fourth edition

My first birthday present was given to me today by David (a day early!). I was so thrilled when I realised it was a ticket to see Mr Rufus Wainwright live later this year. I have seen Rufus on three earlier occasions, but this one will be just him and a piano. Cor.
Now to wait [...]

Just a little peek of my just-off-the-blocking-board shawl. It’s beautiful, it’s warm and it’s mine. Sorry. I notice how my projects travel by colour. I had a green phase last spring/summer, then recently I have knitted a lot of blue-ish purples and pink fuschia, and now I appear to gravitate towards rich reds. I hope [...]

I am very bad at receiving compliments, but am very good at taking criticisms to heart. Yesterday I was called something Not Very Nice by a random passer-by at my workplace. It was completely out of order, had no basis in reality and all my colleagues were stunned into silence (which does not happen often). [...]

Yes, it continues to be cold. The novelty of snow has long worn off. My sole source of weather-related amusement is the media who insist 60,000 people will die in the Big Freeze, the British Army is being set in and the beginning of food shortages lead to soaring prices. Yesterday night BBC News ran [...]

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 [...]

I do not know how many of you have read Alasdair Gray’s excellent dystopian novel, Lanark: a Life in Four Books? It takes place partly in Glasgow and partly in an imaginary Glasgow, known as Unthank. In Unthank the characters are forever chasing sunlight whilst seemingly dying of a symbolic disease known as ‘dragonhide’ (Yes, [...]

15. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
This is being written whilst I’m gritting my teeth: Ben Marcus’ The Age of Wire and String. It’s a very, very short novel. I spent a month reading it. Then Stupid Boyfriend said: “Oh. Did you try to make sense of it? I didn’t. I just [...]

.. 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…

Knitting and poetry are more similar than they might first appear, she added, with poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy partial to an occasional knit, and the Society’s president Jo Shapcott, Seamus Heaney and Emily Dickinson all authors of poems featuring knitting. “With poetry and with knitting, you work line by line, and if something goes [...]

What does home mean to you?
When I left Denmark in 2006, I spent the last few weeks living out of my suitcase and sleeping on friends’ floors. I liked this sort of transitory existence because I knew I was moving from my old home in Copenhagen to a new home in Glasgow. What I [...]