With A Slice of Cake & Heaven

I could not resist showing you a proper photo of how my Harmony cardigan is progressing. I finished the last bit of lace today, so it is all stocking stitch (and sleeve shaping) now. I have trawled Etsy and eBay for some suitable buttons - I know I am only halfway through the first of five pieces, but I have my eye firmly on the end result. I am thinking along the lines of these buttons or possibly these - I will start rummaging through my button boxes(! - it is true. I now have more than one big button box) once I have an idea of just how ornate the cardigan itself will look. Oh, I love planning.

I think Harmony might be keeping me company during the World Cup in football (i.e. soccer for you non-Europeans). I really liked the Olympics knit-along earlier this year, and Harmony, being both a labour-intensive project and a relatively straightforward knit, would do me just fine as a World Cup project as I cheer for the Danish football team and weep bitterly into my cold buttermilk soup when they lose.

A brief, brief interlude into Eurovision-land: I am going out on a limp here but I think Armenia might be marching towards glory. It is a tentative prediction as this year's contest is really too close to call, so call this "my gut feeling" prediction more than anything. I would also watch out for Albania (a great slice of electro-pop), Turkey, Georgia, and this year's surprise contender from Cyprus. Other pundits are leaning towards Israel, but I'm really not getting it,  while the early frontrunner Azerbaijan has come across limp and forced, so surely that is out of the running..?

Finally, there is nothing quite like being pigeon-holed with sweeping generalisations.

Also, this On the Rocks cover is one of the best Lady Gaga cover versions I've heard alongside that Paparazzi cover version (stay tuned all the way through the video - it gets better and better). Speaking of Gaga, have you read the Caitlin Moran interview? I had my own heroes when I was seventeen, living in Nowheresville and feeling completely Other, but my heroes were males writing songs from a male perspective (though Otherness arguably did play a part as core members of the band were gay). Later I discovered Polly Jean, of course, but I would have loved to have a prominent woman in pop culture playing hard and fast with mainstream gender perceptions (no, Madonna doesn't count for several reasons).

Now, excuse me, I have a date with a slice of carrot cake from Auntie M's Cake Lounge, my new home away from home.

Honey, I'm Home

I am home after three days working in Yorkshire. The sun was out the first two days and our surroundings were beautiful and very rural. During one meeting I spotted a pheasant walking about on the small hill outside and predictably enough I saw plenty of sheep, cows and even deer. I do not live far from nature here in Glasgow, but it is nice when you do not get a constant background hum of traffic. And I got a lot of knitting done during meetings, in the evenings and on my epic five-hour-long train journeys.

Harmony is working up really well. I am past the first lace chart and the rib section and well into the second lace chart. It is my sort of project, really - lace charts, fine gauge yarn and a staggering amount of knitting to be done - and I'm happy to sit knitting it.

Harmony is my only project  at the moment, though, so I will need another project to keep my sanity.  I have a gazillion ideas in my head right now (most of which involve completely  insane fair-isle, thank you Ben) but I may have to stick to summery yarns right now which limits me a bit.

I have been catching up on the Eurovision Song Contest - I was stuck on a train during the first semi-final which was heartbreaking and had to rely on text messages from Other Half ("Poland's a pervy Hungarian animated short film") which was fun, but Clearly Not the Real Thing. You can still catch me talking ESC on BBC World Service's Digital Planet but for me it is now all about the second semi-final. I have high hopes after seeing energetic songs (and Belgium/Russia) making it out of the first semi-final, so I'm hoping the trend will continue with Turkey, Romania, Azerbaijan and Denmark qualifying easily with a surprise surge of love for Cyprus. I also think Armenia will do well.

Just before leaving for Yorkshire, I followed an amazing thread on MetaFiler. MeFi is a decade-old message board and one night a user posted that two friends of his had found themselves in a potentially dangerous situation - could anyone help? Newsweek has a comprehensive look at the story, but you will want to read it all unfold on the MetaFilter site. Best of the web, for sure, and proof that social networking has more to it that celebrity tweets and Farmville..

Under the Peach Trees

Strange week.

• Finished a shawl. It is a gift, so I am not posting information or pictures before the recipient has opened her present. But it was an underwhelming knit: the pattern was horrible, the colour unlike me and it took me forever to finish. I know the recipient will love it because the shawl is so, so her and that makes it all worthwhile.
• Ripped back several rows of my 4-ply cardigan because I had mistakenly thought I did not need to check the chart. I did. Fine Milk Cotton still holding up really well despite the abuse.
• The Crowded House concert veered between being sublime (hello, In My Command), cringe-inducing (one of their new songs goes "In Amsterdam / I fell under a tram" - whatever happened to knees and kitchens? I want references to knees and kitchens back) and downright embarrassing (security guards being very obnoxious to anyone wanting to dance). And Neil Finn still sported a moustache.
• Other Half had to go to hospital due to a dodgy knee. He is fine now, but I was all over the place for about three hours. This is love feels like: one huge pool of worry.
• Finished reading John Buchan's The Power-House, a novella without a plot but a lot of sinister innuendos. It reminded me of Mark Gatiss' The Devil in Amber which I read a few years ago. This is not a compliment. In Buchan's defence, he was writing within the period.

