Made

After several weeks and a marathon day today, I have weaved in the last ends of Homebound - Who We Are which I am exhibiting at Tramway (artistic nudity - possibly NSFW - them - not me!) next week. I will write more about my actual piece and take plenty of photos once the exhibition opens, but right now I'm just rather happy to have finished making it. Today has been a ten-hour odyssey of adding-editing-adding-editing and some more editing (I'm a big fan of less is more).

Leisure knitting, sewing, and blogging are all on the agenda for the next few days. I have signed up for a quilting course alongside some familiar faces which should be fun (although the quilting tutor might not agree after being subjected to us!). I have been practising the lace pattern for Fancy and I think I have cracked the secret code. I also have a halfway-done muslin for my Simplicity 2501 top which I am itching to finish..

.. maybe I shall start by having a quiet night off from making things.

First Signs of Spring

I went out for a walk in the sunshine today. Along the way I passed one of my favourite pieces of street art. Seeing this little happy seal never fails to cheer me up. Look at his wibble face!

Usually any graffiti or street art gets removed rather swiftly, but this little fellow has graced the side of the bridge for as long as I can remember. Maybe he cheers up the park wardens too?

Leaving the footpath running through the arboretum, I entered the actual Botanical Gardens. Snowdrops, croci and this almost-in-bloom tree. The sun continued to shine. I saw students curling up on benches trying to focus on their books (and failing miserably).

I honestly felt tempted to buy myself some coffee and a croissant, and join the students on the benches but I've been down this road before and know the Sore Throat and Blocked Nose consequences far too well.

Besides, I had errands to run like a proper grown-up. Well, if you saw my errands you'd refuse to believe I'm a grown-up but I'll save that for a later post..

Needless to say, I was also cheered by my lovely sunshine-yellow beret that I am wearing a lot at the moment.  My beret matches the yellow crocus flowers, I discovered, which pleases me no end.

Then I came home to find my postie had left a parcel for me. I had ordered some African wax print cotton off eBay and it arrived today! Hooray!

My fabric is lovely and I had a very, very pleasant transaction with the eBay seller (who I recommend wholeheartedly - how often can you say that about eBay sellers?). The fabric is earmarked for the Crepe dress which I have a notion to make many, many times. I just need to find fabric for the sash (maybe do the sash out of the same fabric? It is so busy it doesn't need to be broken up by a solid colour) and, of course, find the time..

.. because right now I'm really, really busy trying to make my piece for the Tramway exhibition work. Right now I have a bucket wallpaper paste and a bag of old newspapers lurking in my bathroom. No prizes for guessing what we've been up to tonight.

Knit Like Fury

Get involved. There is still time for you to knit a square and send it in to Janssen & Jetson. If you are in Glasgow, why not volunteer? You can help stitch the blanket together, you can donate your time and ushering skills, or you can help spread the good word.

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.