Catch-Up

I have ten rows to go on my tenth shawl of 2010. The rows are getting very long now, so I'm taking a break - just long enough to make myself a cup of tea and to update my sadly neglected blog. It has been a very long week. All my best intentions and all my best-laid plans flew out the window whilst I tried to hold on to my sanity and get through a mountain of work. I have been playing catch-up ever since returning from Denmark and I think I'm almost nearly there.

These things have helped me through the week:

• He Will Have His Way - the follow-up to She Will Have Her Way, funnily enough. Boy & Bear's version of Fall At Your Feet is quite possibly my favourite Finn cover (fighting it out with Holly Throsby's Not the Girl You Think You Are) and I also really like the surf rock take on Shark Attack.
• Humoncomics can be very hit-or-miss, but I liked their take on Scandinavian cuisines. I made Danish rice pudding this week - it's a main course in Denmark and makes for wonderful comfort food. We did not have any leftovers, though, or I would have made some klatkager the next day.
• Dogs Don't Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving. If you have a dog or ever known one, you should read this. I still remember how betrayed my dog looked when we moved across town (I was 18. He was deeply upset on a profound level).
• This youtube video made me smile one cloudy, grey November morning: Dannii & Kylie Minogue flash mob in Sydney.

My shawl beckons me (as does that cup of tea). Have a lovely weekend.

Reds & Greens

November is never a great time to take photos, blue-tinted light and all, so excuse the slight bluriness and blueness of these photos. I have been working on this Kim Hargreaves cardigan ever since Touching Elegance was published. It should not have taken me this long but a lot of things have conspired against me: other projects, a sudden lack of knitting mojo, stressful time at work, injury-prone hands..

Luckily I was able to devote some proper time to the cardigan during my holiday and the second front knitted up in less than four days. I found my homemade spreadsheet absolutely invaluable: all the increase and decreases which make for a slightly biased fabric and create a gently sloped front edge were just too much to keep straight in my head. I'm a visual learner and I think I'll make these spreadsheets a lot in the future unless I'm dealing with extremely basic shapes.

Whilst I was in Copenhagen, I decided to search for suitable buttons. The original pattern just calls for five buttons, but I had decided to incorporate a sixth buttonhole to help stabilise the fronts as I've knitted this cardigan with negative ease. I found the perfect buttons in a fabric shop and I'm very pleased by how I managed to find some in the same shade of red (it's not an easy shade of red to match - it is a coral-ish, slightly cool red). My original plan was to find some navy and white buttons to give the cardigan a nautical feel, but these buttons make it a much more versatile garment. Score!

Incidentally, this is the best piece of knitting advice I have ever been given (thanks Gran): Use the most expensive buttons you can afford. Cheap buttons will make even the most luxurious garment feel cheap whilst expensive buttons will make a simple garment look like a million.

I have also been knitting socks. Well, mini-socks to be precise.

I'm running a Christmas workshop later this week and have been playing around with scrap yarn in preparation. The grey sock is knitted in 4ply yarn and the red sock in aran-weight yarn. I plan on adding embellishments (beads, buttons, glittery yarn) and see where that takes me. I also need to tweak the 'heel' as I'm not very happy with how it looks.

I'm doing yet another Christmas workshop next week - that one is about crocheting Christmas ornaments and we'll be using a pattern which has been handed down my family. I have already done a few swatches for that one whilst in Denmark (we called it 'mother-daughter bonding over Christmas crafting') but I might do a few more. Just for kicks.

Finally, thank you so much for all your comments and Rav messages lately. I'm running way behind schedule in answering all of you but I will get there!

Plans Afoot

Early next year I am getting a sewing machine and I am so excited. I have been trying to figure out which machine to buy and so far the Janome dc3050 is the frontrunner. I have tried it and I like its versatility - I am just not sure it is not a bit too fancy and it is perhaps also a bit pricier than I would have liked (especially for a model which has been on the market for years). What machine do you have and what would you recommend? I am not a complete beginner - I just haven't sewn for a few good years. I have also spent time thinking about why exactly I want a sewing machine.

Of course I want to make my own clothes. Being a proficient knitter has taught me how amazing it feels to wear something that fits 'just right' and in colours I like. Like many others, I find clothes shopping an ordeal - partly because I never seem to fit into one particular size and partly because I don't like most of the clothes bought in shops. Upcycling old textiles is also greatly appealing (and nothing new to me - my favourite pair of trousers as a teen were fashioned from old 1950s curtains) and being able to mend things in my home strikes yet another cord. Perhaps I'm just trying to convince myself that this is not just another act of consumerism but actually a practical purchase. That is how my head works.

