.. one Halloween costume down, one to go.
Other Half is currently trying to consider whether or not to stab the ear with a palette knife or not.
Oh, decisions…
Posts tagged Art
Tomorrow my partner, David, and I are off to an arty little Halloween party. As I’m writing this, David is busy getting himself all Van Gogh‘ed up. Both ears are still intact, thankfully. I have chosen to go as Frida Kahlo, who is pictured to the left. Having a similar colouring as Ms Kahlo made it an obvious choice – plus I get to accessorise my outfit with my beautiful Laminaria shawl. I just need to find some statement ear rings and my outfit is complete.
But look at that photo. Isn’t it stunning? I keep meaning to write about what inspires me as a knitter (and as an artist – I splash paint on canvases occasionally). Art history is a huge source of inspiration as is vintage fashion plates and photography. I continue to be fascinated by how other people approach and use colour. This photo is a brilliant example: the red playing off the teal blue with small hints of pale yellow/gold(?) offering a bit of calmness. I can see those colours being translated into, say, some beautiful teal/red colourwork mittens with a tiny pale yellow motif around the wrist.
Speaking of colourwork, I started knitting the Selbu Modern beret the other night. I uncovered two colours of Sandnes Tove in my stash and cast on cheerfully. I completed eight rows of colourwork before admitting to myself that I did not like how it was working up: the grey main colour was overpowering the purple contrast colour. Time to rip out. I’m currently considering whether to use the purple yarn as the main colour and go grey for the contrast – or whether to dig deeper into the stash.
Wholly unrelated: if you want to chill out with a little flash game this weekend, may I suggest Small Worlds? It’s short and you have no enemies to kill – but it is extremely atmospheric and, dare I say it, haunting.
Have a lovely Saturday, everyone.
(Title taken from my favourite Frida Kahlo quote)
The Guardian is running a series of semi-humourous columns called This Column Will Change Your Life and I hit upon It’s Not Easy Always Being Right the other night. I don’t think I’m always right – I live in shades of grey – but I know that I often feel like I’m outsmarting people (mostly myself) which is a bastardised form of Always Being Right, of course.
Unfortunately this “outsmarting people” is not particularly useful. I am not outsmarting bankers in order to make hefty profits, for instance. My brain is far more useless than that: I’m always two steps ahead of whatever I am supposed to be doing. A typical example of a telephone conversation would be: “Yes, you have misspelled my name, but I would like to address the legal issues surrounding .. okay, it’s K. A. .. can we just look at section 7 befo .. yes, K.A. R…” and when I type I miss out words because my brain is always three or four sentences ahead of whatever I’m typing.
Now imagine how I read. I read very fast and can wolf down a book in a couple of hours. About ten years ago I decided that I needed to start poetry because you cannot wolf down poetry. You have to work at making meaning. You have to be patient with a quiet mind or the poem will not open up. I spent years working with poetry before I felt ready to go back to reading prose. And I still wolf down prose instead of savouring every little punctuation mark. I cannot remember characters’ names nor minor details, but I can tell you if I enjoyed the read or not in very fancy terms.
I am not a New Agey person but I do wish I could live more in the present and focus on what is Right Now. Instead I’m always two steps ahead and outsmarting myself while I’m at it.
A few links that have grabbed me over the last few days:
+ Madeleine Albright: Read My Pins. When costume jewellery went political.
+ The $3,000 Scarf – or why crafting isn’t necessarily a cheap hobby.
+ Cross-dressing in the 20th Century – a series of photos. Thanks, Alex.
+ The Ultimate Bauhaus Dog House – or how to produce a quintessential Ms Bookish link.
+ Take A Weird Break – some very odd headlines from a British women’s magazine. “Spirit Mum Sends Me Elastic Bands” sums it all up.
+ Lady Gaga – Bad Romance (youtube). I love her forthcoming single – it’s exquisitely poptastic in a super-cheesy Eurovision-goes-gay-bar-circa-1986 way. I could see Sweden offering this in a perfect Eurovision world. Other Half hates the song. Pffft.
An assortment of various links for your pleasure.
- Dicey knitting – for the ones among us who like to throw dice when we need to make a decision. “Start with the Ivory Cube — it will tell if you you knit, purl, slip, increase, decrease, or cable/twist. This is where you Impose Chaos“. Thanks, L.
- Golden silk from golden orb spiders: “A unique piece of golden yellow silk brocade cloth, woven from spiderwebs, is on display at the Museum of Natural History in New York. To harvest enough silk to make the cloth, more than a million female golden orb spiders were collected in Madagascar, “milked” for silk, and released back into the wild.” The links are not for the faint-hearted, but they are incredibly interesting. I say this as a arachnophobe.
