I Apologise In Advance

I don't know if I am being particularly bitchy today, but when I came across the following pattern note on Ravelry, I stopped in my tracks:

When I’m knitting a Jared Flood pattern, I feel like he’s making love to me. When I finish a Jared Flood pattern, I feel like I just gave birth to his child.

I feel this quote is almost worthy of a lolcat picture - you know the "U R DOING IT WRONG" type - because either I'm not knitting the right kind of patterns or the quoted knitter has not been involved in the right kind of love-making. Also, I know that seaming stuff is seen as a painful process but it is as painful as child birth? Really? And, finally, I just find the pattern note a touch on the creepy side of things.

But I do think I am in a bitchy mood today. I spent my lunch catching up with blogs and after a few reads I decided I had had enough of self-congratulatory, self-satisfied glimpses of homemade organic bread, tidy houses with expensive Scandinavian design furniture and delicate beige sweaters paraded on a series of identikit children who are all doing so incredibly well at school.

I think tonight I'll need to crash a lot of cars on the Xbox 360 whilst eating chocolate. And possibly knit a couple of more rows on David's sweater (I'm hoping stocking stitch will make me go completely zen).

I'll leave you with one of the greatest Halloween costumes I've seen for a long, long time.. and a slightly bitchy link: Regretsy.

Deja Vu

YouTube Comment or E.E.Cummings? One of the funniest 20th century poetry/21st Century internet crossovers I have seen today. Not that I have seen that many, of course. After a few weeks of awe-inspiring knitting productivity, my busy fingers have become almost idle. I cast on, knit maybe twenty rows, decide the project doesn't thrill me and I rip it all out. Lather, rinse, repeat. Possibly it is the continuous failure of Topstykke that haunts me. The pattern is great, of course, but I keep messing up:

1. I cast on too few stitches and tried to remedy this whilst on a fast moving bus to Aberdeenshire filled with shouty Russian students.
2. I cast on the correct number of stitches but lost my stitch markers somewhere between a sofa and the kitchen table (a 3 year old nephew might have been involved).
3. I cast on correct number of stitches, got all of the set-up row right and blissfully knitted on until I realised that I was knitting a size up from what I'm supposed to knit.
4. I cast on correct number of stitches, got all of the set-up row right and blissfully knitted on until I realised I had twisted my cast-on and I was knitting a moebius-shaped top which will be impossible to wear (in this dimension, at least).

So I think it is time to let Topstykke rest for a few weeks whilst I get other things done. David's sweater is a top priority (he won the Halloween costume competition, by the way) and I want to have another lace shawl on my needles (Aeolian, I'm looking at you). I just hope that I can stick with those two projects and not rip them out after twenty rows.

Shockingly enough I have begun reading again and am currently one-third through Iain Banks' Transition. Banks strides the literary and speculative fiction divide, but cunningly uses a middle initial "M" to differentiate between the two genres. Interestingly, "Transition" is being marketed in the UK without the "M" (i.e. it is not speculative fiction, you fools!) whereas the US market gets courted with the "M" (hey, it's speculative fiction!). My favourite Banks novel, The Bridge, is a non-M novel but is more speculative than many genre novels. It's all about marketing, isn't it? So far I'm enjoying the novel, in case you were wondering..

I Tried to Drown My Sorrows, But the Bastards Learned to Swim

Tomorrow my partner, David, and I are off to an arty little Halloween party. As I'm writing this, David is busy getting himself all Van Gogh'ed up. Both ears are still intact, thankfully.  I have chosen to go as Frida Kahlo, who is pictured to the left. Having a similar colouring as Ms Kahlo made it an obvious choice - plus I get to accessorise my outfit with my beautiful Laminaria shawl. I just need to find some statement ear rings and my outfit is complete. But look at that photo. Isn't it stunning? I keep meaning to write about what inspires me as a knitter (and as an artist - I splash paint on canvases occasionally). Art history is a huge source of inspiration as is vintage fashion plates and photography. I continue to be fascinated by how other people approach and use colour. This photo is a brilliant example: the red playing off the teal blue with small hints of pale yellow/gold(?) offering a bit of calmness. I can see those colours being translated into, say, some beautiful teal/red colourwork mittens with a tiny pale yellow motif around the wrist.

Speaking of colourwork, I started knitting the Selbu Modern beret the other night. I uncovered two colours of Sandnes Tove in my stash and cast on cheerfully. I completed eight rows of colourwork before admitting to myself that I did not like how it was working up: the grey main colour was overpowering the purple contrast colour. Time to rip out. I'm currently considering whether to use the purple yarn as the main colour and go grey for the contrast - or whether to dig deeper into the stash.

Wholly unrelated: if you want to chill out with a little flash game this weekend, may I suggest Small Worlds? It's short and you have no enemies to kill - but it is extremely atmospheric and, dare I say it, haunting.

Have a lovely Saturday, everyone.

(Title taken from my favourite Frida Kahlo quote)

And They Lived Happily Ever After

.. and they lived happily ever after - they being the knitter and her own Liesl. I frogged a scarf I knitted last year but only wore twice and miraculously I got an entire top out of my three re-purposed skeins of Noro Iro. Liesl is a magical pattern, I think.

Right now I'm really using knitting as means of escape from a very, very busy life. I cannot write about the things that are happening as I have vowed to keep certain aspects of my life separate from this blog, but I am currently facing a workload which is causing me to a) freak out slightly, b) stress and worry a lot and c) have brain-freezes. I wish I could pick up a book and escape, but my head is not in that sort of space at the moment.

