Performance Review

From left to right and top to bottom: 1. Red Redux, 2. Grey FLS, 3. St. James, 4. Noro , 5. Snorri, 6. Liesl, 7. Paprika, 8. Handspun Yoke Cardigan, 9. Forecast, 10. Sun Ray, 11. St. Theresa, 12. Dragonfly (click on mosaic for full-sized picture)

Twelve cardigans, pullovers and tops.

Red Redux (1) and Dragonfly (12) are variations upon the February Lady Sweater. I wear the former more than the latter due to yarn choices. New Lanark Aran is studier than Patons Jet, even if it is nowhere as soft. Red Redux also has full-length sleeves. The original February Lady Sweater (2) is also knitted from New Lanark Aran. This is a versatile, comfortable and well-fitting cardigan. I wore it constantly throughout 2008 and most of 2009 and it wears beautifully.

I do not wear St. James (3) all that often due to its short sleeves and the itchiness of the yarn. I do not wear Liesl (6) all that often either, but that is because winter moved in just as I had finished it. It is more versatile than St. James and makes for a great layering piece. Sun Ray (10) should be a great layering piece too, but the neckline is too high and the waist-shaping not quite right. I wish I had had enough yarn for sleeves as I think that would have worked better.

The Noro pullover (4) is destined for the frog pond. I was so proud of it when I had finished it but it does not fit me at all. The neck opening is too wide, the body's waist shaping hits me at the worst place possible, the sleeves are the wrong length and all the edgings poke out no matter what I do. I love the yarn, fortunately, and will reknit this into something usable. As it is, I've worn it three times. On the other hand, I have worn Snorri (5) practically every other day since I finished it. Perfect fit, really warm and I'm superhappy with it. I also wear my Forecast (9) a lot. While I am not sure about the buttons, I love the fit and the snug sleeves. The colour makes me really happy too.

The handspun garter yoke cardigan (8) is beautiful and never fails to get comments whenever I wear it. I just think it's a surprisingly difficult cardigan to wear. I don't like it buttoned up and I am not quite sure what to wear underneath. It has stretched a bit since I knit it (I blame the alpaca content of the commercial yarn) and it pills ever so slightly. Mainly I just look at it rather than wear it.

Paprika (7) is worn a lot by contrast .. but only at home. On weekends, I throw it on top of my jammies and lounge about in it. I rarely wear it outside the house, though. It's warm and snuggly, but there is something a little "not in public, darling" about it.

Finally, St. Theresa (11) is the worst knitted top in my wardrobe. It is lumpy, unshapely and adds several stones to my frame. The colour does not suit me - I have been thinking about re-purposing the yarn in a striped pullover or cardigan, but I just cannot face the thought right now. Not pleasant.

Lessons learned: I like casual cardigans in hard-wearing yarn (that doesn't sound like it's going to be fun to knit). And I need to convince myself to knit full-length sleeves because otherwise I will not wear whatever I'm knitting. Oh, and I like reds and greens..

Thinking About Ravelympics

I have cast on my first new project of the year: The Fan Shawl and I'm using three balls of King Cole Mirage in the "Kiev" colourway. I hope the shawl will be a bit more blanket-like than shawl-like. So far the yarn + 4mm needles combo is producing a nice firm fabric. I'd like to have a warm, washable pseudo-shawl to wrap around me in the living room sofa. Here's hoping the wool/acrylic blend will actually block well (I like to live life dangerously sometimes). I have previously worked with the yarn and liked it then, but as soon you move away from doing plain garterstitch and into decreases/picking up stitches, Mirage becomes horribly splitty. The colours are great, though, and they cheer me up on a grey winter's day.

Speaking of winter, the Winter Olympics are upon us very soon. For certain knitters, that signals the start of the Ravelympics (basically knitters join an online group, decide on a project to cast on during the Winter Olympics opening ceremony and have finished by the end of the closing ceremony). I chose not to participate in the Beijing Ravelympics for personal reasons, but I am going to participate this year. Thing is, Mid-February is going to be a busy time for me and I already know I will have a big project on the needles by then. So, I've decided against a cardigan or a pullover for the Ravelympics. What then?

The obvious answer is either a Revontuli shawl (I have a brand new ball of Kauni in my stash!) or a hat/mittens combo. I finished 2009 feeling like I hadn't knit enough accessories and that my head and fingers were always cold, so that might be a good idea. I will be reorganising my stash tomorrow, so I might uncover the perfect yarn for a perfect Ravelympics project. I'm thinking colourwork rather than lacy texture simply because Glasgow continues to be freezing cold and I'd rather knit something super-warm that I can use until warm weather arrives (July? August? Never?) than something really pretty and delicate. Having said that, I like the looks of the Gosai beret and mittens.. Must. Resist.

First, though, back to modular knitting. So much for being a process knitter - I just want that shawl wrapped around me pronto.

