Worldwide Knit In Public Day, Glasgow Edition

A big thank you to everybody who showed up for the Worldwide Knitting in Public Day in Glasgow.

We had a lovely picnic at the Kelvingrove rockery (you can even see Lord Kelvin in the background looking at us - we thought about knitting him a beanie). It turned out to be so much fun that we are thinking about having another knitters' picnic later this summer. It was great to see so many people from various knitting groups and places (New York! New York!!).

Thank you to everyone who brought cake, fruit, homebaked bread and sunscreen. A special thank you to the amazing Jen who had devised a knitting game with fabulous prizes (handspun yarn! spinning fibre! dyeing kit! handdyed yarn!).

And now to apply copious amounts of aftersun lotion..

FO: Laminaria

"See," Personal Photographer said, "you totally look like Naomi Watts". It's not that I don't appreciate the sentiment; it's more that I think Personal Photographer might need glasses. Or maybe he just thinks that my red Laminaria is glam and I agree with him on that. I'm not tiny, blonde or Australian - but I am feeling very glam when I wear my shawl. Lamniaria, oh, Laminaria. Where to begin?

I had no problems with the pattern: it was extremely well-written, the charts were crystal-clear and the designer has made some very helpful Ravelry notes regarding yardage. In fact, I zipped through most of the charts without a hitch (even the much-fabled Transition chart - you just need to count your increases). If only all patterns could be as well-written as this.

My main concern was the 1-ply kidmohair/merino yarn I was using. It had fallen apart on me during the first chart - literally, fell apart rather than snapped - and I was anxious that it might fall apart again or break during blocking. As KV suggested, I knit a test swatch and blocked it before blocking the shawl itself. Surprisingly the yarn really came into its own during blocking and I had no qualms about subjecting the shawl to some pin action.

I will knit this shawl again - possibly in some Old Maiden Aunt merino/silk I have in my stash.

More photos at the Ravelry project page (and I do not look like Naomi Watts in any of those either).

Cast-On Frenzy

Laminaria is done. Tomorrow we are heading out for a proper photo shoot, my Personal Photographer and I, so this little sneak peak will have to suffice for now. As you can see, the shawl survived the blocking. When I finished the shawl I cast way more projects than I usually have on the needles at any one time. Perhaps it was because I had been so focused on Laminaria - monogamous knitting and all; perhaps it was because I wanted to do so much things all at once; perhaps my head's just full of ideas and I needed an outlet?

Don't snicker at back, please, but I have cast on for another Ishbel shawlette. I know, I know.. I didn't like knitting it first time around, and I've even cast on in Kidsilk Haze in a really, really drab grey-brown colour. My best explanation is that I wanted something completely different from Laminaria. Something to cleanse my palette.

I've cast on for the Topstykke tunic which I bought as a kit in Denmark. It's a top-down tunic with puff-sleeves, an interesting decorative feature on the front .. and it's knitted in light fingering wool on 3.5mm (US size 5) needles. So far I'm struggling to get my knitting brain to read Danish (my native language too!). I'm predicting this'll be a long-term knitting project that I'll knit when I'm watching TV or the like. Did I mention that the light-fingering wool is .. grey?

Third project, then. It is the most immediately interesting project of the three. It is a crocheted top-down cardigan made from two different colourways of Kauni 8/2. Yes, stripes! Inspiration comes from a Danish blogger, Liselotte Weller, who made a stripey top-down crocheted cardigan in Kauni - but I'm not exactly following her sketchy pattern. I have a very, very relaxed attitude towards crochet (it used to be my craft of choice for years) and I'm pretty much making it up as I go along. Crochet is so very forgiving.

Finally, some months ago I made up a crochet pattern for a cowl. I've been asked for the pattern and thankfully I made a few notes. I have a test crocheter all ready to get going, so watch this space.

