A view from my daily walk..
..can be very inspirational..
.. don’t you think?
(don’t judge ‘em – the gloves are unblocked and one needs ends woven in)
Posts tagged Photography
We went on a mini-break to the North-East coast of Scotland. I love visiting this particular part of Scotland – it reminds me of the landscape where I grew up (agricultural, close to the sea, small villages, cows) and yet this place is so startlingly different and dramatic (dangerous cliffs! fishing huts! waterfalls! lobsters!). We were really lucky with the weather this time, but this little place is just as beautiful in the depth of winter.
Now back to normality. I hope this little mini-break recharged my batteries because I have a feeling things are going to get hectic in the next few weeks..
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.
Friday afternoon I packed my tote bag and headed out for my favourite spot in the local park: underneath the trees where the sparrowhawks hang out and close to the little corner which houses several foxes. I sat there with my knitting and then I had a visitor.
(yes, I came home with a tonne of ideas for future projects)
This photo was taken in 1839 making it one of the earliest known self-portraits in the history of photography. I have looked at it often. He feels so alive, so human. It is a far cry from the stilted portraits which were to follow in the decades to come.
I was reminded of this when I came across First Sounds, a website set up “to make mankind’s earliest sound recordings available to all people for all time.”
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville recorded phonautograms around 1860 and although the sound is distorted, it makes for facinating listening material. Scott’s recordings predates Thomas Edison’s far more famous recordings by some seventeen years, although there is arguably a significant difference in sound quality.
Last year the re-discovery of a young girl singing Au Clair de la Lune – a recording made by Scott in 1860 – made the headlines. Thanks to Mefi I just realised that experts are now thinking that Au Clair de la Lune was being played at twice the speed and the actual singer is Scott himself. While somewhat less romantic than a young girl’s voice being heard after 150 years, it made me think of how inventors and pioneers are often left on their own as they try to make their ideas reality.
They have suspected it for a long time and now our neighbours are sure: Casa Bookish is a really weird household. Taking photos of brickwork? Yes, weird but it could be for an art project. Taking photos of rusty iron gates? Quite weird, but could just be interested in getting stuff fixed. Photographing a bit of knitting? Totally and utterly weird.
The project? Ah, I’m glad you asked. I have finally begun knitting Geno from Rowan 43 after procrastinating for about a year. I started it some days ago and have been knitting up a storm .. on size 2.75mm needles which means I have about 8 inches done. It is not exactly an instant gratification project, but it is gratifying nonetheless. I’m using Rowan Fine Milk Cotton in “Water Bomb” (a duck’s-egg-blue) and the yarn is surprisingly velvety. It’s a good summer project.
True to fashion I’m obsessing over which buttons to use. I have bought some bog-standard mother-of-pearl buttons from John Lewis, but they are rather .. bog-standard. So I began sorting through my vintage button stash and came up with various possibilities.
In the top-left corner you get some fake-ivory buttons, on the right you can juuust make out some carved mother-of-pearl(?) flowers with some nice staining and on the bottom you get some utterly adorable red plastic flowers (1960s?). I rather fancy the red flowers but I only have four of those and the pattern calls for at least six. I’m also very, very, very taken by these buttons found on Etsy (of course).
Maybe I should just keep knitting?
Maybe I should just do that and relax a bit seeing as the majority of this weekend has involved me poking about the inside of our PC. Long story short: what I thought was a relatively simply problem with overheating turned out slightly more complicated. I’m now extremely tired of computer parts salesmen ignoring me and talking to D. exclusively – just because I’m a woman. Unfortunately (for them) I’m also the computer savvy one, so their über-complicated “you need a new motherboard” sales talk with D. was all in vain. Anyhow, new fan-cradle and CPU fan has been installed and I resisted the lure of shiny new RAM.
PS. This entry has been written on-and-off whilst renegade kids, the Fire Brigade and the Police have been passing by our door. I am in dire need of relaxation now. Knitting, here I come.
Yes, I know I said stuff about knitting with grey wool. The phrases “never again”, “not in the winter months” and “I need colour!!!!!” may have passed my lips.
But I’ve changed my mind.
The pattern is Norwegian Woods by Sivia Harding. Earlier this year I knitted a few repeats of it in the gawjuss Old Maiden Aunt silk/merino yarn I have stashed away. I was flippant, made a few too many mistakes and ripped it all out. Now I’m knitting the shawl in Snældan’s 1-ply wool (Faroese wool mixed with a touch of Falkland Islands wool – and spun on the Faroe Islands!). I’ll blog more about the shawl as it progresses.
As you can see from the photo, it is snowing in Glasgow today. South-east England has had a couple of inches of snow and they are panicking. Silly people (sayeth this Scandinavian gal) For once I don’t mind the snow so much and it made for a great photo opportunity this morning. Right now I’m still seeing ginormous snowflakes hurling towards the ground.
A couple of links (because my links folder is bursting at its seams).
+ I really want this t-shirt.
+ Is there anything Barack Obama cannot do? Well, I’m not too hot on his poetry. Dare I say it? I write better poetry than him? I do.
+ Great photos of London from above (thanks, Molly)
+ A bit more heavy-going than I usually get here: We Who Are Left Behind: Poetry as Testimony in Derrida and Celan.
+ Amazing Flickr photo-stream: Lars Daniel. He makes me miss Copenhagen even more.
+ Type as Image. It does wot it sez on teh tin.
Have a lovely day – with or without snow.
