I had never painted any pottery before, but I actually had a really good time. I learned the hard way that it is difficult to paint straight lines on a curved surface but this little tea cup ended up just .. fine.

I’m trying not to be too hard on myself, actually – the lines are wonky and the design feels very token but I’m trying not to be too critical, m’kay? It is amazing how self-critical crafters can be.

The colours are exactly how I hoped they would turn out, at any rate. And funnily enough they are almost the exact colours of the dress I’m hoping to make this weekend.

A few links for you to peruse:

• Peter Oborne of the Daily Telegraph insists that the recent English riots should be seen in light of British society as a whole – and asserts that the moral decay of British society is as bad at the top as the bottom. Quite a brave column.
• Russell Brand(!) weighs in on the rioting with a punchy (and beautifully written) column. Well worth reading and not just for lines like “Then dopey ol’ Boris came cycling back into the London clutter with his spun gold hair and his spun shit logic as it became apparent that the holiday was over.” I do admire a well-turn sentence.
• Is the Glasgow accent being cockney-fied? I enjoyed watching the little film clip and remembered how I arrived here not understanding a word of the local dialect – and now I do.
• Sad Etsy Dogs. Exactly what it says on the tin. My favourite is this one which isn’t all that sad. My second favourite is definitely sad, though.
• It’s not all about humiliated small dogs. Knitting and crochet do good things too.. like making toys for the Battersea Dog & Cat Rescue centres. Aww.. though I do feel cheated by the photos that do not feature a single dog.

I sat reading 5000 Years of Textiles (edited by Jennifer Harris). The book is both a fabulous visual source-book as well as an engaging non-fiction read. I do try to have a balanced reading diet, though I do gravitate towards light reading in the summer.

The good weather even continued throughout Monday, so I was lucky enough to have an unexpected evening of outdoors knitting with a handful of friends. To our surprise, we had our photo taken by some semi-celebrities who did not even ask our permission. If knitting in public is suddenly declared the ‘new cool’ in a Scottish newspaper, I’m going to sue..

.. I still cannot watch the news. I was going to write a great deal about why I am so affected by the Norwegian terrorist attacks (yes, it was terrorism) – but I can’t. Maybe one day I will be able to write about being Scandinavian and watch everything good about being Scandinavian getting attacked by an inadequate soul. Today I am not that eloquent.

So, some random links instead!

• How to make some very cool buttons from shrink plastic. Finally a way I can utilise my partner’s artistic bend!
• GoodReads. I joined a few days ago and promptly added 796 books (686 read). Yes, I was in the library when everybody else was out partying and having fun during their formative years.
• Some very good yarn bombing/knitted graffiti. I always feel it’s wrong calling it grafitti, but that’s me being pedantic. Nor am I usually a fan of yarn bombing, but I like this.
• 19th C photos of Vaudeville and Burlesque performers. Since my partner fell in with the cabaret crowd here in central Scotland, he has found some rather interesting links.
• Russell Brand’s surprisingly excellent tribute to Amy Winehouse. “That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I’d only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound.”

I hope August is going to be an improvement on July. I have had enough of this month.

Recently I had conversations with other long-term bloggers (I’ve been at this for over a decade) about why we continue to blog. One remark stuck with me:

Because I love it. Many new bloggers think it is a quick and easy short-cut to fame and fortune. It is not. It is hard work. I do it, because I cannot NOT do it.

I have been thinking about blogging and my blog’s various incarnations. The posts I will never post but which I have written in my head so many times. Posts that would increase traffic, get linked and re-blogged, and maybe even get some attention from outside the blogosphere. Stories that will never be told because they are not mine to tell. Two go back six years. One goes back just a few weeks.

I am thinking of these blog posts as I watch big-scale news unfold here in the UK. People who told stories that were not only not theirs to tell, but also obtained illegally (allegedly, I hasten to add). I have a hard time believing that they told these stories because they loved writing or because they truthfully believed them important stories to tell.

Words are powerful – even in these increasingly visual times.

And I am sitting here on a Friday night and I think about my little, totally insignificant blog and I think about the written word and readership.

And.

I have been very good at walking away from my blogs when they became too unwieldy and too .. too widely read. I was always very proud of Bookish, my literary blog, but I was also relieved when I pulled the plug.

Fourth Edition has grown into something to be proud of as well. It chronicles my journey from being a stuffy academic to an odd-ball creative type. And I meet so many lovely people thanks to this blog. Sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed too. I continue to walk the tightrope: I am continuously torn between my desire to maintain my privacy and my need to write these blog entries.

Don’t think I have not thought about walking away from Fourth Edition (because I have) but I also know I would just start over again. Lather, rinse, repeat..

I guess there was a point to this entry but I lost it along the way. I just remember what I was taught and what I went on to teach: always look for the gaps, the absences, what is not being said.

This is worth keeping in mind. Not just for blogging but also for news coverage.

The amazing, AMAZING Tokyo Subway Quilt is being given away by Oh! Fransson as a Japan fundraising effort.

