge fan of Fluxus, but I also have to step outside of my comfort zone now and then) and DK:KNIT, an exhibition on experimental knitting design hosted by the Danish Cultural Institute in Edinburgh (this means I’ll be in Edinburgh on Monday, by the way. Give me a shout if you want to meet up for coffee).

Assorted linkage: Other Half loves this poster but I just cannot get beyond how Freudian it is. Or is it just me? Save the Words! is a beautiful application although most of the words are surely inkhorn terms. And this Icelandic jumper spotted at the Reykjavik Pride Parade is just about the best thing ever.

• when you take a photo from a Ravelry user’s notebook and upload it to your blog without seeking permission.
• See also: cool (Antonym)

Usage example:

“Seeing my disembodied self on a foreign-language blog was really uncool,” said the knitter

Photo taken down with apology. Thank you.

Anyway, I have been listening to knitting podcasts instead. I listen to a lot of different ones – both current ones as well as a lot of old ones. I was listening to a relatively current one when I was jolted out of my morning sleepiness by the podcaster describing someone as being a bit “spazzy”. Now, I realise that British English and American English are two very different things. I also realise that whilst I find expressions such as “that’s spazzy” or “that’s gay” very offensive, these types of expressions are accepted among certain young people who do not mean to be derogatory or offensive. The question is: do I contact the podcaster and point out that I find her language offensive .. or should I just let it slide and get less serious about words and meanings? I’m reminded of Josh Rouse’s The White Trash Period of My Life in which he sings careful with words .. they are so meaningful. It is one of those songs I should never put on my iPod morning mix and yet I do.

My inbox delivered some delightful surprises this morning – lovely previews of the new Kim Hargreaves book, Misty, and the forthcoming Amy Butler yarn range – so even though I was stuck with melancholy songs and surprisingly derogatory knitting podcasts, I could enjoy my morning coffee and scone feeling a bit cheerful.

“It is a sign of a deeply disturbed civilization where Tree huggers and Whale huggers in their weirdness are acceptable… while no one embraces the last speakers of a language.” -Werner Herzog

Found here which looks at whether we should preserve languages and whether a world with monolithic language usage would be a bad thing? More on this later.

Mooncalf left an astute comment on my last entry wherein I had a mini-rant about Danish lifestyle blogs being smug and self-satisfied. She linked two blog entries, both of which reacts to the Martha Stewart-ness of some blogs. I really enjoyed reading the entries and I have taken some of their points to heart. I think it is important to remember that all blogs are edited in one way or another. We all have messy tables, bad days, sweaters that do not fit, unread books and frozen pizzas. I tend to shy away from confessional blogging (and I’m also notoriously private for someone who has blogged continuously for almost nine years), but I do attempt to create a fairly realistic picture of my life whilst leaving out things I would feel uncomfortable sharing.

So, bearing all this in mind, please ask me a question.

And, going back to the idea of language, notions of identity etc etc, I found this little tidbit in one of my commonplace books:

“As there is no selfhood without some other, a national canon — whether attached to land or language — is constituted in such a way that its identity has both intra- and intercultural aspects. In other words, it is mediated by the memory of the other and its development always involves at least two cultures. The court of Louis XIV, English Classicism, or the Weimar Klassik defined itself with reference to Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Thus, it is possible to argue that national canons reveal an interacting with other creeds. They are intercultural manifestations, conflictual as well as mutually complementary, configurations that are, in relation to each other, not only powerfully reciprocal but also strongly oppositional.” -Mihály Szegedy-Maszák

I think that pretty much reveals my stance on whether we should preserve* languages or not.

(* I’m not of a prescriptive bend, mind.)

Today Translations spokesman, Mick Thorburn said: “Over the last few months we’ve had clients asking us for Glaswegian translators.

(..)

“Usually, the role would involve translating documents but in this case its more likely to be assisting foreign visitors to the city whose ‘business English’ is not good enough to understand the local dialect.”

(..)

He added: “We’re not necessarily looking for people who are particularly skilled in linguistics, just candidates who can help out clients who may struggle with native Glaswegian.”

I remember arriving in Glasgow and not being able to understand most of what was being said around me. While getting some Glaswegian colleagues helped (although I have never found a use for the phrase “that fake bake is pure dead brilliant, hen”), I struggled until I twigged that Glaswegian is basically akin to my Danish uncles attempting to speak English. There is a certain flatness to Glaswegian intonation that is very, very similar to mid-Zealandic intonation and some words spoken with a broad Glaswegian accent sound more like their Danish counterpart than the actual standard English word: home becomes hame which sounds quite like a slurred mid-Zealandic hjem. For a girl who has tried to escape rural Denmark for most of her life, all this feels a bit like a cosmic joke.

Thanks to my friend Lise, I spent most of my lunch reading about the 16th best football team in the word ever. The most recent incarnation is through to next year’s World Cup which bodes well for the amount of (tense) knitting I’ll get done. Huzzah!

• 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.

Then I began University and one morning between classes I was catching up with my reading. That is when I encountered The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot and, although I normally try to avoid hyperbolic blanket statements, that poem effing changed my life. It was like language streaming straight in my veins and I felt drunk on poetry for the first, but not the last, time.

Let me confess: I have a special place in my heart (and brain) for High Modernism. Earlier I described High Modernism as

“that vast array of strange and deliberately disconcerting art forms which emerged in the Western part of the world around 1908-ish and which petered out towards the end of the 1930s. Shklovsky’s definition of остранение (ostranenie or ‘defamiliarisation’) describes my favourite art works so splendidly: they unsettle the readers/listeners/spectators by forcing them to acknowledge the artifice of art (and thereby making a clean break with the naturalist tradition of art).”

This is an intellectual sort of enjoyment: I enjoy the game of making meaning; I derive pleasure from understanding patterns emerging from seeming chaos. I really like poets like Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein for these reasons. I have to work to get at the ideas behind the poems. TS Eliot fits in with all this, of course, but I also derive a very raw emotional pleasure from his poetry.

For me, Eliot’s poetry is about understanding life. It is about finding your own way between one word and the next, between one moment and the next. It is about being intellectually curious, acknowledging how that is both a gift and a curse, and finding methods of dealing with this. It is about fragments and meta-narratives. It is about hope and loss of hope. It is about being human. It is tough, raw, almost unbearable and yet so .. beautiful.

My favourite Eliot poem is probably Ash Wednesday (from which the title is taken). An odd choice for an agnostic woman, perhaps, but it marks the transition from Eliot the High Modernist to Eliot the Religious Poet. I have always been drawn towards liminality.

Poetry matters because language matters.

Which is excatly why I find it so troubling that the Danish government calls their crackdown on Christiania (as well as the earlier eviction of Ungdomshuset) “a process of normalization“.