Love Spreads

Life is good when the sun is out and you have the day to yourself. The postman brought me the Spring/Summer edition of the Rowan International newsletter and I read it whilst surrounded by buttercups, daisies and playful squirrels. Later, when the sun disappeared, I went to the local Polish deli for rye-bread, tuna pate and buttermilk. It made for a delicious late lunch. I also found two beautiful tweed skirts in a charity shop along with an old, old knitting magazine. Total cost: £3. Yes, it has been one of those days today. One to savour.

I need a tiny pick-me-up, actually, because I have been struggling with wrist-pain following yesterday's knitting group. The old ice pack came out again as did the pain killers. I have been able to crochet without too much bother, so I am wondering if the small knitting needles are exacerbating whatever is wrong with my wrist - I am using 2.5mm and 3mm. Presumably it would do my wrist good if I swapped my usual Continental style for the English style, but as I am working with cotton, I am worried about any change in tension.

ANYWAY. Today has been a lovely day.

And that is even before I mention that a girl in winter has given me a pat on the blogging shoulder. Basically, it is one of those spread-the-love things where someone says "I love reading your blog, have this virtual plaque, think of ten random facts about yourself, and then mention ten blogs you love reading."

I'll give you six factoids, though, because I'm really dull.

1. I have two of my own designs on the needles at the moment. One is a sock pattern and the other one is a beaded scarf. I plan on releasing the patterns. 2. I think in colour and suspect a mild form of synaesthesia. 3. I cannot wear high heels thanks to hypermobile feet. Well, okay, I can, but I'll be limping the next day. I have inlays for my (flat) shoes which ensure my feet are kept steady throughout the day. Thankfully I don't need to wear the inlays constantly. My podiatrist once told me that had I been born in Russia, I would have been part of the State Circus. Thanks. 4. I identify as a Secular Humanist which sometimes makes people think I'm a big fan of Richard Dawkins. I am not. He veers far too close to fundamentalism for my taste and I find him decidedly off-putting. 5. When I say that my style is "vintage-inspired casual", I really mean "perpetually student-ish". I still get asked for student ID in shops despite being in my mid-30s. 6. I once appeared on a Danish quiz show and then travelled around New Zealand on my winnings.

Now imagine the next sentence in big pink sans-serif letters across the bust of a Photoshopped Hollywood Starlet: Ten Fabulous Bloggers You Need to Add To Your Feed Reader Right Now:

• Drop Stitches, Not Bombs - clever and stylish Italian woman knitting her way across Europe (although mainly UK-based)
• Bellsknit - Bells in Australia has a way with words, yarn and food. Gorgeous photography and great sense of humour too.
• Thrums - a recent find. New York-based woman who reads, knits and observes people.
• A Friend to Knit With - the photography is just stunning
• Feather & Fan - the brilliant Orata's blog filled with her own designs and travels.
• Ms KnitWit - I really like how she captures the extraordinary in ordinary life in her photos. Also: smart, funny and crafty.
• Roobeedoo - Someone else who has been transplanted to a life in Scotland. She's a reader, a crafter and very human.
• Academia Nuts- I'm privileged to call her a friend. You should see her knitting projects too.
• Anarkistens (ægte) Kogebog - Danish food blog. The funniest blog I've read in a long time. And she's all about using 12thC recipe books in her kitchen. Respekt dér.
• Petra O - a Swedish craft blog which is hugely inspirational with its beautiful photography and distinct style.

I Need Distractions

My great-grandmother's bedspread/blanket arrived today. Every single square was knitted individually in moss-stitch and then sewn together before she picked up stitches, knitted an edge, cast off, and crocheted a decorative edge. (So much work. I can deal with the huge amounts of mustard yellow in the spread, in other words.) I wonder if I should drape it over our sofa.. We live in a rented flat, so some of the furniture is not exactly to our taste (particularly the pink-yellow chintz sofa).

Thank you for the comments on Becoming Less than a Magpie. After writing it, I went straight to Ravelry and started weeding out my queue. It has gone from 247 patterns queued to 77 projects queued. It feels very liberating. I know the new autumn/winter collections will be hitting the web soon, so I am prepared to see my queue get a bit longer, but I am keeping the following self-imposed rules in mind:

• Will it flatter my figure?
• Will it work with existing items in my wardrobe?
• Do I already have similar objects in my wardrobe?
• Will I get any use out of it?

In other words, I will assess concrete things like gauge and shape as well as abstract things like style and wearability. Also, I will no longer be queueing fifteen patterns when one well-chosen pattern suffices.