Crafters care.

Meanwhile, my thoughts go out to my friends in New Zealand. Most of my friends are North Islanders but I’m still rattled by the Christchurch earthquake. Friends of friends are still missing. I’m not a religious person, so I cannot pray, but I can at least sit here and hope for good tidings.

Finally, on a personal note, things are a bit rough at the moment for one reason or another. I’m trying to find joy in small things but even this exercise is becoming somewhat sluggish. Perhaps the long winter is getting to me. Perhaps I just need to make my peace with some relatively big chunks of my life. I don’t know. Solutions/answers to the usual address, please.

I love the public library service for what it did for me as a child and as a student and as an adult. I love it because its presence in a town or a city reminds us that there are things above profit, things that profit knows nothing about, things that have the power to baffle the greedy ghost of market fundamentalism, things that stand for civic decency and public respect for imagination and knowledge and the value of simple delight.

Philip Pullman reacting to UK library closures

“So sudden loss causes us to look backward – but it also forces us to look forward, to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us. We may ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives. Perhaps we question whether we are doing right by our children, or our community, and whether our priorities are in order. We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others.”
- Barack Obama, Tucson Memorial Speech, 2011.

1. Susan Boyle has covered Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over”. On Oprah.
2. Neil Finn and I are officially over.

Today was a bleak, rainy Friday, so my partner and I headed out to Mini-Sweden for some Scandi-style retail therapy (and quite successful we were too; I came away with supplies for a secret project of mine). We also helped ourselves to some pseudo-Scandinavian food and all was right with the world. I like Mini-Sweden. It’s clearly an expat-Scandi thing because I never used to be this enthused about heading there. Maybe it is just because I enjoy feeling smug about knowing what the product names mean..

Afterwards D and I swung by a nearby shopping centre to get a few Christmas presents sorted for our Danish family and friends. Whilst caught in retail hell, I decided to try on a few cardigans in preparation for future knitting projects. I’m that glad that I did – and I’m glad that I was yet to get the yarn for a certain crocheted shrug because the shape was really unflattering on me. I have an hourglass figure but cascading fronts + big collar = ‘sack of potatoes’ figure. D has a great eye for what I should wear (I’d hire him to be my personal stylist but he claims he doesn’t want the job) and he had me try on this top instead. Holy moly. I would never have thought I’d look anything but chunky and boxy in that sort of style.. but I looked sexy, stylish and seriously cool. That’s a first.

A few links for your perusal:
+ The first real teaser trailer for Attack of the Herbals. Watch out for the “German” priest – I know that guy!
+ Something nasty is happening in Malmo, Sweden. Sadly I had thought something like this would happen at some point but I had pegged Denmark as the spot. I’m also concerned that it has taken this long for the news to hit the headlines. Bad show, very bad show.
+ Don Paterson on Shakespeare’s sonnets. I’m not fully sold but I’m intrigued.
+ Grading the flags of the world. Hilarious stuff and also a bit educational.
+ The best of the web, fershure: The Ages of English. Super-fabulous look at the development of the English language. Interestingly I can sort-of understand the English spoken circa Viking Settlement. I also like the glimpses into Scots English.
+ Paulina Porizkova, 80s ‘supermodel’, on aging. Very much worth a read.

Then again I identify as a secular humanist. One of these days I need to make myself a “Humanist; Not a Dawkins Fan”, though. One of the Pope’s aides have pulled out of the UK visit following an interview wherein he criticises the UK for “a new and aggressive atheism”. The media have reacted strongly to this, of course, but I think I know which brand of atheism the aide is referring to and, honestly, it is a form of atheism that makes me uncomfortable too. I need to write more about this, but suffice to say that a) I’m puzzled by the Pope’s visit and b) I hope all my Catholic friends in Glasgow will have a memorable and good day.

If course there is one religious belief with which I do feel connected: Forn Sidr or Asatru, the belief in the old Norse gods. I grew up with the stories and while I do not believe, there is definitely a connection. I think it is about growing up in a landscape where you see remnants of the ancient past everywhere and seeing the forces of nature unfold before your eyes. Again, I need to write more about this.

And there is a knitting aspect, of course.

Last night I cast on for Idunn. I assumed this would be a commuter project: The February Beret by sockpixie. I made this hat in orange last year and it turned out to be the most flattering hat I have ever owned – well, apart from the rusty orange hue. As soon as I finished it last year, I  began thinking about those two precious balls of Scottish Tweed DK in “Apple Green” from my stash. Ever since Rowan discontinued Scottish Tweed due to supply issues, I have been acting all dragon-like what with the hoarding and jealous guarding.. but yarn is really meant to be knitted up and so here we are.

And Idunn was a Norse goddess associated with apples.

I don’t think it’ll be much of a commuter project because I’m halfway done. Just in time for the first autumnal winds and heavy rainfall. I love being a knitter.

PPS. I shall be in Copenhagen November 4 until November 8, so get in touch if you know of any knit night/knit event/yarn sale.