November 30 2011 has been a day of strikes across the UK as a reaction to the Tory-led coalition’s “austerity measures”. I have been watching the news unfold from my cosy home, but part of me did wish I could have been out there. Some years ago I would have been. It has been interesting to see how most of them media have been shouting that this one day of strikes could push the UK back into recession .. I seem to remember most of the UK got an extra few days off for the sake of a certain royal wedding earlier this year but that was “a celebration”, of course. Interesting, also, that this strike comes the day after the Chancellor’s “Autumn statement” which I was following with incredulity yesterday. You can read an acerbic and pointed response here.

Moi? Cynical? I think I am turning into a grumpy old woman (I have the grey hairs to prove it). Maybe just realistic rather than grumpy.

And so with a boot firmly planted in the realistic camp, I was delighted to find other people utterly bemused* by the never-ending editorials about The Party Season. I think I had a party season once when I was 20 and as a skint student, I wore secondhand 1970s silver-lamé frocks accessorised with green Doc Martens. And nobody cared that I wore the same 1970s frock to every single drunken student jig. I do not think I live in the same world as the glossies – who does? And who buys** them?

Let me share something amazing and lovely with you: Someone has been leaving small, intricate paper sculptures all over Edinburgh. Who? No one seems to know. It is a woman who proclaims that she is used to “making things” and that she has left these art objects to voice her support for libraries, books, words, and ideas. I absolutely love these objects – I would call them book art rather than artists’ books (there is a distinction, I feel) – and I love the quiet making and placing of them. There is something so utterly wonderful about art objects that do not scream but whisper.

Knitting posts to come soon. Tonight I just wanted to write about slightly more .. cerebral things.

*) Sorry about using italics so much
**) Actually I use italics way too often.

But we did have a lovely week together.

Highlights included watching the ever-changing skies over Loch Lomond (pictured left), having an afternoon pint of local brew in The Falls of Dochart Inn (out of tourist season significantly less Brigadoon than I suspect it’ll be in high season), doing the obvious Monty Python jokes at Doune Castle, buying yarn at New Lanark, playing Munchkin in the evenings, having a tremendous dinner at Fanny Trollope’s and .. just hanging out with some of the best people I know.

Of course I was also working my usual hours and trying to deal with paperwork, so things were slightly less relaxing than it could have been. I also miss our guests in a raw, unsettled way. Still, I feel nourished and ready to tackle what is ahead.

What is ahead? I am heading to London for work next week, so I need to prepare myself for that. I also have a couple of patterns to write and a lot of things to finish. Somehow I have also talked myself into a rather big homemade Christmas present that needs to be finished by early December.

Ulp.

Finally, and wholly unrelated, I went down to Occupy Glasgow’s camp yesterday and I had to laugh out loud when I saw a sign saying “Daily Mail, We Don’t Respect You Either“. How marvellous.

My Karise shawl has been chosen as a pattern for the next Old Maiden Aunt knitalong on Ravelry. To celebrate this, I am offering a whopping 20% discount on the pattern until November 30, 2011! Just cite OMAKAL as your discount code. More information in the Old Maiden Aunt Ravelry group.

I have been re-jigging my social media commitments, so I now have an open-to-all Twitter account that you can follow. If you used to follow me on Twitter, you may want to follow the new account instead. Knitterly stuff guaranteed, but I’ll basically be tweeting about anything that takes my fancy. A condensed version of this blog, if you like.

(Speaking of which, I have managed to delete my entire folder of knitting blogs from Google Reader. I have tried to reconstruct my reading list of 300+ blogs but if I usually comment on your blog and you think I haven’t been around lately, do let me know.)

This Saturday I will be teaching a lace shawl class at Wool 4 Ewe in Aberdeen. I think the class has filled up pretty well already, but any Aberdeenshire dwellers can check with Kathy whether she has had any cancellations. Hopefully I will see you there – and if not, feel free to drop in after the class to say hello!

So, yes. Busy times!

I have actually finished quite a few things, but I’ve not even made any Ravelry project pages for them, let alone managed any pictorial evidence.

This is a brand-new project. I’m using one ball of Rowan Kidsilk Stripe for a very straightforward triangular shawl.

Kidsilk Stripe is a new Rowan yarn: essentially 2 balls of Kidsilk Haze in one ball and combining shades of KSH to create lovely stripes. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much life the stripes have. Purple isn’t just solid purple but has all sorts of subtle variegations. I hope my photo hints at that. I’m using the Twillight colourway for this shawl  (greens and purples) but I also really like the Cool colourway (teals and deep pinks).

And I have new specs! I was lucky enough to win a free pair of spectacles from Edinburgh-based Spectacles Direct via a Facebook(!) competition. I never win anything and I was in dire need of new spectacles, so I was very, very thrilled.

