Oh, my Glasgow. She is pretty even if we do not see the sun all that often and it rains a great deal. She is pretty.
We went into town today, to the Lighthouse (not as in Virginia Woolf, but as in The Lighthouse, the Scottish centre for architecture, design and urbanity).
Other Half wanted to see the Donna Wilson exhibition as he went to art school with her. We also fancied some free books.
In the end, we got away with eleven free books on a number of topics: food design, twentieth century architecture, re-imagining Scottish cities etc. Some very cool, interesting and useful stuff. I somehow also managed to buy a book on the Wiener Werkstätte because I'm a sucker for early twentieth-century design. Ahh..
Che Camille is not far from The Lighthouse. I like the place a lot and right now it feels like one of Glasgow's best-kept secrets. It won't stay that way. The boutique/design workshop takes up most of the upper floor of one of the many Victorian buildings lining the shopping street - and getting up there to see what they have done with the space would be enough of a reason, but they are also featuring fabulous, quirky clothes/furniture from young designers. I cannot afford anything (except tiny handknits which I obviously prefer to create myself), but I do surreptitiously feed off the fantastic sense of synergy created by its owner, Camille.
Tomorrow Other Half and I will be off to Che Camille's Clothes Swap/Customise Yr Clothes workshop. Should be fun.
(this is the staircase in the Lighthouse Tower. pretty, no?)
Thank you for your advice on what to do when the knitting mojo just isn't there. I have finished one sleeve of my grey jumper and will embark on the other tonight. I just think I hate knitting sleeves, to be honest. Then I'll be knitting the collar which is the bit which really interests me with this jumper.
I have two different types of collars in mind. One is an asymmetrical bow-like construct (vaguely reminiscent of half-a-fan neckwarmer (thank you, mooncalf, for the lovely example) for which I have no pattern plus I'll have to turn the construction around ninety degrees. I'm either going mad or am stretching my knitting abilities. Possibly both). The other idea revolves around a tube-like construct which I could attach with buttons. The latter is not half as elegant as the former but will not involve me trying to reverse engineer an unknown pattern and then turn it on its side.
Le sigh.
Next time I'm making a jumper, I'll use a pattern.
See the colour of my skin? I was standing on top of a windy hill in Scotland in January wearing just a long-sleeved tee, jeans and my finally-finished grey jumper. Don't tell me that I don't suffer for my blog.
I finished the jumper on Tuesday. Wednesday I wore it outside and found out my neck itched like crazy (and the collar looked silly). Friday I took the scissors to the neckline, got a little over-enthusiastic and had to fool around with lifelines and cutting out a fair chunk of the yoke. This morning I knitted the neckline and decided to nick the idea of a tied bow from St. James. I just had had enough of my own ideas at that stage.