For some odd reason I keep going back to the idea of a knitted dress. I found a machine-knitted dress in Monsoon (British clothes shop) which I absolutely loved (apart from the fibre make-up) and then I saw some jaw-dropping Briars and lengthened Dusty tunics. I just sit here in my cold flat and imagine [...]
Posts tagged Print Culture
Reading the Past
The economic recession has claimed many victims. The first phase saw people losing jobs, companies going bankrupt and banks folding. Experts say that this first wave is over. Signs of economic growth are visible in the financial sectors. We are now living through the second phase: spending cuts have to be made. This is all [...]
Work As If You Live in the Early Days of a Better Nation
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, [...]
Behaving as the Wind Behaves
Let the Right One In was a much better film than book. Everything which was overegging the book-pudding had been removed in the film: neverending subplots, irrelevant and distracting characters, and immense wordiness. The film was sparse, beautifully shot, and intense. While not the masterpiece it has been made out to be, the film was [...]
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 [...]
Visual Words
In my handwritten note I alluded briefly to the idea of handwriting possessing “presence” and printing having only “absence”. In its infancy printing was known as “artificial writing” – the implication being that handwriting = natural, printing = artifice, obviously. I once messed about with ideas concerning printing and how English as a literary language [...]
Buttons and Books
These are my Buttony Mitts. I test-knitted them for Lilith of Old Maiden Aunt. Basically, she asked me one day if I wanted free handpainted yarn and I replied with my best teenage “dooooh” face.
The yarn is gorgeous. It is a soft alpaca-merino-bamboo blend and is handpainted in shades of forest green, khaki and [...]
Codex or Kindle?
I am off to Edinburgh to attend a discussion on The Future of The Book. Codex or Kindle.. or something else? In the meantime, have fun with these links.
+ Urban Knitting: the world’s most inoffensive graffiti. I’d argue it’s not graffiti (as that word refers to lettering or the act of writing) but it’s street [...]
Cadder Excursion
The HarperCollins visit was a great success. They marketed the event as a chance to see original Peter Pan artwork and unseen letters from famous authors such as JRR Tolkien and Agatha Christie, but in reality we enjoyed the visit to the cartographic offices much more. We also had a chance to peek into the [...]
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