Between deadlines, flu and whatnot I have found time to start work on a new shawl pattern. It’s a really relaxing knit – one I can do late at night when my brain is too wired to sleep and too tired to focus – and I’m really pleased with it so far. Tonight I have been tweaking the charts and I had a really satisfying moment when I solved a particularly nagging row. I hate hate hate transitions that do not stack or flow into one another – unless I can see a clear reason why they do not stack, they just strike me as laziness on the behalf of the designer – and this one row just did not look right. The solution was right in front of me: moving decreases from the centre of the pattern repeat to the edges. Hooray!

My favourite bit on the interwebs this week? Reel Scotland speaking to John McKay who directed my favourite Sherlock Holmes-related BBC drama. No, not that one. Nor that other one. This one. The article is full of interesting takes on film-making, on working in TV, and on making things happen in Scotland. And then there is this great throw-away line that just made sense: “..this bit of Glasgow, our San Francisco.”

My other favourite internet bits this week? This fantastic collection of Soviet science-fiction magazine covers. This grey airship bag from Etsy. And you can learn the most interesting feminist lessons in very surprising places.

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.

Yes, I was aware of the response to The Gentle Art of Domesticity but I did not think this response particularly relevant to The Gentle Art of Knitting. I could write a long and boring paragraph about how I read books (I’m one of those girls who went to university and lost her intellectual innocence to literary theory) but suffice to say that I tend to focus on the book itself rather than any outrage surrounding its author.

And so I approached this new Jane Brocket book as I would any other knitting book: did I think it useful? did I find the patterns interesting? did it inspire me? did it teach me anything new? I hope I answered those questions in my review.

Some linkage:
+ Women of the Vortex. MARVELLOUS pictorial evidence of daring lady painters of a young 20th century. I find Vorticism endlessly exciting. I wish I could go to Tate Britain and shout about machines, speed and modernist epistemology. BLAST!
+ A Knitted Garden. This totally made my morning when I first saw it.
+ Modern day Hollywood has nothing on the stars of the Big Studios years. Clark Gable & the Scandal That Wasn’t is an excellent read.
+ Speaking of entertaining reads, this review of “Rushed to The Altar” from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books had me howling with laughter. The review is definitely not for the faint-hearted and it is NSFW, but it is also hillarious.
+ It is a good thing I did not have my own webspace back in 1996, because I would definitely have set up an early prototype of My Daguerreotype Boyfriend.
+ Neil Patrick Harris’ opening number at this year’s Tony Awards = possibly the best 6 minutes of 2011 so far?

I have finished no less than three projects this week, so there will be plenty more knitting content over the next few days, but I’m also trying to work out a response to China Mieville’s Embassytown which does not involve me muttering about Martian poetry. Cross your fingers hard.

I was listening to an old album the other day while I was knitting up these two swatches. Quite apart from reminding me about another time and place in my life, it also made me think about the place knitting has in my life.

On a very personal level, knitting is about mindfulness. It makes me slow down, it clears my head and it makes me focus on the moment. I have always been very good at thinking thirty steps ahead of myself, of overbooking my diary, and of trying to be too many things to too many people. Knitting has changed me in many ways, but I think this is the most important one.

Some people swear by knitting plain stockinette in the round, others by turning heels and planning toe decreases. I love knitting lace. My head is at its quietest when I follow lace charts – at their best, the charts are simple and elegant ways of conveying complex information – and I love learning intricate repeats of  yarnovers and decreases. And I love the amazing transformation known as blocking.

Blocking is simple: you soak your shawl in water, you pin it out to dry and somewhere along the line your knitting goes from being an ugly duckling to a beautiful swan. Look at the photo. I knitted two identical swatches and blocked one of them. Isn’t it amazing? Imagine if life could be controlled in the same manner: “ooh, life’s a bit lumpy and crumpled up today, so I’ll just soak it in lukewarm water for 15 minutes and apply a few pins..”

Today has been a day of making charts in Excel (there are plenty of great tutorials available online, so I’m not going to bother writing one up, sorry!) and of writing about knitting lace. It has made me reflect on the joy that I feel when I knit lace – and how I approach lace knitting.

I do not arm myself with blocking wires, lifelines, or special lace chart reading tools. I just use a pen to mark my position in a chart, I use one safety pin (to mark the centre stitch) and I use cheap stainless steel pins. Words are so interesting: to arm oneself .. as though I was about to wage war on my knitting or seeking to conquer a chart. No. Lace knitting is my personal time. It is self-indulgence (for, lo!, I rarely wear my shawls), it is downtime, and it is peace of mind.

Three quick non-lace links (and congratulations to non-knitters making it this far):
+ Pop Culture paper-cuts. How many do you recognise? And did you know that Silhouettes are named after Étienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister imposing harsh taxes after The Seven-Year War? I wonder what will be Gideon Osborne‘s legacy? Nothing as enduring nor as artful, I’m sure.
+ How to Knit A Giant Lego Brick Doorstop
+ Top Tips for Budding Lyricists – why you shouldn’t write what you know and why it is sometimes okay to make up your own language.