So I knit. I knit a lot.

Earlier this year I was told to relax by watching trashy TV and reading crap books. I've finally taken those words on board and so I'm watching a lot more TV - whilst knitting, of course - than I usually do. This has lead me to conclude that FlashForward is very bad; that True Blood is very interesting; that Merlin is very silly, has pretty art direction and occasionally sports hidden depths; and that I have very little patience for reality TV (bar BBC's MasterChef which Other Half watches religiously).

In other news, the most despicable "newspaper" in the UK - the Daily Mail which does not deserve a link - has published a poisonous article on the death of boyband singer Stephen Gately of Boyzone (BBC link). I read the homophobic article itself earlier today before the Daily Mail found it necessary to edit it. In the words of the Guardian's Charlie Brooker (and his entire column is magnificent):

The funeral of Stephen Gately has not yet taken place. The man hasn't been buried yet. Nevertheless, Jan Moir of the Daily Mail has already managed to dance on his grave. For money.

It has been 20 minutes since I've read her now-notorious column, and I'm still struggling to absorb the sheer scope of its hateful idiocy. It's like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo.

I hope Gately's husband and family sues the hell of Daily Mail. And I hope that other advertisers follow Marks & Spencer's example and withdraw their advertising money from the Mail. It is not the first time the Daily Mail angers me (in fact, you could set your clock by how often I feel personally insulted) but this is truly gobsmacking vicious.

Ah, a blog entry which is all over the place. And all I meant to say was that I really do love my new top and that I'm knitting a lot at the moment. The fact that this turned into a bit of a rant should give you a clue as to how stressed I am.

Pax.

Wednesday Linkage

An assortment of various links for your pleasure.

• Dicey knitting - for the ones among us who like to throw dice when we need to make a decision. "Start with the Ivory Cube -- it will tell if you you knit, purl, slip, increase, decrease, or cable/twist. This is where you Impose Chaos". Thanks, L.
• Golden silk from golden orb spiders: "A unique piece of golden yellow silk brocade cloth, woven from spiderwebs, is on display at the Museum of Natural History in New York. To harvest enough silk to make the cloth, more than a million female golden orb spiders were collected in Madagascar, "milked" for silk, and released back into the wild." The links are not for the faint-hearted, but they are incredibly interesting. I say this as a arachnophobe.
• This has been mentioned a lot on various literary blogs, but it bears repeating: An Open Letter to the Federal Trade Comission. There is a difference between being a lit blogger receiving freebies which may/may not be reviewed and a corporate shrill. The FTC has apparently not noticed the difference.
• Most of my adult life I have been looking for the perfect Bauhaus teapot. I now know why it'll never be mine.
• Glasgow Guerilla Gardening. What it says on the tin. Sometimes they include knitting.
• The house of my nightmares. And probably also of the assigned estate agent..
• The 56 Geeks. Which one are you? And yes, you will be one because you are reading a blog. Brownie points for guessing which one I am. (thanks, Emme)
• The continuing saga of Amazon, their Kindle and the concept of "Fail".
• Hilary Mantel won this year's Man Booker. I can't even pretend to be mildly interested. Sorry.
• One of Dave's online buddies have started a parenting blog. Normally the words "parenting blog" strikes fear into my heart, but when it's called When Should They See Die Hard and the first post made my day: "The first stage is what I'll call "The Minion Stage". Essentially having a little tiny henchman who does as their told and will make Manhattans for you."

Enjoy.

If It's Saturday, It Must Be Random

You take approximately 750g of ripe elderberries (rinsed and de-stalked, natch), 200g of granulated sugar, two table spoons of lemon juice, two diced cooking apples and about 2 pints of water. Stick 'em in a pan and boil until you've squeezed every last drop of goodness from the elderberries. This should take about ten minutes. (Remember to remove the pink foam that will form on top of the boiling goodness.)

Then strain your elderberry juice through a clean tea towel (it will stain your tea towel!), dice another three cooking apples and put them into the elderberry juice, boil until apples are cooked (and add sugar and lemon juice to taste - usually I don't see the need, though).

Serve hot in a mug with a spoon to fish out those delicious apple bits. It's toe-curlingly wonderful stuff.

Meanwhile, on the knitting front, I have been working on a pair of fair-isle fingerless gloves to match my autumnal hat. I'm two rows away from finishing one glove and I think I will leave it at that.

It is not that it is not pretty. It is not that it is not a quick knit (each glove takes less than two evenings worth of knitting time). It is not that I do not have enough yarn. I am just not feeling it, baby.

Granted, the fit is awkward (slouchy where I'd prefer snug) and I have issues with the pattern (such as increases not fitting with the colourwork). But I could deal with that - ripping out the excess fabric and adjusting the increases - if I knew I'd wear the finished gloves. But I'm pretty sure I won't. The hunt is still on for autumnal gloves, then.

Finally, a few links:

• I want this bathroom.
• I want one of these hats (and generally want more people to wear hats!)
• Scientists draw squid using its fossilised ink. Amazingly cool.
• Scotland's oldest robbers are, of course, local boys.
• While the UK condemns ring-wing groups, something is still rotten in the state of Denmark.
• Finally, if you are able to use BBC's iPlayer, I recommend Peter Capaldi on Scottish portrait painting and the first episode of Tweed, a docu-soap about Harris Tweed. For someone who claims not to watch much TV, I have been watching quite a bit lately..