- This has been mentioned a lot on various literary blogs, but it bears repeating: An Open Letter to the Federal Trade Comission. There is a difference between being a lit blogger receiving freebies which may/may not be reviewed and a corporate shrill. The FTC has apparently not noticed the difference.
- Most of my adult life I have been looking for the perfect Bauhaus teapot. I now know why it’ll never be mine.
- Glasgow Guerilla Gardening. What it says on the tin. Sometimes they include knitting.
- The house of my nightmares. And probably also of the assigned estate agent..
- The 56 Geeks. Which one are you? And yes, you will be one because you are reading a blog. Brownie points for guessing which one I am. (thanks, Emme)
- The continuing saga of Amazon, their Kindle and the concept of “Fail”.
- Hilary Mantel won this year’s Man Booker. I can’t even pretend to be mildly interested. Sorry.
- One of Dave’s online buddies have started a parenting blog. Normally the words “parenting blog” strikes fear into my heart, but when it’s called When Should They See Die Hard and the first post made my day: “The first stage is what I’ll call “The Minion Stage”. Essentially having a little tiny henchman who does as their told and will make Manhattans for you.”
Enjoy.
You take approximately 750g of ripe elderberries (rinsed and de-stalked, natch), 200g of granulated sugar, two table spoons of lemon juice, two diced cooking apples and about 2 pints of water. Stick ‘em in a pan and boil until you’ve squeezed every last drop of goodness from the elderberries. This should take about ten minutes.
(Remember to remove the pink foam that will form on top of the boiling goodness.)
Then strain your elderberry juice through a clean tea towel (it will stain your tea towel!), dice another three cooking apples and put them into the elderberry juice, boil until apples are cooked (and add sugar and lemon juice to taste – usually I don’t see the need, though).
Serve hot in a mug with a spoon to fish out those delicious apple bits. It’s toe-curlingly wonderful stuff.
Meanwhile, on the knitting front, I have been working on a pair of fair-isle fingerless gloves to match my autumnal hat. I’m two rows away from finishing one glove and I think I will leave it at that.
It is not that it is not pretty. It is not that it is not a quick knit (each glove takes less than two evenings worth of knitting time). It is not that I do not have enough yarn. I am just not feeling it, baby.
Granted, the fit is awkward (slouchy where I’d prefer snug) and I have issues with the pattern (such as increases not fitting with the colourwork). But I could deal with that – ripping out the excess fabric and adjusting the increases – if I knew I’d wear the finished gloves. But I’m pretty sure I won’t. The hunt is still on for autumnal gloves, then.
Finally, a few links:
- I want this bathroom.
- I want one of these hats (and generally want more people to wear hats!)
- Scientists draw squid using its fossilised ink. Amazingly cool.
- Scotland’s oldest robbers are, of course, local boys.
- While the UK condemns ring-wing groups, something is still rotten in the state of Denmark.
- Finally, if you are able to use BBC’s iPlayer, I recommend Peter Capaldi on Scottish portrait painting and the first episode of Tweed, a docu-soap about Harris Tweed. For someone who claims not to watch much TV, I have been watching quite a bit lately..
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.
After spending the afternoon drawing, laughing and singing at Dr Sketchy’s (brief nudity, beware), it was a bit of a downer heading back onto Glasgow’s streets to find that Rangers winning the football league equalled people heckling other people and a lot of drunken aggression. Sectarianism is such an ugly thing and never fails to scare me just a little bit.
It’s been a week of settling back into Glasgow, then. I have been a bit quiet – much preferring my book and my knitting projects to social interaction. Saturday we did go out to West Kilbride – which markets itself as Craft Town Scotland – to visit the Old Maiden Aunt Yarns workshop. Following my recent yarn adventures, I decided against buying any yarn but I did commission Lorna of Chookiebirdie to make me a customised handstitched needle case. Weakness, thy name is Karie Bookish.
Finally, our good friend Gabi Reith has been involved in a big, big art project on the East Coast. She has taken a derelict building, covered it in fabric and decorated it with a giant sketch. It’s very cool. See for yourself, if you don’t believe me.
We have found more clay pipes by the Forth and Clyde Canal – here is one of the nicest pipes, if not exactly the most intact..
Notice also the rather interesting shards of china in the background. We’ve identified one piece with the Willow Pattern but the rest remain elusive. Interestingly we’ve found tiny bits with lettering (be still my beating heart!) and other bits with what looks like fishing huts.
Swine flu has been confirmed around 12 miles from us. I’m expecting an outbreak of panic here which will involve people looting tissue paper, tinned soup, hand soap and cans of lager from our local supermarket. In other words, I’m not worried, although my mother might be once she realises how close I live to Monklands Hospital (i.e. not very close but in the same country). As a Dane I feel obliged to inform you that pork products are perfectly safe to eat. Mmmm, bacon.
