FO: Abigail

To be honest, I thought it would take me longer to knit this little cardigan and that I'd have plenty of work-in-progress pictures, but I started and finished this little cardigan within twenty-four hours. I think it is a new record. Abigail is my own pattern - straight from my head through my fingers and into a finished garnment. While I have a few things I want to change (the buttonband bugs me a bit, for instance), I'm happy with the way it turned out. I'm also very, very pleased that the cardigan used less than 150 yrds of DK weight yarn. Stash buster, anyone?

As previously mentioned, I used Patons Washed Haze DK which is a cotton-blend. I'm thinking that Garnstudio's Muskat would make a lovely substitute as would their Merino Extra Fine (I'm on a bit of a Garnstudio trip at the moment, so excuse me). I used 4mms bamboo needles and some wooden buttons I found in my stash.

And Abigail? Abbie lives in my building. She is one month old and very, very pretty. I hope her mother will like the cardigan - I have sized it so wee Abbie should get plenty of use out of it in the months to come. I'm now going to reknit the cardigan for another little girl (this time in Denmark).

And the Rest Will Follow

After having drop-spindled for a few weeks, I'm now happy enough with the results to try and spin yarn I might conceivably work into something worthwhile. I've chosen some merino fibre in one of my favourite colours and am simply trying to spin as thin a thread as I possibly can. Depending upon how much I get out of the fibre, I may or may not ply it. Hopefully I will get enough to make a lacy cowl or even a tiny lace shawl.

Oh the excitement!

I still am woefully oblivious to the proper techniques, of course, but I can feel I'm getting better at "feeling the fibre" as my fingers work it. I can't ever see my drop-spindling a sweater's worth of yarn, but it is very relaxing and quite fun. I even have my greedy eyes set upon some of this fibre and this once I get just that tiny bit better at my drop-spindling.

Then there is the actual knitting, lest we forget.

I've been surfing various Danish blogs and discovered that my Pine is apparently "en pine" (i.e. a pain). I had no idea.

I'm knitting from the Danish-languaged pattern which is said to be riddled with mistakes and nigh incomprehensible. So far it is making perfect sense to me, but I don't know if it is because I'm a) an intuitive knitter who tends to use patterns as springboards rather than line-by-line instructions or b) using my grandmother's brioche stitch method which I was taught at a young age or c) doing something very wrong and not realising it? At any rate, my Pine is progressing well and I'm enjoying myself. I may get back to the question of the pattern's difficulty/flaws after I've started the yoke.

But that is not Pine in the picture! It is a little baby cardigan I started last night in Patons Washed Haze DK.

The yarn is working up awfully well and I much prefer it to the Aran weight I used earlier in the year for another baby item. The DK is smooth and doesn't split unlike it's heavier sister product - the colour is also very pretty and (dare I say it) gender neutral. It is a top-down cardigan straight from the top of my head and I'm really enjoying the experience. I'm currently combing my vast collection of vintage buttons - I may have accidentally found more - for something suitable. And more pictures will follow.

Treasured

When I talked about independent bookshops and Glasgow, I mentioned that my neighbourhood has several excellent secondhand bookshops. This is my favourite: Voltaire & Rousseau just off Otago Street. Sometimes I even think it is my favourite bookshop in the entire universe, full stop. As someone whose idea of a good time is digging through piles of old books long out of print, unsurprisingly I once went on a date to Voltaire & Rousseau with David, now my live-in partner. But the bookshop is an acquired taste. On the photo you can just about make out its first room - the £1 room - and it is symptomatic for the entire shop. Books are vaguely sorted into categories and then shoved into ramshackled shelves or stacked on the floor. Last time I was there, I dug through an entire box of literary criticism hidden behind a ladder. The main room is similarly organised/disorganised. This is not a place you go if you want to find one specific book. This is a place you visit to find books you never knew you needed - and you go frequently to keep up with what is in (visible) stock. I think it's a slice of heaven on earth.

A few links for your perusal:

• The Human Genre Project: "..a collection of new writing in very short forms — short stories, flash fictions, reflections, poems — inspired by genes and genomics." They are actively looking for contributors, so if you have a short story or a poem kicking about, do take a look.
• Adipositivity (NSFW) "..aims to promote size acceptance (..) through a visual display of fat physicality. The sort that's normally unseen. The hope is to widen definitions of physical beauty. Literally."
• From KnitWit: "..I love the reclamation of knitting from a largely private, domestic sphere and drafty community halls where it is too easy to ignore,to be a more visible social activity"
• And from the Domestic Soundscape, an amazing post on the connections between earth, animals, spinners and knitters. I cannot choose which quote to pull because the entire post had me going "yes, yes!"
• Finally, the last in a triptych of related knitting posts: the much-linked Golden Fleece? post by Needled/Kate in which she looks at the (rather absurd) notion that Scotland equals cashmere. Warning: this post will teach you things about EU law and textile history. She even suggests you read Walter Benjamin.

Meanwhile, I'm not quite sure if I have a cold, if I have the flu or whether my body is just playing tricks on me as per usual. I'm off to bed and I have a few Georgette Heyers (bought from Voltaire & Rousseau) to keep me company. Have fun, kiddos.