Kettle Pot Black

I have always been slightly uneasy about my geek tendencies, but there is no denying them. I worked briefly for a computer gaming magazine in my early student years, I have a respectable selection of polygon dice, the shelves boast both Geoffrey Chaucer and William Gibson, and I have seen Star Wars more time than I care to admit. I even saw Revenge of the Sith twice in theatres which is geek dedication, I will have you know. But I won't stand for just any dross just because it has a spaceship, clever future technologies or a ray-gun. No, I like my genre indulgences to be smart, interesting and ambitious (.. or have Ewan McGregor wielding a light sabre).

We watched Franklyn tonight. A strange little genre film starring Ryan Phillippe and Eva Green - the sort of film B-list actors do between mortgage-paying big studio films and which often end up their best showcases (Gangster No. 1 is still Paul Bettany's best film, for instance). I liked Franklyn, I really did. It felt like a British cross between Dark City and Donnie Darko with beautiful photography and stunning art direction to boot. I am not sure it would appeal to people with little interest in "geek stuff" but if you like your slightly surreal alternate realities and high concepts, this film might just appeal. As David said to me earlier: "If I had watched this two days ago, it would have been my favourite film of 2009".

Speaking of "high concepts" I was mildly amused to see Adam Roberts' review of the new Jasper Fforde opus in The Guardian.

A kind of pleasant implausibility has always been at the heart of Fforde's appeal. (..) Shades of Grey, while not laugh-out-loud funny, is agreeably and pleasantly eccentric, cleanly written and nicely characterised. (..) The first 250 pages are narratively underpowered and rather diffuse. Fforde's young protagonist, Edward Russet, putters around his world, and the reader slowly builds up a picture of how things work. The second half is more gripping, and a climactic expedition (..) becomes page-turningly exciting. (..) I finished it with the sense that there's less to it than meets the eye. The narrowness of the high concept is, finally, too much a sort of meagreness, and too little a scalpel edge.

Compare this with my own recent review of Roberts' own Yellow Blue Tibia (in which I sadly omit to mention the strained comedic tone to the first 250 pages and the painstakingly eccentric characters which litter the entire novel):

I read Adam Roberts’ Yellow Blue Tibia this holiday season and I wanted to love it. Its premise sounds like something I would like – Soviet Union, science fiction writers and the possibility of multiple realities – but I ended up being disappointed. Roberts’ writing is sloppy (as is the editing), the tone is uneven and the book does not live up to its premise until fifty pages from the end when you get the feeling Roberts is finally writing the book he wants to write. I was very unimpressive with a running gag about a man with Asperger’s Syndrome which was wholly unnecessary to the plot and jarred badly. Still, the last fifty pages or so redeemed the book from being merely a bad read. It was an uneven and occasionally interesting read.

Maybe Roberts should have called his book Kettle Pot Black instead.

A Year in Books

2009's tally: 38 books. Not a patch on previous years (in particular the year of university degree and thus long-term unemployment) but a respectable amount nonetheless. However, sixteen of those books were fluffy Regency novels by one Ms Georgette Heyer, so I am slightly ashamed of myself. On the plus side, I managed to read some books I had been meaning to read for a long time..

Good reads: I discovered Andrew Crumey and I look forward to more books by him. Moebius Dick was my favourite out of the three Crumey novels I read in 2009. AS Byatt's The Children's Book was incredibly satisfying and I re-read the last twenty-five pages twice before finally closing the book. I finally read Donna Tartt's The Secret History and while I continue to struggle with North-American fiction (Atwood notwithstanding - long story) and I had a few quibbles with certain subplots, I enjoyed the read. The best read of the year was undoubtedly Michel Faber's Under the Skin. It was one of those "nasty little books" I love so much. An incredibly well-written, tightly plotted and genre-defying novel I know I will be revisiting in years to come. It's not often I find a new favourite read.

Uneven reads: I read Adam Roberts' Yellow Blue Tibia this holiday season and I wanted to love it. Its premise sounds like something I would like - Soviet Union, science fiction writers and the possibility of multiple realities - but I ended up being disappointed. Roberts' writing is sloppy (as is the editing), the tone is uneven and the book does not live up to its premise until fifty pages from the end when you get the feeling Roberts is finally writing the book he wants to write. I was very unimpressive with a running gag about a man with Asperger's Syndrome which was wholly unnecessary to the plot and jarred badly. Still, the last fifty pages or so redeemed the book from being merely a bad read. It was an uneven and occasionally interesting read. Flann O'Brien's minor classic The Dalkey Archive was also a comedic read but a more successful one. I was not entirely enthralled by it, though, but I am glad I finally read it. Junot Diaz' Oscar Wao was another book I thought I would love more than I did. I am still not sure why it did not work for me and it continues to nag me.

Bad reads: I really didn't like Ross Raisin's God's Own Country. It read like Raisin had read Iain Banks' vastly superior The Wasp Factory and felt the book needed sheep. Audrey Niffenegger's much-hyped The Time-Traveller's Wife was a huge disappointment to me. I thought it would be a genre-hopping, intelligent novel and instead it was chick-lit in disguise. Honestly, if I wanted romance or sheep-herding, I'd be reading Georgette Heyer. Wait a sec..

