A Woolly Head

This is how a sewage pumping station looks in my city. Pretty cool, no? I had no idea it was still in use, but apparently so. I pass it every time I am heading towards the 78 or the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. Mi ciudad es bella. But I mention the Sewage Station because the other night I had a vivid, odd and pretty cool dream about opening a yarn shop in that particular building (blatantly disregarding the fact that a) there's a funky smell in that little corner of Glasgow and b) it is a freaking big building for a modest little business proposal).I had even named the shop, Riverworks Wool, and had begun planning the inventory in my head.

As it is, my local yarn shop is a boutique with all it entails: exotic brands such as Habu (stainless steel yarn! paper yarn!), vegan yarn (nettle! hemp!), angora produced by one guy on Orkney and interesting indie dyers such as Old Maiden Aunt and Fyberspates. Buying a sweater's worth of yarn would set you back at least £85 ($120) .. if you could find enough skeins of one wool, that is. It is a place to peruse and maybe buy a few skeins for a luxurious scarf rather than a yarn shop you rush-visit because you have just seen a gorgeous sweater you have to knit.

Obviously my head had that on the agenda the other night as Riverworks Wool (sans smell) stocked workhorse yarns as well as luxury yarn (and a little tea+ cake section). It was packed full of the Garnstudio/DROPS range which is basic, decent workhorse yarn in a multitude of colours at a decent price. I had a fair selection of worsted-weight yarns (like Cascade 220 and Berroco Ultra Alpaca) as well as a substantial sock yarn selection (because I'd want to keep Paula happy?). Add to that, Malabrigo, Kauni, Hanne Falkenberg kits and Amimono ..

.. it is one of those things which continues to puzzle me. My mother's yarn shop in rural Denmark manages to stock most of the things I mentioned above plus the entire design.club.dk wool range, Italian, Norwegian and German yarns, and also the lovely Rowan yarns . If my mum's little town of 30,000 people can support such a yarn shop, why wouldn't Glasgow be able to? I don't think I shall ever get tired of this little rant.

Anyway.

Speaking of yarn shops, I found this Faroese online yarn shop yesterday. It is very, very difficult to remember that I am on a strict yarn diet. Look at this cardigan! Or this cute girl's dress! My Faroese is .. well, non-existant .. but it being a Scandinavian language, I can make out that a 1kg cone of beautiful worsted-weight lambswool would set me back £50 and it comes in, oh, 30 colours.

I'm not buying yarn, I'm not buying yarn, I'm not buying yarn.. although I have finished three projects thus far this month. Hmm..

Addendum: Isn't this Hanne Falkenberg cardigan the most divine ting you have ever seen?

IM IN UR WASTELAND

It is times like these that I wished I smoked. Tough decisions to make and it is (unsurprisingly) tough to make them. I knit to relax and (again, unsurprisingly) I have finished a hat within two days. So, let's distract myself with interesting links. It usually works..

+ Unusual Architecture does what it says on the tin. I rather like Poland's Crooked House and am in love with the Kansas City Public Library.

+ A Map of the Galaxy's Most-Travelled Space Port Stations. As someone points out in the comments: "A word of advice: do not use the restroom at the Eagle Nebula station. I know it means you'll just have to hold it for 30,000 years until you reach Carina, but trust me, you'll be glad you did."

+ A really interesting grid: Human Variation - The Height/Weight Photographic Grid. I'm particularly intrigued to see how I'd look if I followed my doctor's advice..

+ Libraries' surprising Special Collections.

+ And, finally, a soul-destroying link: The Waste Land .. LOLCat-style. I don't even find it funny, but if you are of a less serious disposition than me you might find some sort of enjoyment in "fonician in teh whirlpoolz,  spinny/ spinny fortunes’ wheel. / in teh fonician, ponder ur fate!" Grrr..

+ Finally, finally: foxes on trampolines. Just because.

