Living in Interesting Times

Summer has arrived in Glasgow (briefly), so we Sunday in the park. We found raspberry bushes nearby and enjoyed my home-made baked goods. I sat reading 5000 Years of Textiles (edited by Jennifer Harris). The book is both a fabulous visual source-book as well as an engaging non-fiction read. I do try to have a balanced reading diet, though I do gravitate towards light reading in the summer.

The good weather even continued throughout Monday, so I was lucky enough to have an unexpected evening of outdoors knitting with a handful of friends. To our surprise, we had our photo taken by some semi-celebrities who did not even ask our permission. If knitting in public is suddenly declared the 'new cool' in a Scottish newspaper, I'm going to sue..

.. I still cannot watch the news. I was going to write a great deal about why I am so affected by the Norwegian terrorist attacks (yes, it was terrorism) - but I can't. Maybe one day I will be able to write about being Scandinavian and watch everything good about being Scandinavian getting attacked by an inadequate soul. Today I am not that eloquent.

So, some random links instead!

• How to make some very cool buttons from shrink plastic. Finally a way I can utilise my partner's artistic bend!
• GoodReads. I joined a few days ago and promptly added 796 books (686 read). Yes, I was in the library when everybody else was out partying and having fun during their formative years.
• Some very good yarn bombing/knitted graffiti. I always feel it's wrong calling it grafitti, but that's me being pedantic. Nor am I usually a fan of yarn bombing, but I like this.
• 19th C photos of Vaudeville and Burlesque performers. Since my partner fell in with the cabaret crowd here in central Scotland, he has found some rather interesting links.
• Russell Brand's surprisingly excellent tribute to Amy Winehouse. "That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I'd only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound."

I hope August is going to be an improvement on July. I have had enough of this month.

Reflection

Oh, Norway.

Knitterly Musings & Some Links

I have spending considerable time trying to figure out what to knit for the forthcoming winter. The last two winters have been terribly cold and I want to make things that'll keep me both cosy and relatively stylish. A bit of a tall order as I tend towards wearing five layers in the midst of winter! Pinterest has been a huge help in figuring out what to knit. I have a board called Oh, You Pretty Things! (guess why) where I pin clothes and jewellery that catch my eye. I have been fairly ruthless, so while it is not a huge selection what I have pinned really captures my taste. And so I measure all my thoughts and ideas about winter knits against that board.

Having the board helps when I fall in love with knitting patterns that are really outwith the rest of my wardrobe (or what I'm trying to steer my wardrobe towards). I am hugely in love with Wilhelmina, for instance. I love the colours, the shape, and the reindeers. And it goes with absolutely nothing I own.

Would you still knit a cardigan even if it didn't go with anything in your own wardrobe? Or am I missing a fashion trick and Wilhemina does actually work with what I perceive as my style? Yes, I need your honest opinion.

I'll return to my winter knit search, so here are some random linkage for you to ponder:

• Marie Curie hopes you'll knit a giant tea cosy in the name of charity.
• If that feels like too big a project or you want to do even more good with your knitting needles, why not join the Big Knit in making tiny hats?
• Of course Atlantis was just off the coast of Scotland.
• Tilda Swinton is the fiercest woman alive. Fact.
• Hackgate continues to thrive here in the UK (this MeFi thread is still a good primer). This weird story about a bin bag was my personal favourite daily twist in this increasingly bizarre scandal.
• And here's one for the Doctor Who fans among you.
• You know that my twenty-year long love affair with his music has died when I don't even casually stroll down Byres Road hoping for a glimpse..
• The Minefield of Female Relationships is an interesting read, though I have reservations about .. aspects.

The Week That Was

The week in brief: One Karise shawl. This one was knitted in Old Maiden Aunt alpaca/merino laceweight. I used around 325 yards - an amount I find freakishly low. Okay, this is not a huge shawl, but it is decently sized. Weird.

One shawl pattern put up for sale. It has been really exciting and heartening to see the response. Thank you everyone whether you have commented on the shawl, added it as a favourite, queued it, or even bought it. Heck, I'm thrilled by it all.

One book launch. Tracey S. Rosenberg came to Waterstones to promote her first novel, The Girl in the Bunker. I was thrilled to get a signed copy at the meet & greet. I primarily know Tracey as a poet, so it has been really interesting to see her move into prose.