Only one random link today: Vidders Talk Back to their Pop-Culture Muses.
“For decades, Americans sat in front of their televisions and watched — just watched — their favorite shows. (..) But one group of fans has interacted with their favorite television shows for more than three decades. Vidders, as they’re called, make unauthorized underground videos using clips from the shows. Each vid compiles dozens of clips from various episodes, all set to a song.”
To be perfectly honest, I’ve seen a handful of these fanmade vids and most of them are .. not very good. The formula goes something like this: one plaintative love song – say, Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love”. Then take the lyrics and pair with with your fandom of choice – so, when Leona bleats “Time starts to pass..” you insert pictures of Captain Kirk/the Doctor/Six looking at a watch. Lather, rinse, repeat .. But unsurprisingly there are some mindblowingly good vids out there. This is the best I’ve seen.
PS. Happy birthday to regular commentator and offline compadre, Darth Ken. I love you, man.
Glasgow does visual arts so very, very well and every year we get the added bonus of a four-day art fair. Guess what? It’s that time of year again.. Today we went to the Glasgow Art Fair and enjoyed ourselves tremendously.
Last time we went, we nearly ended up buying a Lucy Campbell painting (specifically one extremely similar to this one). We both liked its fairytale qualities and I felt strangely comforted by its Philip Pullman-ness. Today I’m glad we didn’t buy it. I think Campbell has her definite strengths but I think they lie within the realm of illustration rather than painting.
This time the Art Fair was visibly affected by the recession. Saturday afternoon was simply not that crowded and quite a few vendors confided that they were having a tough time shifting anything. Interestingly this year also saw galleries from Spain, Vietnam and the Czech Republic trying their luck. Diversifying or maybe the stands came cheaper this year? The Vietnamese stand was spectacularly crap, incidentally.
Ever the pop culture aficionado, Dave spotted Carl Moore‘s work immediately and was very, very taken with his Animals Who Want To Be Other Animals series as well as the Robot Dreams series. I’m not sure about the robots, but I loved the Animals series too.
Proving that I have way more taste than money, I headed straight to Jonathan Wolstenholme’s watercolours (the cheapest one was £2,900 – that’s a lot of sweaters!). The website does not do them justice, but try looking at The Descent of Books with its clever, humourous details or Murder in the Library which ticks all my boxes. Wolstenholme’s watercolours may not be cutting edge or setting the art world on fire, but, gosh, they’d look nice in my imaginary library.
And for any woolshop/yarn shop (however imaginary), what about a few David Blyth prints? We had a good natter with David M. of Peacocks Visual Arts (who represents David Blyth), which made a nice afternoon even better.
On days like these, I just love living here. I really do. Art and beauty nourish my soul.
It’s going to be a beautiful day so the bluebirds sing.
I have booked myself a short, but much-needed flight home to Denmark in May. I need to spend time with the Danish part of myself, I have decided. Going back is always odd because it invariably ends up being a long series of meet-ups with everybody I have ever known in Denmark. I cannot remember the last time I spent a few hours in Copenhagen just, you know, hanging out with myself. I am not complaining. It just feels strange after having spent fifteen years in Copenhagen and suddenly the way I engage with my city is transformed. I think this is something most expats experience.
Linkage, then:
+ When I read “Glasgow Artist Restores Lost Mural” on the BBC website, I knew exactly who and what they were talking about. Wooh!
+ Cover Versions: “Classic records lost in time and format, remerged as Pelican books.”
+ Speaking of which .. Pelican paperbacks. I used to own a lot of them.
+ Art-House Book Trailers. Just as vile as the name suggests.
+ CraftGawker. Look, be inspired, create.
+ This Is Not A Riot: An effective, non-violent response to riot police. (I miss going to demonstrations)
+ The Fall of the Spanish Hapsburgs, or why marrying your first cousin is a bad, bad idea. See also this pictorial guide to the Spanish Hapsburgs. Ouch.
+ As seen everywhere on the web: Uncomfortable plot summaries. To wit: “Groundhog Day: Misanthropic creep exploits space/time anomaly to stalk coworker.”
+ And as seen on John’s blog: “Over the weekend, sharp-eyed Cassini-watchers on unmannedspaceflight.com noticed a series of way-cool photos on the mission’s raw images website.” Mindblowingly cool photos.
I finished reading The Time-Traveller’s Wife. It was rather “girly”. I have also begun yet another knitting project: Geno in duck’s-egg-blue milk-cotton. It’s rather lovely and very summery.
