St. James

My days are currently packed full of work and sleep. Seriously. Luckily I can also fit in my obsessive knitting as I have a three-hour commute. What you see on the left is the result of the past ten days. The pattern is St. James from the current issue of MetaPostmodernKnitting. The pattern has a tied bow at the neck but I have a strange aversion to bows, so the top is adorned by a cluster of crocheted flowers instead. The end result is really quite stunning and very vintage-ish. I have enough alpaca-silk yarn left for a dainty shrug/cardigan, so I'm going to look out for a 50s inspired little pattern that would complement St. James. Oh dear, I'm going end up with a twin-set.

PS. can you spot our Fourth Edition sign in the background? It's juust peeking out. Yes, we are sad, typography-obsessed nerds in this household.

PPS. Comments are very much appreciated but I cannot get back to anyone before the end of this crazy week, sorry. You know I luvs y'all, don't you?

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Is It Only Tuesday?

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You know what I abhor? The phrase "one of them". I was told Saturday that all foreigners should leave Scotland and when the speaker learned I was foreign, he qualified his words with a "but you're not one of them" excuse. If I had a penny for every time I have heard people use that phrase, I'd be knitting cashmere sweaters. It's a lousy, cheap way of trying to seem less xenophobic and more inclusive, but the phrase only makes the speaker appear more racist and exclusive. Anyway. Sorry for that mini-rant. It has been a long week even if it is only Tuesday. My head is pounding and I still haven't had dinner (because cake does not count). Let's go for some delightful links.

+ Viktor & Rolf's Barbican Exhibition. Side-by-side comparisons of runway models and quite creepy dolls. Interestingly, it took longer to recreate V&R's clothes in doll-size than it took to create the original runway look. + Interesting Bookcases and Bookcase Designs. I used to know someone who lived in a 17thC Copenhagen townhouse and who'd use the rafters as her bookshelves. It was awesome. I really like the children's bookcase-bedroom, actually. Wonder if it would be possible to recreate that in an adult size? + The Word Clock. What it says on the tin. + Czech uranium glass buttons. Uranium?! I came across these listings on eBay and I still don't know what to make of them. + I'm not a huge fan of cupcakes but this shark attack cupcake mountain is fantastic.

Finally, Charles Bernstein on the current global crisis:

Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems. The crisis has been precipitated by the escalation of poetry debt—poems that circulate in the market at an economic loss due to their difficulty, incompetence, or irrelevance. Illiquid poetry assets are choking off the flow of imagination that is so vital to our literature.

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A Serious Post On Politics, Sorry

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Statistically there is a twenty percent chance that Sarah Palin will have to act as President of the USA someday - a fact based upon presidential history* - or an even greater chance if you also factor in McCain's age, his medical history and his unwillingness to release current medical records. Bearing that in mind, Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric is the most terrifying thing I have seen in a long, long time. And now the McCain campaign has been suspended. The Republican presidential hopeful has rushed to Washington to give everybody a good piece of his mind and instead of letting the VP nominee do her job of stepping in for McCain, he has called off everything for the moment. Although, come to think of it, would you let Palin debate politics with Barack Obama if you were her boss?

Clive Cook's piece was written before the suspension of the campaign but his observation is even more interesting now:

"I do think Obama is handling the crisis much better than McCain--not because he is suggesting better remedies (he continues to say little), but because his instinct to reflect before opening his mouth and his impeccable taste in advisers are both working to his advantage.

These factors I think are much more important than the supposed popularity of standard Democratic positions on economic management. Unlike McCain, Obama offers no instant bold responses, needing to be qualified or withdrawn or forgotten soon after. As ever, he looks calm, methodical and unruffled--and has his picture taken in conference with Paul Volcker, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers, who command wide respect. His response may be thin, so far, on content, but it is an altogether more reassuring posture than his rival's tendency to hasty and exaggerated certainty.

Finally, as a self-identified Humanist, knowing that Palin was somewhat recently blessed to be free from 'witchcraft' is just unfathomable and, again, terrifying.

I'm struggling here, America. I really am.

*according to Lawrence Lessing

Drape Happens

I began knitting the Lush and Lacy cardigan a few weeks ago with my lovely alpaca-silk yarn. If you know me, this may surprise you as I am not really a 'lush and lacy' person, but I was tempted by the idea of a tomato red silky cardigan in a feminine vintage-ish style. I would wear that, oh yes. As you can see by the photo, I am no longer knitting a cardigan nor is my work-in-progress particularly lacy. What happened?

Drape happened.

If you are used to working with textiles, you know that drape is important. It is how the fabric falls or hangs. When you are planning a knitting project, you try to match the drape to the pattern. Some patterns call for a rather indiscernible drape while others incorporate drape into the design. When choosing yarn, it is important to remember that silk and cotton drape more than lambswool or merino which both have good stitch memory.

When I chose my yarn, I knew it would have a lot of drape. The cardigan would put the drape to good effect. Perfect. Except when I had pretty much finished knitting the back of the cardigan, I was looking at the floppiest flap of fabric that had ever flupped. And I still had to knit the two fronts, two sleeves, sew it all together and pick up stitches to knit details. I knew it wasn't going to happened because the end product would look like a giant tomato had just coughed up a dead alpaca goat on top of me. Not exactly a stylish vintage-ish knit.

So I ripped it all out and started over. This time I am knitting a very, very simple top-down raglan* top as you can see in my photo. It is knit in one piece and because the pattern is so minimalistic, the drape will be able to work to its advantage. I'm using St. James as my template although I am going to modify the pattern slightly. The sleeves will be much longer (because I live in Scotland) and the neckline a tiny bit different. And I'm very happy with how it all looks thus far.

And in related knitting news, my knitting group was filmed by Scottish TV last night because we are so damn hip. I was goaded into being interviewed by TangledFrog but I think I managed to sabotage the interview by mentioning astrophysics. I am not sure if the programme will air outside Scotland but I will keep you posted. Unless I feature heavily, of course.