Style is quite abstract, isn't it? I am not fashionable (although for one brief month back in 1995 I was outrageously trendy) but I do think a lot about style. Being Danish I have grown up with a certain Nordic aesthetic - you might best know it from countless IKEA catalogues. Scandinavians like their simple lines, plenty of light and very little nonsense to their architecture/furniture/designs. A typical Danish knitting design would be something along the lines of Topstykke, Duet or Granite. Plain knitting with a little twist. On the other hand I have never been a very good Dane and I turned into an bit of an Anglophile when I was very young, cue the love of tweedy things with cables and fair-isle (or, in other words, everything Rowan). Add to that, an uncompromising love of Modernist art and design (and that pesky Scandinavian mid-century modern influence) and that is pretty much where "my style" is at.

See why my queue has shrunk so much? Yeah.

Now I'm off to wave a tiny Danish paper flag about. The Danish football team is playing their first World Cup match today and I'm slightly worried as they are meeting one of the top contenders, Holland. It is going to be tense and I still cannot knit.

Becoming Less of a Magpie?

The Football World Cup has begun. I'd be happier if I could knit my way through every match, but my wrist is still bothering me. A colleague recommended arnica gel as a possible short-cut to future happiness knitting. I am not one for herbal remedies, really, but I get twitchy if I have nothing to occupy my hands. During my "downtime" I have been doing a lot of thinking. Yet another fantastic Cargo Cult Craft blog post sent me thinking about the things I create and why I create them. This spring I made Millbrook, a lightweight cardigan, and it has turned out to be one of the pieces I reach for again and again. I want to knit things I will actually wear and I think I need to be far more discerning about what I chose to make. I think I have been a "magpie knitter" in the past - making things just because I thought they were really, really shiny rather than because I needed them.

I love knitting triangular lace shawls which I wear as scarves - but do I really need more than four or five? Instead, perhaps, I should look into knitting fine-gauge lace cardigans and pullovers, because a) I will wear them and b) they fit with the rest of my existing wardrobe. Fine-gauge lace cardigans and pullovers will provide the challenges I love in my knitting, and while they may take much longer, they will actually see some use rather than languish in a drawer somewhere. I'm thinking along the lines of Geno, Arisaig, Shirley .. but pattern suggestions are very welcome. My queue is long, unwieldy and does not contain many realistic knits. I am looking for winter-appropriate patterns as well as more summery knits.

Susannah at CCC makes a great point about realistic wardrobes. I find my wardrobe is very geared towards "vintage-inspired casual" but I struggle when it comes to dressing up. Recently a good friend became engaged and I had a moment of panic, because I have nothing I can wear to a wedding. Fortunately the wedding is some years away, so I have time to find a solution, but it was an eye-opener. I tried on this dress (I liked the silhouette), but I am struggling to see how a party dress fits into my lifestyle. Weddings come around every five years or so, not every five weeks. Susannah's point about realistic wardrobes comes in handy here. If I did have a realistic approach to clothes-shopping and -making, I would have a little shift dress I could pull out whenever an occasion arose. I would have matching shoes and a little handmade cardigan.

Another thought-provoking blog post about clothes and bodies come courtesy of ProjectRunGay. I know, I know, but their fashion recaps of Mad Men has been hugely enjoyable - and I don't even watch the show! This post about "Joan Holloway" (aka our Mrs Reynolds' Christina Hendricks) was a particular favourite of mine because I have a similar body shape and took a lot from how Mad Men's costume designers dressed Hendricks. I might be able to apply some of the logic to my own clothes. In a realistic way.

PS. I wholeheartedly recommend the Glasgow Boys exhibition currently on display at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum. I think it will become a touring exhibition, so keep an eye out if you are in the UK. I was particularly taken by George Henry's Symbolist landscapes and Japanese watercolours as well as Arthur Melville's impressive watercolours.

Injury Time

I thought the tragedy should be captured in majestic black/white and adorned with a Photoshop effect. Yes, it is my left wrist. No, I cannot knit. Yes, I'm icing it and am booking a doctor's appointment today. And I'm typing this entry with my right hand only which means blogging is really slow and annoying. Instead I'm reading and I'm very glad that I got the new Scarlett Thomas book out of the library instead of paying real money. I will tell you why when I can touch-type again.

Update: "bruised tendon" and I "need to watch the activity level". My doctor muttered something about I should have gone to A&E back when my injury first happened. Cough.