Goal for 2010: reading fewer Georgette Heyers, reading more from the unread pile(s), get hold of the latest books by Margaret Atwood and Colm Toibin.

With Sleeves - FO: Coupland

And the day before we left for Denmark? I finished the last sleeve on David's pullover. Here he is, that dear man, posing in a snow-clad Danish forest. Coupland Factoids: just a smidgen over 5 balls of New Lanark Aran in the "Bramble" colour way (I joined the sixth ball to do the ribbing on the second sleeve) and maybe 15-20 g of some Noro Kureyon leftovers (col. 124). Needles: 3.5mm for the ribbing, 5mm for the body and 4.5mm for the yoke/sleeves. And own design, of course. I continue to be head over heels with the slip stitch pattern I used.

So, in 2009 I knitted the following: 10 tops, 3 baby garments, 6 hats (my project page doesn't have the red beanie, for some reason), 8 shawls, 2 scarves, 2 pair of mitts and 1 "other" project. 32 projects?! Bloody hell.. I feel faint just looking at those numbers. I'll have less knitting time in 2010, though, so I don't expect I'll be able to match my 2009 output.

I do know one thing (okay, two things) about my knitting in 2010. One is that I will not be buying yarn for myself because The Christmas Elves (and myself) gave me a lot of new yarn. Two is that I will be getting more yarn because I am getting more professionally involved with knitting than I have been before (I cannot and will not say more on this, though), so the deal is to knit down my personal stash and keep the professional stash balanced. Exciting times ahead, it is fair to say.

What yarn did I get when I was in Denmark? Ahhh, this is the fun/scary bit. My gran gave me a sweater's worth of Hjertegarn Lima (rav link - this goes for all yarns mentioned) in a pretty grey-green colour, a sweater's worth of Løve Garn Iceland in a heathered grey (I'm thinking Manu, because the drape is really nice), 2 balls of Navia Uno in a gorgeous dark grey and a ball of Kauni in a purple/fuchsia concoction certain to make certain mortals swoon. David and I made our merry way to Copenhagen and things got a bit out of hand. 2 balls of Drops Delight, a ball of Fame Trend because I had been coveting socherry's haul earlier this year, some grey Drops Alpaca, and I found two hanks of the discontinued yarn I used for my Laminaria at a ridiculously low price. And then things got really bad/good when I unpacked my present from Bestest Friend: enough angora yarn to make a fluffy shawl, enough yak(!) yarn to make a gorgeous shawl (Bitterroot?) and, get this, 700 yards of laceweight cashmere yarn. My friend had raided this Swedish webshop for me and, gosh, I'm bowled over.

I meant to write about books because I have been reading a bit too and wanted to make an End of Year post about my year in books, but that shall have to wait.

Happy New Year, or as we say in Scotland, Happy Hogmanay everyone!

Catching Up With Myself

Sitting comfortably? Good.

Just before Christmas our computer finally died on us. This was not totally unexpected after some emergency surgery earlier this year, but still came as a surprise as the computer had been really fine and well until we left it for a few days in order to travel to Aberdeenshire (a journey which was traumatic enough sans computer death - we were stuck on snowy roads for nearly three hours as traffic stopped moving following a black ice accident). On our return there was no response. I went out into the heavy snow to get spare parts, but spare parts did not work. We had to leave the UK knowing that our little home was without a working PC. It was not a happy thought. As you might have twigged by this very update, we have managed to bring a swanky new PC into our life and I'll end this extended metaphor before it gets out of hand.

So. Holidays, then. Aberdeenshire was snowy and cold. Denmark was surprisingly less snowy and not as cold. I had fun introducing David to Danish Christmas traditions and we all enjoyed ourselves eating far too many home-made chocolate nibbles, reading books and watching TV. On the picture on the left you can spot a bit of my parents' garden (we loved watching the variety of wildlife eating treats left for them) and also a bit of the beautifully trimmed Yule tree (spot my mum's folded stars? She's thinking of doing craft fairs next year).

We also made it to Copenhagen where the lovely Kirsten Marie graciously let us borrow her flat. This was a real treat as I usually see an insane amount of people whenever I'm in Copenhagen and do not really get to spend time in a city I called home for twelve years. Last time I saw 19 people in three days. This time we saw three people in 1-and-a half days. The rest of the time we just walked around the city, shot a few photos, walked some more, defrosted our cold bodies with super-expensive coffee (I had forgotten how expensive Denmark is!) and walked even more. Yarn shops may also have been involved, but more on that in a later post. Finally we made it out to regular blog commentator Darth Ken's flat for yummy food and great conversation. I continue to be ambivalent about my erstwhile home, but I cannot deny it was great just letting myself relax into a familiar space.

Scotland is still snowy, dammit. It is also really, really cold in our flat and I may have given in to this "heating the flat" thing because I'm almost wearing as much indoors as I am when I go outside. And we have a swanky new computer! Tomorrow's New Year's Eve (Hogmanay) and we are determined to have a very quiet night after the rather leisuredly busy Christmas.

So, tomorrow: an FO, some new yarn and a tiny bit about something else.