I Am Aware Of My Own Mortality

The other day I tried on a wedding dress. Now before you all start screaming with joy and gushing - hold on for a minute and let me explain.

Principles is yet another UK clothes chain in deep financial doo-doo. It sells really nice stuff, though, and I went into one of their closing-down sales to have a gander. And I saw this which looks more like a 60ish mini-dress than a tunic. And I thought to myself: "If that no-good man of mine ever asks me, I'd want to wear a slightly hippie-ish 60ish inspired tatted-lace dress, wouldn't I (with these shoes)?" Sadly it was very shapeless, being a tunic and not a mini-dress.

Seeing my partner's facial expression when I told him? Highlight of my day, I tell you, highlight of my day.

And deep down it all felt a bit weird too.

Also in the "oh dear, I'm getting on in years" vein, several people around me insist on spawning. This has resulted in me spending several traumatic minutes combing the Ravelry database for acceptable baby knitting projects. So far I have found these patterns: Lucille (a vintage-inspired cardigan), Autumn Leaves (a simple cardigan with a patterned yoke) and the super-cute Fiona's Top. Clearly I need patterns for stuff that boys can wear too. Any recommendations?

Finally, todays' "neighbourhood" photo was taken yesterday at the North Kelvinside Meadow, a green space just two minutes away from our flat. The meadow is a disused space which has never had any housing on it and has been out of use since the 1970s. Local campaigners are now trying to persuade Glasgow City Council that we need to turn it into a meadow rather than flats. Cue guerrilla gardening!

In the Shadows of Trees

Mooncalf requested a picture of my Pine. As the picture reveals, the cardigan's green (which will shock and surprise many of my regular readers). I'm knitting it out of two threads of the same fingering-weight yarn which is an unusual experience for me.

First I thought I could cheat and use some lovely tweed worsted-weight yarn I have in my stash, but when I actually read through the entire pattern like a good girl, I realised that some parts are knitted using one thread. So two threads it is, although I suppose you could get away with using worsted-weight yarn and matching fingering weight. Something to consider if you are planning on knitting this.

The body consists of four "ridges" and I'm on my third already, so it is a relatively quick and easy knit. I'm still sliiiightly unsure whether or not I shall have enough yarn (i.e. I have just about what the pattern suggests but I've been told to be slightly wary of Helga Isager's yarn requirements), but I suppose I could always have the button-band be a contrasting colour?

As for where I was sitting this afternoon - well, the Glasgow Botanical Garden is a perennial favourite. It is a short walk away from my home, it's relatively quiet even on busy (i.e. sunny) days and I can go into the Kibble Palace (pictured) if it starts to rain.

After a long, stressful and utterly busy week, I took great joy in buying some sugary tea, getting my knitting out and just chill with my knitting for an hour or so before my Other Half came in to get me. I need more afternoons like this.

I also took some more photographs of my neighbourhood because I do love my West End and several of my Danish friends have requested a few photos of the place. Stay tuned.

Tonight, though, the concluding part of Torchwood Season Three (aka "Children of the Earth"). Scarily Torchwood S3 has been jumping the shark in reverse, so instead of going from good to bad, it has gone from being ludicrous in its first season to being absolutely compelling viewing. All I'll say is that this season had me at "Well, what else are the school league tables for..?"

Lost in Fiction - RIP?

Our local independent bookshop, Lost in Fiction, closed its doors recently. I greeted the news with very mixed emotions. Independent bookshops are becoming increasingly rare and it hurts every time one of them closes. The closing-down of LiF also reflects that rents and commercial property prices in the Glasgow West End are spinning out of control. An entire block on Byres Road, our main shopping street, now consists of closed shop fronts. People are taking bets on which shop is next to go.

On the other hand, Lost in Fiction was a really crap bookshop. I say this both as someone with extensive experience within the book business and as someone who should've been LiF's target audience. LiF was essentially a bookshop for people who don't like books very much. Its stock was curiously bland and resembled a slightly dated airport bookshop: pastel-coloured chick-lit and cheap thrills dominated with a few super-hyped literary novels from yesteryear scattered on the shelves. If LiF had an editorial profile beyond "bland mainstream", it was well-hidden. I think this lack of personality, this lack of editorial edge, was its downfall. Tellingly I visited the shop a few times and never bought anything.

As the West End already has several excellent secondhand booksellers, the idea of an independent bookshop is not a stupid one. I think you'd need a strong editorial profile and possibly even a specialised interest (such as  hard SF or GLBT literature), but above all other things the owner of the bookshop would need to know books and the book business.

I'm already looking forward to the day when that bookshop opens.

In other news, my current knitting project, Pine, is going well. This'll be my first bottom-up cardigan and while I'm not enjoying the tedious work on the body, the brioche stitches are making the knitting go quite fast. I'm horribly busy at the moment and my parents are visiting soon, so I do not anticipate seeing it finished just yet - but it is a semi-quick knit regardless. I have acquired (even more) vintage buttons which will look rather nice.