SSS + C

Self-Stitched September is going swimmingly despite the lack of updates. It helps that the weather in Glasgow is unpredictable at best, so I get good use out of my woolly projects despite it being early September. SSS also helps me focus on what I need to make for myself and not what I would really like to make. Anyway, a photo of today's outfit. Forecast is a perennial favourite of mine and at the moment it makes for a great jacket. Depending upon the season I either use it with vintage looking shirts peeping out (like the one I am wearing today) or I stuff several layers underneath it and button it up. Either way, I love wearing it and the fit continues to be great. I'm also wearing my Vancouver socks. I need to knit more socks. Despite my unease about knitting socks, I like wearing them on autumnal days.

I look really tired in the photo. I'm actually okay, so I presume lack of makeup + lack of enthusiasm = tired face.

SSS round-up: Kaiti/Kiri shawl (Saturday), Snorri (Sunday - in the evening I switched to a Rowan Kidsilk Aura vest I haven't blogged about), Dragonfly (Monday) and Serenity/Haematite (Tuesday).

I am obsessed with knitted dresses at the moment although I know I don't have time nor the willpower to knit a dress, let alone the confidence to wear one. I love this Drops pattern and think that Kid Classic would make the perfect substitute. Imagine this dress in deep red or maybe dusky purple? Oh yeah. I'm also loving the 1960s vibe of the Grouch pattern and there's a terribly cute cabled dress, Georgia, in the recent Homestead Classics booklet. I think I might just stick to buying a knitted dress (if I find one I'd feel comfortable wearing) because I have too many things to knit already.

Finally, some non-knitting content: just like ten years ago I put Joyce's Ulysses aside circa page 250 only to find myself being engulfed by Life. I tried returning to the novel earlier this week, but my head was not in it. If I find my life slowing down, I shall restart the novel because apparently that is what happens when I try to read it. So I have decided to squirrel it aside for the moment and focus on Tom McCarthy's C which is on this year's Booker short list. All I know about C is that its author rejects the realist mode of late 20th British fiction (HOORAY), claims a kinship with early 20th C High Modernism (HOORAY) and that a review ended thus:

"Will he turn out," McCarthy asked recently of the French writer Jean-Philippe Toussaint, "to have been deconstructing literary sentimentalism or sentimentalising literary deconstruction?" It's a sign of his writerly horse sense that this skilfully realised, ambitious, over-literary book finds the time to leave a similar question hanging.

Clearly my kind of book.

Momse's Sewing Box

The parcel man brought me my great-grandmother's sewing box yesterday.

It contains buttons of varying sizes and colours.

And things that may look like buttons but have clearly been put there by one of my prankster uncles (yes, that's sweets wrapping paper).

And "Chinese thread" (I presume it is linen thread - do any Danes know?)

And a beautiful little container of French linen thread. I dare not break this open. So pretty.

And old coinage. 1960, 1969 and 1985, respectively.

And this is my favourite: a button from one of Momse's dresses. The colours & design are so her. I miss her.

Sensitive Knitters: This Post Comes With a Warning

I have thrown out several old knitting/crochet projects today. I don't think I've even ravelled them - except Newgrange, Ms Pettigrew, and Autumn Morning - as they were mostly pre-Ravelry. I chose not to rip out the projects because, really, the yarns used weren't that great and I have way too much yarn already. I chose projects that were ill-fitting, badly-conceived or just not used - and oddly enough D seemed more upset about me throwing out projects than I was. I don't really know why anyone would get upset about me throwing out an itchy rainbow-coloured mohair scarf.Or a hat which makes me look at though I'm growing fungus on top of my head. Looking at Newgrange I was reminded of an old idea I had for a crocheted cowl/scarf, though. I will get back to that idea very, very soon. Promise.

Current project is Patsy from the new Kim Hargreaves book, Touching Elegance. Judging from the online community, I am the only person in the entire universe to like this collection, but I really dig the 1920s/1930s nostalgia and its sombre atmosphere.

The back looked incredibly tiny when I first started but as I progressed from the ribbed section into the "proper" pattern, the sizing started to make sense. It has been a quick knit so far - famous last words! - but I'm already at the armhole shaping and am gearing up for making the fronts. Usually I'd work on a sleeve between doing the two fronts, but seeing as I have monkey arms, I will want to lengthen the sleeves so I need to figure out how much yarn I've got and how much I need to lengthen the sleeves. It'll be easier to figure out once the rest of the cardigan is done.. right?

The yarn is RYC Baby Alpaca DK (I think it's being rebranded as Rowan? All RYC yarns now come with nice Rowan paper ballbands). It's lovely. Actually, it's lovely. It's one of those yarns that look vaguely non-descript in the ball but bloom as soon as you start working with it. It makes a deliciously soft fabric but the softness has some body to it: it is not all fluffiness. I do like my alpaca yarns (I'm always cold & alpaca is warmer than wool) and this is one of the nicest I have used. I just hope that I'm not miscalculating just how much it'll stretch - I am knitting it to a slightly tighter gauge and I do want my cardigan to have a blousy feel. We shall see.

