Hawksley Workman. One of my favourite male singers. And the video is so beautiful.
Along the Canal
Alexander Trocchi's novel, Young Adam, is an interesting little piece of Scottish beat literature, if rather uneven. It tells the story of Joe, a young disaffected man working and living on a barge boat travelling between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The film adaptation, which stars Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton and Peter Mullan, is excellent and well-worth your time (if you like your films grim and existential). Nowadays I live a very short walk away from the Forth and Clyde canal where Young Adam is set - I still halfway expect to see Ewan McGregor in a fetching fisherman's sweater every time we walk along the canal.
Today we walked down to the annual Big Man event which seeks to get the local community involved in the area surrounding the Forth and Clyde canal. Local artist Andy Scott is hoping to erect a 30m steel sculpture-cum-footbridge (the Big Man) across one of the canal junctions - in Scott's own words: "the footbridge will be representational of the historic ironworks, boat-building and other industries that were found in the (..) area. I hope he becomes a symbol of the area's proud history and a beacon of hope for the future".
Anyway.
I've now embarked on the bane of my life: the Christmas wish list. Usually I get asked for it in August but this year my family managed to wait until end of September because we are going across to Denmark and so they do not need to post the presents. I'm wondering if it would be okay to ask for yarn seeing as I'm yet to knit up all the yarn I got last year.. Any good Danish knitting books just published? Any new Scandinavian yarns? Any good shawl pin vendors in Denmark?
Now to write the UK version..
Recharging Our Batteries
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..
Calendar Confusion
This is another week where I'm going "How can it only be Tuesday? It must be Friday! Thursday, late Thursday, then!" and then my Filofax pulls me aside and gently points out it is only Tuesday. Oh my. Send me energy, adrenaline shots, copious amounts of coffee and a great deal of fortitude.
PS. Students are back. I can't stand students (therefore I must be a grown-up, I guess). I have a serious problem with students telling me I'm a freak for being very tired after a very long day. Ah, your youth will end too, dear student, and it will end sooner rather than later.
Weekend
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..