The photo was taken in the early 1950s outside her cottage and she is with two of her sons, K and T.

I have several photos of her; my other favourite is from the 1930s when she was approached by a travelling salesman who wanted her to become a hair model. I presume she shot him one of her withering glances. The photo shows her with long, gorgeous hair. I was told it was chestnut-coloured. The photo is black/white.

I was lucky enough to grow up around her. She minded me when I was pre-kindergarten and I spent most of my school holidays in her cottage. Her cottage did not have running water until I was maybe seven or eight and never got central heating. I can still envision her sitting in her chair in front of the kerosene-fuelled stove. She’d knit long garter stitch strips from yarn scraps and sew them into blankets. I think she was the one who taught me to knit. She was certainly the one who taught me how to skip rope.

Happy birthday, momse. We may not always have seen eye to eye, but we loved and understood each other. And I still miss you.

Title comes from this beautiful farewell song (youtube link). Post reposted from 2009, 2010 and 2011 with Momse’s age amended. I continue to miss her.

Between deadlines, flu and whatnot I have found time to start work on a new shawl pattern. It’s a really relaxing knit – one I can do late at night when my brain is too wired to sleep and too tired to focus – and I’m really pleased with it so far. Tonight I have been tweaking the charts and I had a really satisfying moment when I solved a particularly nagging row. I hate hate hate transitions that do not stack or flow into one another – unless I can see a clear reason why they do not stack, they just strike me as laziness on the behalf of the designer – and this one row just did not look right. The solution was right in front of me: moving decreases from the centre of the pattern repeat to the edges. Hooray!

My favourite bit on the interwebs this week? Reel Scotland speaking to John McKay who directed my favourite Sherlock Holmes-related BBC drama. No, not that one. Nor that other one. This one. The article is full of interesting takes on film-making, on working in TV, and on making things happen in Scotland. And then there is this great throw-away line that just made sense: “..this bit of Glasgow, our San Francisco.”

My other favourite internet bits this week? This fantastic collection of Soviet science-fiction magazine covers. This grey airship bag from Etsy. And you can learn the most interesting feminist lessons in very surprising places.

I have been working on swatches (which I cannot show you) and my Kastanie sweater. I think it’s fair to say that I’ll end up running out of yarn before I can knit two long sleeves. I never get any use out of the short-sleeved sweaters I own, so I am considering ripping Kastanie out.

And I have another reason for considering it. I am tired of the silhouette. I want different pieces in my wardrobe – I want interesting pieces. Granted I have a body shape that lends itself to fitted clothes (think Christina Hendricks rather than Nicole Kidman) but I still want to make things that have a purpose beyond warming me and not adding fifty pounds in the process.

Recently I have subscribed to a great deal of fashion blogs – the kind where ordinary people blog about what they wear. Girl With Curves has a completely different style to me but I find inspiration in how she layers and combines pieces. What Would A Nerd Wear is often too casual for me, but is great for accessorizing ideas. Blue Collar Catwalk has yet another style – again, different from mine – but I love the way she combines prints.

What I am taking from these blogs is something different than what I take from Ravelry (and I think to some degree there is a very distinct Ravelry style too – if you disagree, look around next time you are at a fiber-related event). Suddenly I’m less hung up on knitting the right designers in the must-have yarn – suddenly I am thinking about my knitting in a wardrobe context.

Lightbulb!

And I think also the death knell for Kastanie.

I have also been kept busy by a quasi-flu and trying to compile a wish list for my birthday. Wish lists are hard because they need to fulfill a certain list of criteria (mostly to do with my family’s location) rather than what I’d love to have in my wildest imagination. So, without further ado, here’s my real wishlist:

+ A dwelling similar to this one, but in Glasgow. Also, with very different art.
+ A puppy, preferably a little crossbreed with a dash of Cavalier King Charles Spaniel (not a purebreed because Cavaliers are awfully in-bred and unhealthy).
+ Moda “Circa 1934″ Jelly Roll: .”. collection [of] its typewriter key caps, vintage numbers and ornate medallions.. Rich red, worn yellow, antique white and sage green give you the perfect palette to work with.”
+ 15 balls of Rowan Baby Alpaca in mid-grey. Just because, you know, it’s a gorgeous yarn.
+ Andrew Pettegree’s The Book in the Renaissance
+ A chromatic typewriter
+ A really, really snazzy DSLR camera – I do like Canon’s cameras.
+ A trip on the Orient Express – art deco decadence for the win!
+ This poster in a lovely understated frame.
+ A cherry brooch
+ This t-shirt – although I should read the book (again? – have I read it?)
+ You can take the girl out of Scandinavia, but she’ll always love classic Danish design lamps.
+ Another trip to New Zealand. I’d love to show D. Wellington – man, I loved Wellington. Yeah, two months should be plenty. Thank you.
+ And, finally, blocking wires! I cannot believe I still don’t have any!

So, which things would you love to receive but also know you’ll probably never get for your birthday?

My second gift to myself has also been a long-time coming. For years I have been circling Garthenor Yarns and their organic, sheepy goods. Their yarns are produced from sheep kept on organic lands and the yarn is spun with minimal processing and no dyeing. I finally cracked earlier this week and now my Shetland single ply laceweight in ‘light oatmeal’ has arrived.

Oh, but it is beautiful. It reminds me of the Faroese laceweights I have been using: the same self-assured simplicity and honesty that says ‘this has worked for centuries, so why change anything?’. This yarn is as far away from novelty yarns or instant gratification yarns as you can get – and for my money it is all the better for it. Although I’d love to see Karise knitted up in this sort of rustic yarn, I think I’ll end up writing an entirely new pattern for it.

Okay, I have also bought fabric but it is less an indulgence than a response to ‘oh dear, I have just thrown out half my wardrobe’. I did try to find tops I liked on the high street, but eventually I just went to Mandors and bought several yards of pretty polycotton in their January sale.

I intend to make several Art Teacher tunics – I’ll be tweaking the pattern, though. The original Art Teacher tunic had a zip which I confess never using as the tunic easily slips over my head. I’ll also lengthen it a tiny bit, make it slightly more A-line and I’ll try very hard not to have ironing mishaps during construction. Scout’s honour (I was never a Girl Scout).

Finally, I’m going to read James Joyce’s The Dead tonight. Why? The story takes place on January 6.

Joyce is one of those authors with whom I have not really made peace (having said that, I think that is everyone‘s relationship with Joyce). I have read Dubliners from which The Dead is taken. I have made headway into Ulysses and Portrait but never attempted Finnegans Wake. I could happily drown in a sea of Joyce’s words – Listen, a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos – but I never connected with him the way I connected with TS Eliot.

Having said that, if you have not read any James Joyce and you recoil at the very idea, sit down and read The Dead. It is a fairly quick read, you won’t need a spreadsheet to help you understand it and – best of all – it is wonderful.

It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations—not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.

Today works by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Henri Bergson and James Frazer all enter the public domain. All eminent modernists or people whose work influenced High Modernism a great deal.

I am perusing The Dalkey Archive Press – that great publisher and re-issuer of modernist works (among other things) – whilst pondering what to pick up. I have pledged to read a modest twenty books this year – a modest amount as I want to read better books, not more books. I have begun by finally reading Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevinwhich is hopefully a step in the right direction? I am 150 pages into it and it reads like, well, a coiled-up snake waiting to strike (what an unsuccessful simile!). I have several books lined up: The Picture of Dorian Gray(in a beautiful edition given to me by D.), Jamaica Inn, and James Robertson’s And the Land Lay Stillare the first three.

2012 is off to a quiet, thoughtful start. This is good.

2011 was also the year I finally signed up for GoodReads which influenced my reading a great deal. As my profile shows, I found adding books somewhat addictive. I began reading more and – crucially – I began reading better books. I began using my local library a lot more and I kept track of my to-read list via GR too. Huzzah for getting organised!

The worst reads: Alan Hollinghurst disappointed me big time with the Man Booker long-listed The Stranger’s Child. Hollinghurst is one of the finest writers of his generation, but TSC just did not deliver. It read like a reiteration of everything he has ever written filled with token, tired literary allusions. Emma  Donoghue’s 2010 short-listed Room made me angry. The Testament of Jessie Lamb was long-listed for the Man Booker prize this year. The first chapter was spectacular: a dystopian novel with a feminist bent. Oh yes! Unfortunately life is cruel and the rest of the book was a poorly-constructed and badly-written teen novel. I felt like giving up reading after Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. And don’t get me started on Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. I really read far too many bad books this year.