I need a couple of more projects on my needles, as Patsy is now the only thing I'm working on. I have a couple of knitting group sessions coming up, so I'll be looking for a few brainless projects. I also want a lace project on the needles - I started knitting a Laminaria shawl for ms Old Maiden Aunt, but my head was not in the right place (I'll get back to it soon enough, though). Off to search the Ravelry database..

.. but first I need to pull my handknitted cardigans out of the washing machine. I know. This blog post is full of knitting upsets.

Bricolage

The internet does weird things to how we are perceived and how we interact socially. Two recent examples:

1. A New Zealander living in Scotland has contacted me through YouTube (where I have added a few Kiwi music videos to a personal playlist) hoping to meet a fellow Kiwi expat: "i'm from xx, north island, where r u from?" .. Denmark? Maybe I should start adding a couple of Danish tracks to that playlist of mine .. nah.
2. Facebook sent me a message the other day. "Suggest friends for XYZ!" Today the site sent me another message: "Keep in touch with your friends! Leave a wall message for XYZ!" XYZ, a distant member of my extended family, passed away from cancer a month ago. Needless to say, the messages made me feel extremely uncomfortable. I can only imagine what it must feel like for her close relatives to be sent these messages and pushy 'reminders'.

Following on from that, I have been following a message board thread about personal identity with some interest. The thread started with a newspaper article talking about "late-blooming lesbians". The thread meandered through discussions on bisexuality, marriage and queer politics - but the one post which made me stop in my tracks asked about the idea of "always having known myself". Can we really, really lay claim to having a stable identity throughout our lives? One of my all-time favourite quotes is from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Ulysses:

I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.

I like to think that our identity is an amalgam of our experiences and a select number of personal traits. I cannot lay claim to "always having known" something about myself, because "always" is a really complicated word. My three-year-old self had a radically different way of perceiving and naming things than my twenty-five year-old self or even thirty-four year old self. I feel at peace with that idea of a fluid sense of Self, a bricolage-like identity, which keeps shifting and moving towards untravelled worlds. I feel significantly less at ease with always having been the same person.

Getting all this from a thread which was basically "u all suck an i'm rite" isn't bad.

While I remember, I'm tentatively planning an escape a holiday to Denmark. I need to recharge my batteries and I miss people. I don't know any dates yet (although it'll probably be late October/early November), but I just thought I'd give a bit of advance notice !

Friday Linkage

Some linkage for you on a Friday night:

• Sketch to Screen - The Art of Hollywood Costume Design
• A knitted calendar - you rip out the days as they pass. Oddly poetic.
• I'm not a huge fan of television as a rule, but I love how this TV set is displayed.
• Historic Crafts currently looking at spinning, weaving and dyeing.
• The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.
• Ask A Real Musician: Five Metal Singers. A classically trained singer listens to five very distinct metal singers. A really interesting read.
• Is England the most overcrowded country in Europe? How to use statistics in a proper way.
• Heja Sverige - a really interesting editorial from a Swedish newspaper (warning: it's in Swedish and deals with Scandinavian politics!)
• "No, You Can't Pick My Brain?" - I found this via my mate Ras who works as pro photographer in Seattle and who is fed up with a certain kind of people asking for a certain kind of advice. I can really relate to both Ras and the brain-picked article writer. And I now identify as a popcorn machine. Pop. Pop.

Self-Stitched September round-up: the Haematite scarf/shawl worn yesterday. My Millbrook cardigan was worn today. It's rather warm in Glasgow at the moment which makes SSS extra interesting..

PS We went to the Joseph Beuys exhibition today. I didn't like it much - I thought it was simultaneously too masculine and too infantile and too tied to Beuys' own myth-making. We then went upstairs to Aspects of Scottish Art 1860-1910 and whilst some of the art was too chocolate-box for me, I enjoyed it more than I did Beuys. You can try to lead this girl to Fluxus, but she does like her early 20th C art. Sigh.

Self-Stitched September: One

I hate knitting sleeves. Everything zips along nicely and then I get to the sleeves and my will to live dies. I think I have twigged why I hate knitting sleeves.

Look at the photo. I'm wearing a Tangled Yoke Cardigan. It was originally knitted by Ms Old Maiden Aunt but it was gifted to me earlier this year. Lilith had knitted extra long sleeves because she likes having cosy hands. Look again. The sleeve is a full inch too short for me, if not more.

I have monkey arms, in other words. I already knew I had long legs because I struggle to find trousers long enough, but I never thought about my arms being long. Still, it explains my hatred of knitting sleeves - I have to knit them extra-extra-long and I had no idea.

Oh, by the way:

'I, Karie Bookish, sign up as a participant of Self-Stitched-September. I endeavour to wear handmade item(s) of clothing/accessories/ jewellery every day for the duration of September 2010'.

Yes, Virginia, I have chosen to participate in Self-Stitched September. I might not photograph every outfit I am wearing every day, nor will I blog my outfit every day (that way madness and narcissism lie) but when I do post, I'll link to the relevant handmade items on my Rav account (or otherwise document which items I have worn). It'll be interesting, although I'm still trying to figure out why I am participating.

• I want to wear handmade items more often (although I already do this)?
• I want to mix up the handmade items I wear (more likely)?
• I cannot resist a good meme?

So, today I'm wearing the Tangled Yoke Cardigan and my Echo Flower scarf/shawl. Let Self-Stitched September commence!