I am now packing for my Yorkshire adventure. I borrowed Miss Old Maiden Aunt's Tangled Yoked Cardigan so I had something to keep me warm during my stay. Of course, my adventure coincides with the sudden arrival of summer but you never know about the British weather.. yes, all the stories about changeable British weather are true. I am also packing my 4-ply cardigan project and am pondering whether to bring a tiny one-skein project too (funny how becoming a Knittah changes your approach to packing your suitcase). I'm also charging my iPod (and if you have Spotify access, I have compiled a Spotify playlist for the journey).

I hope for a better week ahead. I have the Yorkshire adventure lined up, but even more important: next week is Eurovision week! I will be missing the first semi-final, but will be all hyped up about the contest nevertheless. Woot!

World Where You Live

This week I cast on for my Harmony cardigan for the sixth time. Let me run down the other five attempts: 1) cast on during Doctor Who, 2) cast on during knitting group, 3) cast on long-tail and ended up out of yarn 13 stitches from end, 4) cast on wrong size, and 5) cast on with seriously wonky tension. Cast-on number 6 worked, thankfully. I have had to adjust the needle size, so I am now knitting a 4-ply cardigan on size 3mm  (US 2) needles. Wish me luck. One thing is certain: Rowan Fine Milk Cotton is a quality yarn. Remember, I used the same length of yarn to cast-on (and rip-out). While the actual yarn looks a bit crinkly, the knitted fabric looks as fresh as a daisy. Just look at the photograph and think of the abuse .. I knew that FMC would be a good yarn to work with - after all, it is a staple Rowan yarn - but I'm still impressed. I am now pondering other potential FMC summer knits (Geno from Rowan 43 and Arielle from Kim Hargreaves' Misty spring to mind), but let us see how the 4-ply on 3mm needles work out for me and my sanity..

Yes, my hand is better while I still cannot knit as much as I usually do. Actually, my hand is just peachy, but the arm gets pretty painful when I've worked/knitted/typed for a few hours. I try to rest it as much as possible, but I'm also notoriously bad at "just sitting around". I need to do something!

A few links for you:

• Your Life is An Open Book. If you have a Facebook profile, you might want to reconsider how you are using Facebook. You will definitely want to check your privacy settings, and I also recommend using the ReclaimYourPrivacy widget. As an expat I find Facebook incredibly useful for keeping in touch with overseas friends and family members, so I cannot bring myself to quit Facebook, but I have locked down my profile as much as I possibly can.
• This Cate Blanchett/Alexander McQueen outfit is the most stunning thing I have seen in a very, very long time.
• This DNA/RNA necklace is pretty nice too. And more attainable.

And the rest of the day will be spent on paperwork before I suddenly become eighteen years old once more and will be screaming/singing at the top of my lungs (YT link). You never really get over your first love, do you?

Fools Gold

Despite my fears, my hand is slowly getting better. I managed a bit of knitting yesterday before settling down to watch Worried About the Boy, a BBC2 drama about Boy George's pre-fame  life (warmly recommended, particularly if you liked Velvet Goldmine. WATB is not as heady nor anywhere as clever as VG, but it explores similar ground). Completely unrelated, I have decided that this track is going to be the soundtrack to my summer..

The rest of my day is going to be spent doing chores, seeing some friends and hopefully my hand will keep on getting better. Thanks for all the well-wishes!

A Big Dose of Grrrrr

Disaster has struck - or, rather, my own clumsiness has struck. Last night I walked from our kitchen into the living room, closed the door behind me, and somehow my left hand got entangled in the door-handle. The wrist sort-of twisted around the pinkie and .. well, it was not good. I iced the wrist/pinkie immediately and bandaged the area. I also made it through work today thanks to a heady combination of pain-killers, ice-packs and assorted swearing. Sadly knitting seems to be out of the question (I managed one row during my lunchtime and it did not feel good) and I'm now wearing my left arm in a sling.

This could not have happened at a worse time as the next fortnight will be very, very busy in terms of knitting, working and socialising (and even all three activities combined). I have a shawl with a looming deadline, a 4-ply cardigan I am exceedingly keen to get started within the next five days, and a ten-hour train journey which I had planned to pass with some knitting. Oh, and a concert with my favouritest band.

Poor timing, Karie, poor timing.

If the pain down my arm continues I will seek medical advice, but for now I'm all about painkillers, ice-packs, copious swearing and therapeutic sessions of Cursed Treasure. Wish me luck.