fourth edition

The Little Things In Life

2010-03-12T17:07:06Z

First, the obligatory “It is Spring!” photo. Of course I am convinced we will soon see a return to snowy gloom and doom, but I do enjoy being able to walk outside wearing less than five layers.

Secondly, a sock. My first pair were a bonafide success and so I think I need another pair to keep my toes warm at night (it’s more hygienic for one thing). I’m using The Yarn Yard Bonny which I bought almost two years ago. Yes, the colourway looked very, very different on the website, but at least there is very little pooling. It is not nowhere as nice to knit with as the Araucania Ranco I used for my Ravelympics project either. I actually tried to swap the Bonny yarn about three weeks ago but nobody cared.. and so it is now becoming a pair of Monkey socks.

And Larry is done! I was putting the final few touches to him on Knit Night Tuesday when we realised that Larry really likes dancing about to silly pop songs. You should see those thin legs swagger. More seriously, I can see a few things wrong with Larry but they are my mistakes (damn time constraints) and not pattern mistakes. It was a fun little project, but I’m not rushing to knit another sheep (besides, Larry would get jealous). Larry will leave Casa Bookish for good tomorrow and I wish him a pleasant new life.

Finally, take a look at Hermes’ collection at the Paris Fashion week. It’s enough to make my knees wobble with love. Cor.

Lost Boy? Lost Girl.

2010-03-11T15:02:44Z

Pop culture and I have an on-off relationship. I mostly attribute this to growing up in Nowheresville, Denmark, in a family obsessed by 1940s and 1950s American popular entertainment (think Frank Sinatra, Vincente Minnelli films and the Great American Songbook), so when I went to school and was surrounded by kids immersed in current music, I was woefully lost. It took me about three months to figure out what song the kids were singing in the playground and, as my family rarely went to see current films, most 1980s teen films completely passed me by. I’m reminded of my 1980s pop culture black hole as most of my peers are reminiscing about The Lost Boys and License to Drive in the wake of Corey Haim’s death. I finally saw The Lost Boys some six or seven years ago. It is undeniably an entertaining slice of comedic vampire horror, but I was obviously way too old to connect with it. So, in an odd way, Haim’s death does sadden me but my sadness is reserved for that young girl who failed so miserably at fitting in at school and not a shared piece of pop culture fading away reflecting our mortality etc.

But watch this space once people like Ewan McGregor (oh, Trainspotting, the film that defined my generation and demographic segment), Jarvis Cocker (playground singing? No, massive dance-floor singalong) or even Douglas Coupland (whose early novels spawned a mild obsession mid-1990s) start ’shuffleing off this mortall coile’. I’ll be right here bawling my eyes out and wondering what happened to that bright-eyed lit student girl with the funky charity shop clothes.

A few random links:

How to Grown Book-Worms: This is a delightful read. “There are some things I know about fostering book-love in kids. I bet there are some things you know too. Here are my book worm fostering things..” (via)
Trampoline Dog. Because we all need a trampoline-hopping dog in our lives. Well, I do.
If Wes Anderson had done Lord of the Rings… (but you know that Bill Murray would have played Gandalf)
What Is Modern Luxury? A great thought-provoking blog post from Sarai of Colette Patterns.

Finally, I have promised to mention that Lucky 7 Canteen on Glasgow’s Bath Street is super-keen to host knitting groups. They’ll keep lighting up and be very happy to serve delicious food/drinks to discerning knitters. Ask for Mel if your knitting group needs a new hang-out.

Books 2010: Ishiguro, Larsson

2010-03-08T17:15:22Z

As I was reading Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (or Män som hatar kvinnor, Men Who Hate Women, a much preferable title which I shall use forthwith), I kept thinking about my previous read, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. What was it about Ishiguro’s novel which singled it out as an automatic qualifier for the “Worst Read of 2010″ post I will be writing early next year? What made it particularly awful?

Only a handful of books make it to my all-time God-Awful Reads list.

Jonathan Myerson’s Noise is one: wildly inconsistent pacing, one plot dropped in favour for another as Myerson seemingly got bored with his original idea (or found himself incapable of writing the novel he set out to do) and a constant sneering, smug sense of contempt running throughout the book (the only consistent thing about it). Julian Barnes’ England, England is another. Barnes had two great ideas (England as a theme-park and a Baudrillardian take on said theme-park) but could not get them to work in the context of a novel. A cautionary tale that sometimes you need to write an essay rather than try to work your ideas out in fiction. And then dear Ian McEwan with his Booker-winning Amsterdam, a book so contrived, self-indulgent and ill-executed that it has coloured my reading of everything else McEwan has written.

I think what bothers me about Never Let Me Go was the pointlessness of it. I cannot even pretend to loathe it as there is nothing there to loathe. I cannot point to any smug, self-inflated sense of importance (Myerson’s Noise), any over-ambitious intellectualism running rampant (Barnes’ England, England), nor any toe-curlingly bad writing and plotting (McEwan’s Amsterdam). Ishiguro’s book is just .. there. It doesn’t challenge, doesn’t engage, doesn’t take a stand and doesn’t make you think. I’m bothered by this (which could be argued is an achievement, of course).