How do you like my “awkward MySpace photo pose? Ahhh, what you don’t do to appease your mother when Official Photographer is at the other end of the city.

Finally, I finished reading Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child last night. It is exceptionally well-written (as you’d expect from Hollinghurst who is probably the finest stylist of his generation) but it is also exceptionally dull. I was going to write a full review but I would struggle to find enough interesting things to say.. ironically enough,  the exact same problem the book has.

Mondays tend to be my weekly day of relaxation – funnily enough I am often at my most productive on Mondays too. It is almost like I relax by making things!

I just cut out the pieces for my Crepe dress. I’m using Nigerian wax-print cotton. It is going to be quite .. loud, I think, but also rather funky. There are some very cool Crepe dresses in the Flickr photo pool. I hope to make a second, dressier version of this dress for a summer wedding next year, so I am essentially treating this version as a fancy toile/muslin version.

Note to self: next time make sure the fabric is wide enough for the skirt pieces. The cotton is relatively narrow and I had to be rather clever about how to cut out the pieces along the grain line.

My autumn knitting project, Norn, is knitting up quite quickly. I have been taking a couple of days off from knitting due to my on-going wrist problems, but up until Friday I had managed to get a couple of rows done here and there.

I am absolutely loving this: the yarn is soft and fascinatingly heathered; the pattern is easy and intuitive; the result is just beautiful. All projects should be like this. I’ve used 3 balls of the main colour so far and I’m halfway up the body. I should be fine with the amount of yarn I have, then. Phew. Incidentally, I’m knitting this using my usual two-hand colour knitting method. I get stared at a lot (yes, I’m back knitting in public).

Finally, I cannot show you pictures of a design-in-progress but here is a photo which may (or may not) provide you with a clue.

I am in two minds about using myself as a model in my patterns. At my last knitting group session I was sitting next to my friend KOS who is currently working on Karise. It was rather unnerving to have my own face stare back at me throughout the knitting group.

So, if you are an aspiring model/actor/musician living in Glasgow and you need something to pad out the old portfolio or CV, I’m your lady. No money involved, just the chance to impress the knitting community. Or maybe I’ll just need to come to terms with the entire staring-at-myself deal.

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.

Pinterest has been a huge help in figuring out what to knit. I have a board called Oh, You Pretty Things! (guess why) where I pin clothes and jewellery that catch my eye. I have been fairly ruthless, so while it is not a huge selection what I have pinned really captures my taste. And so I measure all my thoughts and ideas about winter knits against that board.

Having the board helps when I fall in love with knitting patterns that are really outwith the rest of my wardrobe (or what I’m trying to steer my wardrobe towards). I am hugely in love with Wilhelmina, for instance. I love the colours, the shape, and the reindeers. And it goes with absolutely nothing I own.

Would you still knit a cardigan even if it didn’t go with anything in your own wardrobe? Or am I missing a fashion trick and Wilhemina does actually work with what I perceive as my style? Yes, I need your honest opinion.

I’ll return to my winter knit search, so here are some random linkage for you to ponder:

• Marie Curie hopes you’ll knit a giant tea cosy in the name of charity.
• If that feels like too big a project or you want to do even more good with your knitting needles, why not join the Big Knit in making tiny hats?
• Of course Atlantis was just off the coast of Scotland.
• Tilda Swinton is the fiercest woman alive. Fact.
• Hackgate continues to thrive here in the UK (this MeFi thread is still a good primer). This weird story about a bin bag was my personal favourite daily twist in this increasingly bizarre scandal.
• And here’s one for the Doctor Who fans among you.
• You know that my twenty-year long love affair with his music has died when I don’t even casually stroll down Byres Road hoping for a glimpse..
• The Minefield of Female Relationships is an interesting read, though I have reservations about .. aspects.

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.

Sometimes I tell myself: “I’m way closer to Four-Oh than I am to Two-Oh. I should start dressing my age. Maybe tone things down a bit. Invest in sensible, long-term wardrobe staples. Get a couple of timeless pieces in neutral colours.” Clearly I don’t listen to myself.

Pictured alongside my favourite coat: the very gawjuss Kaffe Goes Bollywood wrap. You can find the specifics at the Ravelry page, of course, so it suffices to say that I am pretty damn happy with it. It is too long, though, as you might be able to tell and so I’m primarily wearing it as a scarf (wrapped around several times) so next time I make one, I’ll cast on fewer stitches and do 130-150 rows total.

Headline of the day comes courtesy of a Danish local newspaper: Knitting Ladies’ Vandalising Rampage Through Broager (equivalent to the UK’s Flitwick or Crewes: tiny and outskirtsy). If you are really keen, you can try Google Translate on the article but, in short, even rural Denmark has discovered yarn-bombing.. Bless.