"Because I know I shall not know"

I have read poetry most of my life, it seems. I was a quiet Danish teenage girl who read Lord Byron and Rupert Brooke in the school library, swooning over the bold romanticism of the poets' words and lives. When I was sixteen or seventeen, I bought a slim volume of poetry. Away from school, I discovered Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Tennyson and DH Lawrence. Poetry became an escape from the clutter and clatter of my everyday life. And, yes, I romanticised poetry. Then I began University and one morning between classes I was catching up with my reading. That is when I encountered The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot and, although I normally try to avoid hyperbolic blanket statements, that poem effing changed my life. It was like language streaming straight in my veins and I felt drunk on poetry for the first, but not the last, time.

Let me confess: I have a special place in my heart (and brain) for High Modernism. Earlier I described High Modernism as

"that vast array of strange and deliberately disconcerting art forms which emerged in the Western part of the world around 1908-ish and which petered out towards the end of the 1930s. Shklovsky’s definition of остранение (ostranenie or ‘defamiliarisation’) describes my favourite art works so splendidly: they unsettle the readers/listeners/spectators by forcing them to acknowledge the artifice of art (and thereby making a clean break with the naturalist tradition of art)."

This is an intellectual sort of enjoyment: I enjoy the game of making meaning; I derive pleasure from understanding patterns emerging from seeming chaos. I really like poets like Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein for these reasons. I have to work to get at the ideas behind the poems. TS Eliot fits in with all this, of course, but I also derive a very raw emotional pleasure from his poetry.

For me, Eliot's poetry is about understanding life. It is about finding your own way between one word and the next, between one moment and the next. It is about being intellectually curious, acknowledging how that is both a gift and a curse, and finding methods of dealing with this. It is about fragments and meta-narratives. It is about hope and loss of hope. It is about being human. It is tough, raw, almost unbearable and yet so .. beautiful.

My favourite Eliot poem is probably Ash Wednesday (from which the title is taken). An odd choice for an agnostic woman, perhaps, but it marks the transition from Eliot the High Modernist to Eliot the Religious Poet. I have always been drawn towards liminality.

One Small Step or One Giant Leap?

Yesterday marked the first time I could vote in Scotland. I clutched my polling card, brought ID with me and walked down to the polling place fully expecting to queue for maybe five or ten minutes.  I was the only voter, of course, and in no need of  ID either. I told the poll official that this was my first Scottish election and that I was very excited. She laughed and asked if I had brought my camera as she'd be happy to take my photo. Then I walked into the wrong room through sheer excitement, but finally managed to vote.

Excitement? Quite apart from the joy I always get from seeing democracy at work, I think that yesterday marked the day when I felt I finally have a voice here in Scotland. I'm that tiny bit more Scottish now. A bit more 'home'.

And then I visited a handknitting pirate who showed me how to needle-felt. The technique involves sharp, barbed needles  and obviously I stabbed my thigh a couple of times. I ended up with a little pin cushion which looks quite like a Microsoft icon circa 1996, but I don't really think needle-felting is my thing.

However, then the Pirate showed me how to use a drop-spindle and - holy caramel - I was instantly hooked. I was so hooked that I immediately found a good deal on eBay UK for a drop-spindle kit complete with fibre. It'll arrive tomorrow with any luck. Again, as with knitting, I think it is the feeling of connecting with tradition and history which hooks me.

Knitters' Picnic - Worldwide Knitting in Public

This year's Worldwide Knitting in Public event in Glasgow is going to take place on Saturday the 13th of June in the Kelvingrove Rockery, Kelvingrove Park at 1pm. We'll be having a picnic, so bring blankets, water, sunscreen(!), knitting/crocheting projects and something to nibble on.  In case of rain, the tentative backup plan is to meet in the main hall of Kelvingrove museum. Non-knitters are encouraged to show up and be assimilated.

Facebook Event link

(The other week I remembered Glasgow knitters idly chatting about a picnic months and months ago. I revived the topic on Ravelry and, yes, I've somehow ended up "hosting" this event. Let that be a lesson to you all)