One Danish friend has been visiting. She graciously agreed to go along to the book launch, but we've also explored The West End and visited the new Riverside museum. Her visit has made me think long and hard about linguistic identity. Hopefully I'll remember to blog about this later.

One dinner with friends. A lovely Turkish-Mediterranean dinner which has left me reeling for the rest of the week. Something was clearly not okay with the food because I have been groggy, sluggish, and nauseated ever since Monday. I'll spare you the nasty details, but I'm still not feeling good.

One adventurous sweater surgery session. I took scissors to my red alpaca cardigan yesterday. I hope it works or I will have wasted a lot of expensive yarn. I also feel slightly sick thinking of this. I'm now re-knitting one sleeve. Onwards and upwards, eh?

One major news scandal just continuing to unfold. The News International/News of the world scandal has been the gift that keeps giving for this news junkie household. Whilst I have been feeling out of sorts and reclining decoratively on the sofa, this news story has kept me completely enthralled. And appalled.

Who knows what next week will bring..

FO & Pattern: Karise

Yesterday I cast-off the laceweight version of my Karise shawl. Today I tweaked the charts one last time, had a final proof-read and, with a deep breath, uploaded the pattern to Ravelry. Karise is now available to purchase, in other words.

A few words on the pattern.

Karise is designed to be modular. That means that it is entirely up to the knitter how many times the various charts are repeated. I have given my own suggestions, of course, but because the charts flow organically into each other you can do exactly what you like.  You want to knit Chart A once but Chart B thirteen times? Or maybe Chart A 5 times and Chart B two times? Go for it.

Secondly, I have given a suggested yardage of 370-420 yards, but my shawl (pictured above) took less than 300 yards as did my laceweight shawl. I suspect I may just be  a freak, so I upped the yardage just to be on the safe side.

And the name? Karise is named after a small town in Denmark. These days Karise is mostly famous for being mentioned in a terrible, terrible song, but the Danish 19th romantic play Elven Hill takes place just outside Karise. Seeing as the original sample uses the colourway Ghillie Dhu - which means 'guardian tree faerie' - I could not resist.

Karise is pronounced Ka-REE-Seh, incidentally.

I have a few more design commissions, so watch this space. I also have the best idea for a shawl/scarf thingy but I'll need to play around a lot more as this idea is slightly outside my usual comfort zone..

Unwritten

I always say that the best blog posts I have ever written are the ones I never post. Recently I had conversations with other long-term bloggers (I've been at this for over a decade) about why we continue to blog. One remark stuck with me:

Because I love it. Many new bloggers think it is a quick and easy short-cut to fame and fortune. It is not. It is hard work. I do it, because I cannot NOT do it.

I have been thinking about blogging and my blog's various incarnations. The posts I will never post but which I have written in my head so many times. Posts that would increase traffic, get linked and re-blogged, and maybe even get some attention from outside the blogosphere. Stories that will never be told because they are not mine to tell. Two go back six years. One goes back just a few weeks.

I am thinking of these blog posts as I watch big-scale news unfold here in the UK. People who told stories that were not only not theirs to tell, but also obtained illegally (allegedly, I hasten to add). I have a hard time believing that they told these stories because they loved writing or because they truthfully believed them important stories to tell.

Words are powerful - even in these increasingly visual times.

And I am sitting here on a Friday night and I think about my little, totally insignificant blog and I think about the written word and readership.

And.

I have been very good at walking away from my blogs when they became too unwieldy and too .. too widely read. I was always very proud of Bookish, my literary blog, but I was also relieved when I pulled the plug.

Fourth Edition has grown into something to be proud of as well. It chronicles my journey from being a stuffy academic to an odd-ball creative type. And I meet so many lovely people thanks to this blog. Sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed too. I continue to walk the tightrope: I am continuously torn between my desire to maintain my privacy and my need to write these blog entries.

Don't think I have not thought about walking away from Fourth Edition (because I have) but I also know I would just start over again. Lather, rinse, repeat..

I guess there was a point to this entry but I lost it along the way. I just remember what I was taught and what I went on to teach: always look for the gaps, the absences, what is not being said.

This is worth keeping in mind. Not just for blogging but also for news coverage.