Swings & Roundabouts
Maybe it is the festive season, maybe it is the constant news coverage of the climate conference, but I am homesick. I have lived in Glasgow well over three years now and I have settled reasonably well, but even so this is Not Quite Home.
I miss my Danish friends. I miss meeting up with them for coffee and croissant. I miss the easy chatter which comes with fifteen years (and then some) of friendship. I miss getting on my bike and making my way home together with thousands of other cyclists. I miss the recycling system, my favourite cinema and buying proper pastries. I miss the cobbled streets, the public fountains, the neon signs and watching the New Year's fireworks displays.
Thank heavens I'm off to Denmark soon. That usually cures any amount of homesickness. And I am not fooling myself, anyway. If I were to return to Denmark, I would miss Scotland. I would miss having easy access to any book I wanted, the BBC, dramatic landscapes, the easy-going attitude, my lovely neighbourhood and a certain sense of freedom. Swings and roundabouts, dear reader, swings and roundabouts.
Yesterday we went craft fair hopping. First, we visited the Glasgow Craft Fair Mafia at Mono, then we headed back to our own neighbourhood where The De Courcy Arcade has undergone a facelift and a slew of new quirky boutiques have opened showcasing handmade gifts and vintage fashion. It felt like I spent the entire afternoon living in Etsy-land: little owls, ironic embroidery and felted flowers ..
.. and I realised I wasn't enchanted. I can partly blame the old "I could make that myself" attitude and partly that I am a crafter myself and know what well-finished items should look like. The stern Scandinavian in me was particularly blind to the virtues of an ironic embroidered portrait of Dolly Parton or Burt Reynolds. I fear I am too old to be a irony-embracing hipster or maybe I have just started living by William Morris' creed: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful".
I'm homesick and I'm grumpy.
Bulletpoints
A few brief links:
- Why not visit Pompeii from the comfort of your own home? The ruins of Pompeii are now available on Google Street View.
- This is absolutely lovely: Flare, a wind-sensitive electronic dress. "As the wind gently caresses the dress or if you "blow" on the dandelions themselves, a pattern of lights will twinkle across the dress."
- I have fallen head over heels with at least three of the garments in Rowan 47. A preview is available from Rowan's site (it is slow-loading, beware). My current favourite is the pink filly concoction in KidSilk Haze. I might knit in another colour, mind.
- An illuminated snowflake. At some point I will get one of my scientist friends to show me how to make these.
- A YouTube clip chronicling Franz Ferdinand's use of Soviet interwar avant-garde graphic design/art. Ah, El Lissitzky. Be still my heart.
- Starbucks will start selling Flat Whites in the UK in the new year. I love Flat Whites and hope they'll become available in Glasgow too. Yum. (thanks, Kimfobo)
- This little clip makes me a little sad that I won't be in Blighty for Christmas (thank heavens for iPlayer)
- Finally, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The first sleeve on David's pullover is done! Let me do a small \o/ - and as my stepfather's Christmas is done , I feel like I can cast on the delightful Yule Pig potholders in good faith that they'll be done before Christmas. I might even throw in a Christmas tree or two, thanks to these spiffing Christmas socks.
Sunday Round-Up
Borders has gone into administration here in the UK. Its Glasgow flagship store is covered in huge EVERYTHING MUST GO!!! STOCK LIQUIDATION!!! posters. It makes me very sad. I am an independent retailer sort of consumer, but Borders holds a special place in my heart. For years it was the only place I could find in Glasgow and I bought most of my Christmas presents there back when I lived in Stirling. In later years I have come to appreciate its friendly and knowledgeable staff, the excellent craft books section and the well laid-out fiction section. I hope the asset stripped and the liquidation means that select stores will survive - and by that I hope that the Glasgow store will keep going. It is difficult for me to imagine Buchanan Street - Glasgow's main shopping street - without it.
Kirsten S. mailed me the other day to let me know that she has listed my Laminaria shawl as one of her ten favourite shawl projects on Ravelry. Thank you so much, Kirsten! The timing was great as I have been glum these past few days for various personal reasons and it is always lovely to connect with similarly minded people (and I really enjoyed reading why she had selected particular shawls). I'd be interested in reading more posts on people's favourites if anybody has links?
Finally, congratulations to long-time blog friend, Emme, who has just had a baby boy. I love how she tweeted the news before anything else. That's how a social network expert handles big news.
Two Steps Ahead
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.
Wednesday Linkage
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.
If It’s Saturday, It Must Be Random
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..
Saturday Link Dump
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.
The Art of Being
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.
Linkage
Link dump day!
+ Europe, Explained: a nice map which summarises it all for confused non-Europeans.
+ Puppets need puppets too.
+ Vegetarian-friendly roadkill carpet
+ The prettiest yarn shop in Denmark? I like my yarn shops over-stuffed, but if you like minimalism..
+ Sweden has its own Etsy-like site.
+ This is a real film: Tiptoes stars Matthew McConaughey as a "normal-sized dwarf", Gary Oldman as his, er, dwarf-sized dwarf brother and Kate Beckinsale as the love interest. Peter Dinkdale features as a a crazy French radical dwarf. I kid you not.
+ 13 Alien Languages You Can Actually Read.
+ This is what happens when knitting gets serious. Like, REALLY serious. Sock Summit 2009. Check out the graphics.
+ Maia Hirasawa: The Worrying Kind. A stunning, stunning cover where I don't think you need to know the original to appreciate it.
+ Jar Jar Binks salad
+ British Library's treasures. You could spend an entire afternoon just faffing about (well, I could).
+ Field Notes. I covet. I covet badly.
A Beautiful Day
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.