22:02

I'm currently reading Zadie Smith's On Beauty. The book is marred by a faint (if constant) whiff of hysteria which I'm finding rather unappealing despite the novel's veneer of congenial humour and sly take on family and academia. I am not sure I'll finish the book but I cannot really pinpoint why. Meanwhile, my thoughts go out to my friends in New Zealand. Most of my friends are North Islanders but I'm still rattled by the Christchurch earthquake. Friends of friends are still missing. I'm not a religious person, so I cannot pray, but I can at least sit here and hope for good tidings.

Finally, on a personal note, things are a bit rough at the moment for one reason or another. I'm trying to find joy in small things but even this exercise is becoming somewhat sluggish. Perhaps the long winter is getting to me. Perhaps I just need to make my peace with some relatively big chunks of my life. I don't know. Solutions/answers to the usual address, please.

Decennium

February 2001 I sat down and started a blog - I'm actually a bit hazy on the exact details of where and when - and somehow I've now blogged for an entire decade. Selected highlights (and low points)

2001: I began blogging (using my own software). I subsequently moved my blog to diaryland where I met DiscoDave, now my Other Half (although that happened much later). I also began meeting up with Copenhagen-based bloggers. We weren't all that many in those days and could fit our Xmas party into a small flat.

2002-4: I moved the blog to blogspot. My blogging became less about my hazy university social life and more about academia and books. A lot about books.

2004- 2006: I bough my own domain, bookish.dk, and turned my blog into a fullblown litblog. Heady days with publishers emailing me with lovely offers, getting linked by major US & UK newspapers, appearing on the radio and all that. I also gained a bonafide stalker in the process who had to be cautioned by Copenhagen police whilst I hid in my best friend's flat. That wasn't fun nor heady.

2007: My webhosting company pulled the plug on bookish.dk for no apparent reason (this happened to several other bloggers too). I set up this very blog instead after mulling over it for a few months. I missed writing way too much.

2008-?: Lit-blogging gave way to personal blogging gave way to craft-blogging. As a result I now show my face on the blog (and if you are a bit savvy, you can find my full name too). Blogging is now so mainstream that most of my offline friends are linkable. Social networking has become very intertwined with blogging and it is sometimes difficult to know when my blogging starts and ends (for more thoughts on this, I recommend reading Stuart's take).

Simply put: I cannot imagine the last decade without blogging and bloggers. Over the past ten years I have met a huge amount of clever, funny, witty people (and my boyfriend) through blogging. Some of you I have later met offline; some of you remain online friends. I won't do a rollcall because I will miss out too many people - and some of them have left the blogosphere too - but thank you to each and every one of you. It has been a real blast.

Can I make a simple request? If you happen to read this, would you leave a comment? You can say something about how you feel about blogging, if you blog (why (not)?), what your favourite blogs are .. anything goes. I would just like to hear from you - even you, dear lurking blog reader!

And here's to ten more years.

In Her Soft Wind I Will Whisper

Lady on the left? My great-grandmother. She would have been ninety-five 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 and 2010 with Momse's age amended. I continue to miss her.

For the Love of Libraries

I love the public library service for what it did for me as a child and as a student and as an adult. I love it because its presence in a town or a city reminds us that there are things above profit, things that profit knows nothing about, things that have the power to baffle the greedy ghost of market fundamentalism, things that stand for civic decency and public respect for imagination and knowledge and the value of simple delight. Philip Pullman reacting to UK library closures

Fashion Query For Fashionistas

"For an island look choose a pareo or sarong which can be easily wrapped around your waist.. Find the perfect swimsuit to get ready for the beach or pool parties. Purchase a versatile cover-up that can take you to the pool and lunch." But how does normal, sane women dress for summer?

A long-term goal of mine is to refashion my wardrobe through sewing a lot of it myself. Figuring out The Summer Wardrobe is one of my first hurdles. Every summer I end up looking through my wardrobe and struggling to find anything to wear. My natural inclination is to hide as much skin as I can which leaves me feeling and looking positively Victorian every year. I'm slightly fortunate that I live in Scotland, so I do not have to cope with constant sunshine and high temperatures, but even Scotland has the occasional summery day during which I cannot wear jeans and a long-sleeved tee.

But what do I wear then? If I were to define my personal style it would be along the lines of "minimalist librarian chic with a retro feel" (even if that makes me feel all pretentious and such). How do I get away from tweed skirts, leather boots, and woolly cardigans into something I can wear at the height of summer - and not feel completely exposed or like I'm playing dress-up?

Pointilism

It has been a hell of a week, quite frankly.

• A lot of work. I don't discuss work here so let's leave it at that.
• A lot of travelling across Scotland meant some truly great views from my train window.
• A lot of knitting got done on train journeys. My purple cardigan needs to be assembled and then it is done.
• Come to think of it, my red cardigan needs to be assembled too. I didn't reknit a thing, so I have no idea if I should commit to assemblage.
• My loo was finally fixed after being broken for four weeks. I was terribly excited.
• I've booked myself in for some sewing machine demonstrations/trials. I may commit to a model this decade.
• I really, really, really to catch up on sleep or my brain + body will fry.

Zzzzz...