The honourable mentions: Margaret Atwood’s In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imaginationwas uneven but well worth my time. While Atwood writing about other authors is not her at her most interesting, I really enjoyed the section dealing with her childhood and the general overview of genre.  Jasper Fforde redeemed himself with both the delightfully metafictional and whimsical One of Our Thursdays is Missing and the far more sinister Shades of Grey. Jonathan Stroud’s The Ring of Solomon was good – Stroud is quietly turning himself into a very reliable source of entertaining YA fantasy novels – and actually the book rekindled my desire to read. Isherwood’s Goodbye To Berlin and Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time were both unsurprisingly solid. Finally, Susanna Jones’ The Earthquake Birdwas a quirky, psychologically interesting read which reminded me of Murakami mixed with early Iain Banks.

The very good reads: After a year of mostly disappointing books, I re-read a few of my favourite novels.

AS Byatt’s Possession: A Romance was one of those re-reads. I love it with quiet intensity as only a lonely girl who grew up surrounded by books could love a book about lonely people surrounded by books who in turn love reading about lonely people surrounded by books. Another re-read was Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. It floored me.

My best new read of the year was China Miéville’s Embassytown. How interesting that in a year when mainstream literary fiction faltered so spectacularly a so-called genre novel took on all the hard questions and pulled it off flawlessly. Embassytown is not only incredibly well-written and tightly-plotted – it is also a challenging, sophisticated read that delves into the philosophy of language and notions of identity. It is absolutely splendid and deserves as much praise as possible. How very silly that some people will not give it a try because it is speculative fiction, gasp.

Moving Forward: I am not such a fool that I will announce how many books I will read next year. I will crash and burn out if I make any such pledges. However, I do hope that I will read far better books next year. This year was a real downer in terms of quality – even the books I thought would be decent reads turned out to be on the dubious side of things (HOLLINGHURST!)

Margaret Atwood’s In Other Worlds mentioned the concept of ‘slipstream’ books which can be ‘defined‘ as “the fiction of strangeness”. I looked into what kind of book that may be and the loosely-defined canon include so many of my  favourite books and authors that I will probably use the ‘canon’ as a source of inspiration (sans John Barth). I have never been able to pinpoint what type of books I enjoy but I might have a new vocabulary. We shall see.

(2009 entry; 2010 entry)

I was given an amazing Danish knitting book: Mere Feminin Strik by Lene Holme-Samsøe. The Ravelry photos do not do it justice – it is well-conceived, clever, and luscious. It is split into four sections: ‘plain’ knitting, textures, cabling, and lace. Each section has garments as well as accessories showcasing the theme. The attention to detail is evident on every page and I really like how wearable the designs are. I have a couple of must-knit garmentss such as the stunning Cecilia which is knitted top-down and Lily, a bottom-up garterstitch cardigan, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be knitting some of the smaller pieces too. So far Mere Feminin Strik is only available in Scandinavia, but seeing Holme-Samsøe’s first book was snapped up and translated by Interweave Press, I’d be surprised if this follow-up book wasn’t given the same treatment.

ETA: Interweave Press will be publishing a translated version in 2012 – thank you to Carol for the info – she’s the translator!

Overall, though, we did try to give presents that would not only please the recipient but also support people we know and love. This included presents from Gabrielle Reith’s Small Stories range and t-shirts from SevenHundred. I was also very humbled to see many people choosing to gift one of my patterns to friends over this festive period. Thank you!

Things are already in motion for a very lovely 2012 – I hope to catch with myself, you and everyone else before the clock ticks over, though.

Dear Father Christmas,

Love, Karie x

Last night I cast on for a project that has nothing to do with work nor is it one of my own designs. In fact, it is a completely frivolous project that I only cast on because – gasp – I wanted to knit it. I don’t think I have done that for a very, very long time (and typing that makes me feel a bit sad, actually). Kastanie is going to be a jumper. I bought the first issue of knit.wear a couple of months ago because I loved the simple, wearable Wendy Bernard pattern. Of course it transpires that the pattern is a re-branded Riverstone Boatneck jumper which makes me very angry as a consumer. Pay $5.50 to get the one pattern or pay £10 for a magazine? I know which one I would have preferred.