By contrast I finished reading Larsson’s novel this morning having raced through it over the course of the weekend. Män som hatar kvinnor is not my cup of tea. I am a squeamish reader who does not enjoy reading page after page filled with gory details or graphic sexual encounters. I also had real issues with the main characters (the main investigator, Mikael Blomkvist, was an author surrogate; Lisbeth Salander, Blomkvist’s hacker sidekick, was a pile of clichés, or, as Joan Smith points out in her excellent review, ‘a revenge fantasy come to life.’). Having said that, the book made me care. I cared about finding old photographs and piecing together what happened one afternoon in 1966. The plot was convincing (if too gory for me) and unpredictable. Larsson’s real strength, to me, was his description of milieus: both the remote Hedestad community and the smart and educated Stockholm media intelligentsia were drawn with a strong, decisive hand. I do not think I shall be seeking out the two other books in Larsson’s trilogy – I’m too squeamish and not much of a crime-writing connoisseur – but if you like your crime novels smart, well-written and compelling, I’d recommend Män som hatar kvinnor in a heartbeat.

Next: I need to read a book written by a women, I think. Mantel & Wolf Hall, here I come.

Knitting & Reading

2010-03-07T20:14:02Z

Meet Larry the Leicester.

I am knitting Larry out of British Sheep Breeds DK in Bluefaced Leicester cream and brown. The pattern is Janice Anderson’s free sheep pattern (pdf). I made a slight mess of picking up stitches around Larry’s face (the decreases stand out more than I’d like), but I hope it’ll even out once I stuff the toy. I’m knitting Larry on request, but I’m actually enjoying the process way more than I thought I would.

I’m really, really loving the BSB wool: it is a heady combination of the rustic wools I love so dearly (smells faintly of sheep, is unprocessed, comes in natural colours only) and the tempting butter-soft merinos I keep going back to (so very soft, feels great as you’re working with it, next-to-skin smooth). I had no idea it would be so fabulous, although my friend LH has been in raptures over it for as long as I have known her. I really have to knit a jumper or cardigan out of it one of these days. Srsly.

In very related news, my knitting bag is safe. Don’t ask.

I finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go on Friday and I was very disappointed. The book has a meaty subject matter and Ishiguro has the necessary writing chops, but instead of an “extraordinary“, “enthralling” and “masterly” book I was left reading a rather tedious, flawed novel. I get that Ishiguro writes about people unable to live full lives, people who are somehow lost (even to themselves) and people who are out of step with time. I get that he “writes like someone impersonating a realist” with resulting defamilarization etc. Still, the novel has an extraordinarily clumsy dénouement, the plot has numerous gaping holes and the writing felt lazy as though Ishiguro was painting by numbers. Never Let Me Go just did not add up as a satisfactory read and I am left wondering if the glowing reviews (and subsequent prize-nominations etc) were the result of Ishiguro’s reputation as an important British novelist or if I am losing my grip on what a good literary novel reads like.

Next: I have exchanged my book vouchers for Toibin’s Brooklyn and Mantel’s Wolf Hall. I even got Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo thrown in as a special offer, although I rather regret not getting it in Swedish (but then David would be disadvantaged).

A Thoughtful Present

2010-03-03T11:54:30Z

People’s reaction to my sock knitting has been very amusing.

One afternoon I was meeting up with a couple of friends and we were merrily knitting along when a woman came up and said very slowly: “Oh. You are. All. Knitting. Socks.” We weren’t, actually, but I appreciated the stunned tone to the woman’s voice.

And how did my Other Half react? He went out and got me a wooden shoe last because, and I quote, “you might want to use it for showcasing your socks on Ravelry photos.” I already knew he was a keeper, but it’s always pleasant to have this confirmed.

While I am not convinced the last will work for showcasing any socks, I do think it is exceptionally pretty in that ‘early-20th C industrial item’ way when mass-produced items were still being made in non-industrial materials such as wood, when you could still detect the workman’s hand in the final product.

I do also adore the tiny details: the little plaque bearing the manufacturer’s name, the stamp, the hinges and the elegant handle.

Ah, if this won’t get me sock-knitting, I am not sure what will. I do have a pair of very plain socks on the go and I’m actually looking forward to a no-feet-involved photo shoot now.

Still no word on the missing project bag. I have a mind to go rummage through my workplace’s storage facility today (and maybe buy a few books whilst I am in City Centre – those birthday vouchers are burning a hole in my pocket!). I find some comfort in the fact that both David and my mother think I might just have misplaced it. They know me too well.

Frankie Says .. Gone.

2010-03-02T20:58:43Z

This morning I packed my bag for work knowing that I’d be heading to knitting group after work. I zipped up my Frankie Says jumper on its KnitPro needles, threw in the pattern and was too lazy to fish out my sock needles. Now, my workplace is the sort of place where you can waltz in with a a project bag and no one lifts an eye brow, so I did just waltz in with my project bag, left it in a secure place and got on with work. Hours later I was leaving for knitting group, dipped in to fish out my project bag and it was .. gone. I spent thirty minutes looking into every little nook and cranny wondering if I had been absent-minded enough to leave it elsewhere. No, it was definitely gone.

