Hanging Around With Scientists Gives Me Ideas

Experiment: sleep for X amount of hours (X being the amount of sleep I'd get pre-illness), try to be moderately active (i.e. go for a 20 minute walk), read a book, talk on the phone briefly and then see how this down-scaled version of 'normal life' works out. Result: I'm not well. Head foggy, speech slightly slowed down and I need to search for words (and use spell-checker). Hands shaking if I'm not sitting down. Mouth dry. Was on the verge of collapsing during walk.

I'm going to counter this little experiment with jasmine tea, my jammies, some knitting and a flick through The Knitter's Handbook I found secondhand (just £1!) during my brief excursion..

Dammit.

The Bonfire of Good Intentions

If I'm going to have to rip out another effing row on the neckline on my effing sweater, I swear I'm going to toss the effing thing on the bonfire I'm going to build in our backyard. What do you mean "Well, it's your first attempt at an actual garment and you did abandon the pattern after the first three rows"? That's not the point!

The bonfire I'm going to build will consist solely of good intentions gone awry: my copy of James Joyce's "Ulysses" that I took with me across the North Sea in the misguided belief that I'd read it (and left my vintage Georgette Heyer novels in the discard pile while I was at it); the tins of dry yeast that have been sitting in my cupboard for a long, long time waiting for my bread-making to re-ignite; the clothes I was going to mend last summer but haven't; the plants I forgot to water after having declared 2007(!) the year I was going back to have plants in my home. Let's not go into my decision to re-reinvent cabbage.

Okay, maybe the sweater will not go the way of the plants or the culinary plans. Knitting continues to astonish me - not just the process of taking a string of X material, looping it in various ways using fancy sticks and ending up with a textile, but also the actual community surrounding fiber arts and crafts. I may be frustrated by a sweater refusing to shape up exactly as I had envisioned it, but the frustration is countered by warm and witty encouragement from the knitting community.

Just three more rows of moss seed stitch and I swear this'll be it. Grrr..

PS. I have actually begun reading again! Hooray!

Must. Not. Buy.

Oh dear. Following a visit to the neurologist, I'm sitting here going: "I so need to buy myself some yarn as a treat." I don't exactly lack yarn, so I'm guessing that I've fallen into the trap of so many other crafters: buying supplies as a substitute for actually making something. Or perhaps I just really want something new and shiny to pet. Both? The neurologist visit was surprisingly constructive although I find it difficult to explain exactly how it was constructive. I'm having some bloodwork done and am scheduled in for another MRI scan. It feels as though I'm finally heading in the right direction.

It is time for tea, some cookies and an afternoon nap. I still need naps, alas.

Airing the Closet

I don't know if anybody's keeping tabs on the Now Reading section of the sidebar. If you do, you will have noticed that it seems to have frozen. Could it really be? Has Ms Bookish given up on reading?

Of course not. I'm just reading books that don't really fit into my usual categories. Yes, I'm reading knitting books. Gasp! Shock! Horror! And when I'm not reading about knitting, I am knitting. Or listening to knitting podcasts. I'm even contemplating setting up a knitting blog because otherwise Fourth Edition might just crumble under the weight of my ruminations on yarn I want, patterns I adore and angsty reflections upon my knitting abilities. You know, same type stuff that I used to blog about at my former blog .. but substitute "first edition books" with "limited edition handdyed yarn".

I'll be mulling over the knitting blog idea for a few more weeks. Days. Hours. Oh sod it, here's a picture of my first sweater. It's colourful. Expect slightly more refined stuff from my hand, though.

PS. Happy and constructive vibes please as I'm seeing a neurologist tomorrow.

Run, Run..

I'm not the only crafty-creative person in this household. Far from it. Other Half has a degree in textiles, after all, and his latest project is customising shoes. These are his Day of the Dead shoes (aren't they fab?):

Speaking of shoes and craftiness, my crafty friend Lilith is going to run a 5k race later this year to raise money for cancer research. If you want to sponsor her, she'd be a very happy bunny. Lilith has even arranged a prize draw which any knitter (or friend of a knitter) should check out.

If Food Be The Music of Life.. Hang On.

Robert McLiam Wilson is an author from Northern Ireland who wrote a series of critically acclaimed novels in the early to mid-1990s. Unsurprisingly he was interested in exploring what constitutes 'nationality'. At that point I was interested in his works from a literature student's point-of-view: could I say he was 'post-colonial'? Could I yoke him in with writers in Scotland who were busy reclaiming their history, language and culture?

Nowadays I am an expat and I find myself wondering about nationality in far more personal terms. McLiam Wilson claimed that he could only define nationality negatively: "What gives it its chiaroscuro, its particular flavour is a dash of hatred and fear" (I quote this from memory). As a Dane, I find myself part of a history which is not unique - it is the history of any small nation fearing its bigger neighbours. Danes' attitudes towards Germany and Sweden are complicated. In recent years the 'dash of hatred and fear' has become more than a dash in Danish politics as right-wing politicians play upon fear of the Others to secure votes. But is that my definition of being Danish? That I support any football team playing against Germany (and to be frank, I actually do for some bizarre reason)? It'd be a poor way of defining oneself.

As the days are getting longer and as the sun starts to beam down, I find myself longing for koldskål - a dish which is the epitome of summer in Denmark. And so it is: the most obvious expression of my being Danish is through food. A positive definition, thankfully. I have found a near-by supplier of rye-bread and my local supermarket stocks food items I never used to touch in Denmark, but which I now happily sample ever so often: salami sausages, Danish cheeses and the inevitable bacon. Sometimes I even make frikadeller (meat balls) with kold kartoffelsalat (cold potato salad). It feels silly but in a comforting way.

Koldskål is not so easy to come by, though. Its main ingredient is buttermilk and that's not very easy to find (unless you want to go to another part of Glasgow and pay about £1 for half a pint from an organic food store). Here's the recipe and yes, it's a main dish..

4 cups of buttermilk
2 eggs
4 tbsp sugar
Dash of vanilla
Juice of 1 lemon

Beat the eggs, sugar, lemon juice and vanilla together in the bowl the soup is to be served in. Beat the buttermilk and fold in a little at a time. Chill. Serve on top of small vanilla biscuits.

Yum.