Confessiones

When I started university many, many, many moons ago I fell in with the wrong crowd. Looking back, I can see how it happened. The nice girl living next door to me in student hall invited me in for tea and soon after she was offering to "lend" me things. "Nothing bad was going to happen", I was told, "everybody's doing it and it's perfectly normal". And this is when I began playing role-playing games. I had long wanted to play Dungeons & Dragons, but the only ones playing RPGs in my erstwhile home town were boys hanging out in the library basement, and they had a strict "no girls" rule. When my student hall neighbour, Liz, offered to lend me the Player's Handbook 2nd Edition, I felt vindicated. To this day, most of the D&D players I know are women. And they are hardcore, I tell you.

Eventually most of my Copenhagen social circle was composed of RPGers - this is not to say that we only hung out in order to slay orcs, but most of the interesting people I met also just happened to be gamers. Smart, interesting people from all walks of life with real jobs, real lives and actual social skills. They were interested in communal storytelling and in imaginary flights of fancy. I miss them. Sadly I have not been able to find a gaming group here in Glasgow - the ones I have found all meet on my knitting night! - but I keep toying with the idea of starting up a small group.

So, imagine my reaction when I read that a murder spree was linked to the perpetrator playing D&D.. yeah, I was not impressed. As someone in the comments remarked: "1989 called, and it wants its favourite baseless accusation back."

A few apt links:

• Dicey Knitting - let a d20 guide your knitting
• A Cthulhu dice bag pattern
• A d4-shaped dice bag pattern
• Impaler - "this battle helmet features bobble rivets and a pre-bloodied spike" (I felt this pattern name needed to be written in bold)
• The awesome Cthuhluclava

Ravelympics: Third Day Adjustment

Goodbye Clandestine sock pattern. Hello Spring Fern pattern. So much better. I'm now playing catch up. Watching the Olympics here brings home that I no longer live in Scandinavia. The Finland - Russia ice hockey game was just mentioned in passing, the cross-skiing events barely gets a look in (Denmark has always been crap but we'd always show some support for Norway) and we do not get wall-to-wall coverage of the figure-skating events. I remember growing up and getting to watch all the figure-skating qualifying rounds; now I get edited highlights of the top three athletes. But, I do get to see events like speed skating and the luge which I have rarely seen before. In fact I stayed up very, very late last night just to see who won the luge. Ooh, the excitement (and subsequent day of tiredness).

I'll leave you with a little link I have been saving for rainy day like today: Hipster Puppies. Unsurprisingly I'm finding this photo absolutely hilarious and I may have said something like this when I was twenty-one and unbearably pretentious.

In My Arms

My first birthday present was given to me today by David (a day early!). I was so thrilled when I realised it was a ticket to see Mr Rufus Wainwright live later this year. I have seen Rufus on three earlier occasions, but this one will be just him and a piano. Cor.

Now to wait a few more hours before I can start to unwrap the rest of my presents. Whee.

In Her Soft Wind I Will Whisper

Lady on the left? My great-grandmother. She would have been ninety-four today. 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 with Momse's age amended. I continue to miss her.

She Comes Scattered

Just a little peek of my just-off-the-blocking-board shawl. It's beautiful, it's warm and it's mine. Sorry. I notice how my projects travel by colour. I had a green phase last spring/summer, then recently I have knitted a lot of blue-ish purples and pink fuschia, and now I appear to gravitate towards rich reds. I hope I will never have a pastel phase. I do not think I'd be able to keep my sanity. Anyway, proper photos to come this weekend after Official Photographer and I manage to have a full day together. Official Photographer called me this morning to let me know that Crowded House will be touring the UK this spring and that tickets go on sale tomorrow. I have written about this before, so it suffices to say that Crowded House provided the soundtrack to most of my life. I connect places I have lived or been with their songs, and although I no longer listen to them on a regular basis, they are "my band". For one glorious moment I contemplated seeing every Scottish gig, but then I checked ticket prices and also remembered that I will be on my way to West Yorkshire for work reasons when they play Aberdeen. If you had told me ten years ago I would have to forego seeing Neil Finn live for matters involving sheep, I would have thought you mad.

Anna has written an interesting post about her relationship with "things", crafting and feminism. I enjoyed reading it. You may too.

Turning It Around

I am very bad at receiving compliments, but am very good at taking criticisms to heart. Yesterday I was called something Not Very Nice by a random passer-by at my workplace. It was completely out of order, had no basis in reality and all my colleagues were stunned into silence (which does not happen often). I felt so bad yesterday that I bought two balls of Kidsilk Haze and then went home for a big hug. I'm in my mid-thirties and I still do not know how to handle unfair criticism. That too makes me feel a bit blue and inadequate. So let me write about good things. Happy things. Things, thoughts, places and people who make me smile.

• Sarah Haskins makes me really happy. She hosts Target Women which takes a look at the often-ridiculous way the media reaches out to women. The Yoghurt edition had me at "yoghurt is the official food of women!" (and not just because I'm lactose-intolerant and yoghurt makes me feel really sick), but they are all very funny and, excuse the pun, on-target. That's Gay looks at gay representation in mainstream media with equally great results.
• At Academia Nuts, my good buddy R. writes about art as resistance and wonders how she can incorporate her thoughts into her knitting. I have similar issues with regards to my own crafting and would love to read other people's thoughts on this.
• I bought the pattern for the Snapdragon Tam today after coveting the hat ever since I first spotted a photo of it. Paula has just knitted a gawjuss version which pushed me over the edge. I am going to use one of the oldest yarns I have in my stash, a Malabrigo-ish 1-ply merino in a dark, lush forest green. This yarn was once fondled by Robert Carlyle, I'll have you know.
• I was watching Nerdstock: Christmas for Rationalists last night on BBC4 (BBC4 makes me very happy very frequently). The show was very hit-and-miss: I continue to have huge problems with the evangelical branch of atheism (hello Richard Dawkins), some of the comedians were clearly out of their depths and the shiny face of Professor Brian Cox distracted me from whatever he was saying - but I really, really enjoyed Baba Brinkman's Rap Guide to Evolution. Brinkman's not the best rapper in the world but he is very clever (and I find it delightful he also does a rap version of Canterbury Tales).
• I have finished my second shawl of the year (Rav Link - I have reasons for not writing about it here just yet) and am 2/3rds through my third shawl. I'm knitting this one out of Fame Trend (yes, still knitting up what I brought from Scandinavia) and I'm liking the yarn so much more than Drops Delight. I must admit I'm a tad tired of knitting shawls out of self-striping yarn.. but hey, it's good that I'm getting through projects!