I started to second-guess myself. Maybe I had forgotten the bag at home, maybe I had just imagined taking the bag with me to work and maybe it was still in Casa Bookish. I called David who looked All The Usual Places but couldn’t see anything. Right, I thought, I’ll take a detour home, pick up the project bag from its ingenious hiding place and then I will go to knitting group because, obviously, David would not have spotted said project bag even if it were sitting on top of the kitchen counter. I got home, started looking and, no, the knitting bag is definitely gone gone gone.

I am surprisingly upset about this loss. By “upset” I mean “holy crumpet, I’m going to burst into tears any second now and sob hysterically for thirty minutes unless something really uplifting happens in the next fifteen seconds”. We are talking half-a-front of a jumper, some Rowan Summer Tweed, my precious KnitPros and the fact that some **** thought it okay to avail him/herself of my private property.

I mean, who the hell steals a half-made jumper?! Oh lowlife, may your tension become wonky, may you lose stitches and may you develop a sudden allergy to all things woolly.

(of course if the project bag suddenly reappears next time I come into work, we will pretend this little interlude never happened)

Still Winter

2010-03-01T23:08:32Z

This has been the coldest winter in Scotland since the early 1960s. So I have not just been imagining things nor have I become obsessed by that most British of things: the weather. It has been bloody cold and, despite today’s sunshine, it continues to be cold. I am so, so ready for spring to arrive. Failing that, I wouldn’t mind spending a week holed up somewhere like this place with its “underfloor heating (..) boosted by a woodburner with logs from the garden (..) passive ventilation and thick insulation whist inside there is a drying room with an extra radiator to get those outdoor clothes dry after bad weather.” To me, that sounds like heaven.

But I am in Glasgow and I am wearing my sleeping bag like it’s the new black.

Sunnudagr

2010-02-28T16:19:55Z

Life itself has caught up with me, so I am running behind on important things such as answering emails, sorting paperwork and, well, doing the dishes. This weekend I have allowed myself some time off and will be cooped up in bed with books, hot tea and a warm duvet. I have finally accepted this is a necessity, not a luxury, if I am to remain relatively sane, capable and congenial. It only took me some thirty years or so.

I finished reading China Miéville’s The City & the City the other night, though. I had previously tried getting through Adam Roberts’ Swiftly (which felt like a disastrous date set up by an online dating agency based upon our preferences and demographics, but the spark wasn’t there and we disliked each other from the get-go) and Mark Slouka’s The Visible World (which I’m pondering giving a second go), so when I flew through Miéville’s novel, I was relieved. I’d recommend it – particularly if you like smart speculative fiction or want a detective novel with an added flourish – although it was a bit too plot-driven for my taste. Also, I liked Miéville’s light writerly touches such as naming the border area between the two cities “Copula Hall” (grammar nerd alert).

I’m now awaiting the paperback releases of Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and, of course, Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood. What books are you looking forward to reading?

Knitting-wise, I have made some headway on my summer top (now forever known as “Frankie Says..” and I’m showing my age) and I have cast on for a second pair of socks(!) seeing as my first pair are lovely, warm and perfect for snuggling up at night (again, showing my age).

And now it is time to do said snuggling under the covers with a book. Have a lovely Sunday.

Now We’re Getting Somewhere

2010-02-25T18:56:25Z

I finished my Ravelympics project on Monday night, but had to wait until Wednesday morning to photograph the result. I’m rather happy with my first pair of socks: they are pretty, the pattern was fun to knit and the finished object has already been used as bed socks (it gets cold in old Victorian tenements). I am not sure I will ever be a confirmed sock knitter, but I will admit that socks do make for a nice portable project. And that having a pile of handknitted socks will be very useful for someone who is always cold. So there is that.

I began my next project on Tuesday night – my Summer Tweed jumper from Rowan 47 – and the weather gods turned against me immediately. We have had snow the past couple of days. I am so tempted to cast on for a big, woolly jumper but I know I will cherish the Summer Tweed jumper in the months to come. Sometimes I am being too pragmatic for my own good.

Some random links from my “blogging” bookmark file:

+ Very, very, very pretty dustjackets for Jules Verne books. I doubt they will be put into production due to costs, but they are very charming and, dare I say it, toy with liminal aspects of paratextuality (that’s my big, pretentious phrase of the week, then).

+ I met Ms Dirty Martini late last year here in Glasgow. She was affable, lovely and cheerful. I had no idea she was collaborating with Karl Lagerfeld (NSFW link). Six degrees of separation, my my.

+ Kathryn Grayson has passed away. She starred in some of my favourite Hollywood musicals – Anchors Aweigh and Show Boat. Here’s a YouTube video of her with Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawson. Sniffle.

+ “Nobody Knows What the (BEEP) They Are Doing” – or how clever people feel like imposters and wonder why they are doing well. I wish I had seen this ages ago when I was a graduate student. The piece is admittedly a bit pop psychology-ish, but I found it an interesting read.

Bricking It

2010-02-23T20:15:33Z

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.