Anyway. In my stash I had two large skeins of New Lanark Aran in a one-off colourway that I bought on a visit to the Mill back in 2009. The colour is a gorgeous heathery chestnut (‘Kastanie’ is Danish for chestnut) and I am loving up it works up with the stitch pattern. I reckon I have maybe 600g of yarn which may or may not be enough for the jumper, but we shall see. The jumper is a bog-standard, easily-modified top-down raglan so I can play around with fit and yardage. All in all, this is not an earth-shatteringly new direction for my knitting but I just really want a cosy winter jumper that I can knit up fairly quickly and without too much stress.

Speaking of stress, I use WordPress to power this site and sadly their new update makes it incredibly cumbersome for me to blog. This entry has been entirely hand-coded, for instance, and while I do like coding, I am not particularly keen on handcoding every single blog post. It takes too much time. I’m off to find a solution. If you want to see another photo of Kastanie, please visit its project page on Ravelry. No link because that would require about three different windows open and additional handcoding. You get my drift.

• Sort out the unwieldy stash
• Eleven hats in 2011 (or preferably more…)
• Knit up a lot of the random balls scattered throughout the stash
• Finish more than 2.75 garments within a year.
• Relax with my knitting. It shouldn’t feel like a chore

And how did I do? I did relatively badly.

I managed to organise the stash but it became rather disorganised in October when we had to get the spare bed out of storage, thus upsetting my stacks of yarn boxes in the process. Eleven hats? No. I managed three. I still need hats, so I will aim to knit some more with some of the random balls still in my stash. I did knit one cardigan and finished another one which had languished in my knitting basket. I turned a third garment into a shrug and I’m halfway through a fourth garment. Mild success? It doesn’t feel like it.

As for relaxing with my knitting? Here is where I have to come clean. I work within the knitting industry. Although it is the best job in the world, knitting is still work and as such it can feel like a chore at times. Most of my knitting time is spent swatching and I rarely get to finish things. I am not complaining because I am one of the lucky ones who has managed to turn a hobby into a career, but I am now realising that sometimes knitting will not feel relaxing and that is okay.

So, 2011. What did I do and what were my favourites?

• I exhibited knitted art at The Tramway Art Gallery. Yikes.
• One of my go-to- FOs was the Silkwood Cowl which felt like a really carefree project and subsequently has been living around my neck most of the year.
• My other go-to FO has been my Red Cardigan of Doom which took me forever to finish and which I thought looked awful on me. I have practically lived in it ever since. I have to knit a proper long-sleeved cardigan out of Rowan Baby Alpaca because it makes the softest, warmest fabric I have ever worn. I am always cold – except when I wear this cardigan.
• I released a couple of patterns – some free and some not so free. My favourites? Karise was released in July and has just been the subject of a Ravelry knit-along. Tornved was released this month to a quite overwhelming response (gosh). I also did a couple of patterns for a store which I have not yet added to Ravelry.
• I tried a lot of new yarns. I loved working with Old Maiden Aunt merino/silk. It was a lovely heavy and drapey yarn just perfect for shawls. However, it is fair to say that 2011 was the year of knitting Kidsilk Haze. I used that a lot.

So. 2012. What do I spy in the crystal ball and what do I hope for?

• I’m already working on more patterns. I have sketchbook filled with what is essentially 2-and-a-half collections worth of patterns. Hopefully I will be able to devote more time to this in 2012.
• I’d really love to knit a few garments in 2012. Quality over quantity.
• And I still need more hats.
• Keeping on top of the stash. I cannot promise ‘more yarn out than in’ but at least I won’t do the ‘oh, I fancy a ball of that’ thing because that way madness lies. I am getting far better at curating my stash already. May it continue.
• More conscious allocation of my knitting time: what is ‘work’ knitting and what is ‘me’ knitting?

Of course I have a list of things I want to knit, but as 2011 has shown me: I had better not plan too far ahead.