Weirdness Ensues When I Take My Eye of the Ball

Don't you just hate when Real Life interferes with important things such as blogging? I have a multitude of things going on at the moment, alas. To paraphrase an old, old Alison Moyet song, my head is so full it is fit to burst. So, obviously, this is the perfect time to revive my once-passionate love affair with Glasgow's finest foursome: Franz Ferdinand. I know. I cannot explain it either (although I do suspect a 'eyeliner worn at recent awards ceremony' element). I'm not sure about their new album - I wasn't even sure about their previous album - but I have had the new album on repeat all day. Weird.

Here's the first single off their new album. Discuss among yourself if they are referencing Tennyson, Joyce or Homer..

Books 2009: Junot Diáz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

It is not very often that I have to spend time figuring out whether or not I liked a book and what its strengths/weaknesses were. I'm a trained professional, for heaven's sake, and I did not spend [undisclosed] years in Evil Literary Geek School just to sit here and go "uhm". But, dear readers, I am indeed going "uhm" over The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and I have been uhmming for a few days now. I started out loving this book with a fierce passion. I loved the narrator with his footnotes* and idiosyncratic diction. He was funny, contemporary and really refreshing. And then, whoah nelly, the book shifted to another voice, another place, and another time. Diáz is a technically gifted writer and I cannot fault him for wanting to play around with timelines, but once the narrator turned out to just be one among many (or, to use more correct terms, what I thought was just the main diegesis was in many ways both extradiegetic and metadiegetic), the book felt ..

.. and this is where I am going "uhm". Most books would fall apart with a narrative structure like the one I have outlined above, but this one doesn't. It is woefully uneven and comes to a muddled conclusion, but it does not fall apart. It had some sublime moments, but it also came across as very contrived at other times. I cannot make up my mind whether or not I liked it or not.

Perhaps it suffices to say that parts of the novel were excellent but as a whole it left me going "uhm." (And that you could probably categorise it as a post-colonial homage to geek chic.)

(* I love footnotes in fiction! The barking mad footnotes in Nabokov's Pale Fire! The mind-bending footnotes in Gray's Lanark! The comedic footnotes in Coe's The House of Sleep! The elegant footnotes in Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell! The conversational footnotes in Fforde's Thursday Next novels! Even the very silly footnotes in Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy! If it has footnotes, chances are that I'll love the book)

Into Temptation

Holy caramel. I have just visited The Bead Company here in Glasgow and while I'm not a bling girl nor a jewellery-maker, I can definitely appreciate a place as devoted to creativity as that shop. Two floors of all sorts of beads - crystal, glass, gemstone, metal, big, small, cheap, affordable, expensive and in every single hue of the rainbow. Plus, you know, space devoted to workshops, tools, a small but refined library and extremely nice staff. Wow. Now, can we get a haberdashery and a wool shop* as amazing as that, please? I'd also like a local bookshop with the same sort of dedication and range in stock (because the much-anticipated Lost in Fiction turned out to be a bookshop for people who don't really like books).

I have just finished Diáz' The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Thoughts to come.

* Not that I don't like K1 Yarns, it just doesn't have a particularly big range.

You And Whose Army?

Yesterday I kicked someone off my Facebook friends list. I came home, checked FB quickly and noticed someone from my primary school days had joined a Danish-language group called "I'm not racist but be nice OR get out of my country". My stomach tensed as I checked the group description with its ten so-called commandments (including "Accept people can eat pork and not be disgusting" and "Pay your taxes - even if you own a cornershop or a takeaway"). The Danish flag featured heavily, of course.

So I sat there just before bedtime and I was .. not shocked nor surprised..  but, I guess, saddened that someone I once knew would think it a great idea to join such a group. And then I realised that I have no time whatsoever for this sort of sh*t, kicked my erstwhile classmate off my friends list and headed off to bed feeling slightly shell-shocked.

I feel I should be doing something more than just block someone on a silly social networking site (and reporting the group to the FB admins as violating their TOS. I do not think they'll care much), but what?