Ghosts in the Library

Mooncalf wrote a blog post today which hit home. "I have looked through my books," she wrote, "and I need to get rid of some of them." Almost four years ago I uprooted myself from Denmark. I packed twenty-four boxes and my suitcase, and I moved across the North Sea. I moved from my own two-bedroom flat to a flat I shared with others. Most of my belongings languished in unopened boxes until Other Half and I found the apartment where we now live. Twenty-four boxes. Fifteen of the boxes were filled with books.

In my Copenhagen flat I had a wall of bookshelves and the bookshelves were packed. I had books stacked on the window sills, on top of chairs and, yes, on the floor. I had books in the attic too. In other words, I had to choose between my books: which ones were important enough to go on that journey with me; which ones could be replaced; which ones were unimportant enough to simply be given away?

I bought small stickers and started sorting my library.

Green sticker: you will come with me, you are part of me, we will never part. Yellow sticker: I need to think about us; it is complicated; will I find you again in a dusty secondhand bookshop? Red sticker: sorry but we are over; it's not you it is me; you are replaceable; what was I thinking?

I left eighty per cent of my books behind me when I moved.

Regrets? I have a few, and not too few to mention. I gave away books I never thought I would read or re-read and now I often find myself running my finger along the spines looking for that Angela Carter novel I once began but never finished. There are huge gaps where Henry James and Charles Dickens used to reside. I really regret getting rid of my literary theory course books because I had some fabulous marginal notes and now that my brain is wasting away, I would love to curl up with Plato and those marginal notes.

And do not get me started on why I brought a standard paperback edition of James Joyce's Ulysses with me, but got rid of all those Georgette Heyers I have had to re-purchase. Self-delusion, I think.

Nowadays my library has mingled with Other Half's. We have a lot of Iain Banks, Douglas Coupland and William Gibson where once I had very few or none. We are running out of shelf-space once more (I have a cunning plan called "two-books-deep shelving") and I despair at Other Half's tendency to not put books back where they belong (I try to keep our fiction books alphabetised by author and under each author by date of publication).

And I feel haunted by books past because when I am standing in front of the bookshelves, I keep looking for the books that got away.

Time-Travelling

First, a link: this Cat & Girl comic strip made me chuckle quietly. Grrl travels fifteen years forward to meet her future self. 1990s Grrl is underwhelmed by 2010 Grrl. And I chuckled quietly because I saw myself. Having said that, I am mostly the same person I was fifteen years ago. I am older with a few new scars and bruises. I am also a bit wiser, less sociable, and more forgiving. I like the same things I did fifteen years ago (books, computer games, cake, my bed, old Hollywood musicals, vintage clothes, typography, Eurovision, and dogs) but I have added new things (my gawjuss Scottish boyfriend, yarn, coffee, philosophy, and matching colours). I think my 1995-self and my 2010-incarnation would get along just fine, although I bet my 1995-self would be appalled at my hairstyle (I just had my hair cut this past week and I am appalled).

In fact, almost fifteen years ago I made a deal with a good friend (who I miss dearly over here in Scotland). She would cook me a fancy three-course dinner if I wrote a book. Now it could not be just any old book - it had to be a special kind of book. My friend did not expect me to write an academic treatise nor did she want me to write a big literary sensation. She wanted me to write a frothy piece of Regency Romance.

I have read a lot of RRs - they are my comfort foods, my security blankets. I grew up in a household devoted to the weeklies' feuilletons, our local library's stash of Jalna-like books and, of course, Barbara Cartland (who I blame for my youthful infatuation with Lord Byron). Later I discovered Georgette Heyer who may be frothy but never nauseating (unlike Cartland). Today I go through phases: I may read a lot of RRs over a few weeks but then several years pass before my next RR frenzy. These phases usually coincide with stress, feeling homesick or going through a rough patch. Comfort foods and security blankets, indeed.

Could I write a passable RR? I think I could come up with a suitable plot involving, say, a Scottish laird's daughter who is sent to London for the season - on the way she meets a dashing highwayman who happens to be a notorious rake settling a wager. Add a couple of dogs, a duel, a dollop of gambling debt and a waltz at Almack's and I think we have a winner. Now all I have to do is write the darn thing and that fancy three-course dinner will be mine, MINE!

.. My younger self would be tempted, my 2010 self will probably just make the three-course dinner and skip all the writing.

In other time-travel-related news, Doctor Who made me cry this week with an episode about Vincent van Gogh, of all people. Your mileage may vary - the episode has divided fans in various online fora - but I took a great deal from it about beauty, art and life.

Completely unrelated: Congratulations are due to SoCherry who is on her way to becoming an honest woman and to Paula who ran a charity race today. Two of my best friends here in Scotland and they keep on amazing me.