However, I do find myself slightly scared by venturing into the world of dress-making. I went into a few fabric stores in Copenhagen and I was petrified. This was presumably how I felt the first time I went into a yarn store, but I really cannot remember nowadays. I was surrounded by rolls of material and I had NO IDEA what most of them were or how they could be used. I have mostly dabbled in cottons, so I was quite unprepared by the sheer variety available.

I am still knitting, of course. I finished a project whilst on holiday, but I need to sit down and work out pattern before I post more details. It's an own design and it'll be available in a range of sizes. I have a lot of things on my plate work-wise (going on holiday is great; coming back is always slightly stressful) so I don't know when I'll publish it. I only have the sleeves to do on my red alpaca cardigan. I have two more charts left on my Faroese yarn shawl. And I have a sample I need to knit with the deadline looming (yes, it's for a publication; no, not my design; yes, it's super-pretty). All so many projects almost done.. just not there yet.

Random links:

• This headline made me convulse with laughter.
• What a shame my Christmas shopping is done.
• Some people are geekier than me. Or you. Or my Significant Other. Although he enjoyed that site.
• What a way to wake up every morning.
• The geekiest thing I've seen on YouTube. Well, today.
• 10 Essential Books from the Last 25 Years. Exactly what it says on the tin.. not. Too token, too white, too male, and much too US-centric. Also curiously omitting the book which named the referenced generation and no Atwood either (take your pick but The Handmaid's Tale would be my choice).
• This Danish criminal case has rattled me. For years I lived very, very close to where these crimes took place and when I heard about the police trying to find the perpetrator, I had a horrible feeling I knew the guy. I'm very, very, very glad to be proven wrong (if indeed the arrested man is guilty).

Squee

Knitting. I may be grumpy about it at times, but there is no denying that I love it. This year I have been participating in the 10 Shawls in 2010 group on Ravelry (though I have not been social at all) and I'm currently knitting my tenth shawl. It has been a blast and also incredibly self-indulgent: I love knitting lace, I love knitting shawls and nowadays I really have very little knitting time left for personal projects so these shawls have all felt very special. I was pondering what I could do in 2011? I want to do something which feels just as good as these shawls and which can be spaced out throughout 2011. I hit upon my idea when I read Ms Mooncalf's post about hats. For a knitter, I have very few hats. This is strange because I love wearing hats. I love matching them with my outfits, love having warm ears and love using up random odd balls of wool.

2011 will be my Year of The Hat.

It's official. I'll knit eleven hats and my head will never be cold ever again.

Now to a bit about Recent Stash Enhancement of the Scandinavian kind. My purchases run completely counter to my Year of the Hat because, well, I am helpless in the face of North-Atlantic laceweight. Quite apart from the sweater's worth of bulky pure wool which I found in my gran's supermarket, I succumbed to a slew of gorgeous laceweights from an assortment of places: the Faroe Islands, Iceland and, well, Sweden. I also found some cheap preyarn/unspun yarn which I'm looking forward to trying as well as some double-knitting yarn in a very pretty green/teal combo.

Two other delightful things happened whilst I was in Copenhagen:

Firstly, my Bestest Friend Ever decided to give crocheting a go. Now she is on Ravelry and is talking about needing more yarn. I cannot be held responsible for this (cough) but it makes me very happy to see her employ all her cunning and skill in a crafty manner. She could rule the world if she put her mind to it. Next we'll be exchanging placemat sets and toilet roll covers. Just wait and see.

Secondly, I was taught how to use a lucet as previously mentioned. A friend sent me a peculiarly looking instrument this spring and I had no idea what it was, what it did or why she had sent it to me. I had some inkling it might have to do with textile history as I'm a big geek and, well, she is into historical re-enactment (and thus costume history). She brought a friend along for afternoon tea and this person taught me how to use my strange little gadget. It makes me very happy to know people who just happen to know what a lucet is and how to use one. It is so freaking cool.

So, anyway, yes: tell me about the hats you like, the hats you have queued, and the hats of your dreams. I need to plan my hat extravaganza a bit but going through 81 pages of hat patterns on Rav is a bit daunting.

Wordy

A linguist friend once told me about a second language acquisition theory: different people store languages in different ways. Some brains work like a giant filing cabinet: words, phrases, idioms and syntax are all neatly filed away so the brain goes to the cabinet, looks in the Spanish drawer, cross-references this with the English drawer and consults the syntax section before proceeding. Other brains have languages stacked on top of each other and perform advanced archaeological excavations every time they need to switch from one language to another. Guess which type of brain I have.

Ten days in Denmark. The longest I have been back since my big move some four years ago. Today I was standing in my local supermarket wondering why an elderly couple was speaking Danish. As it turned out, they were not - but right now my brain automatically assumes background noise must be in Danish and I have to makes a conscious decision in order to recognise the language as Scots English. Likewise, I'm searching for words: what's English for parabolantenner or 'Bare på beløbet, tak'? I know these words, of course, but I have to dig deep before they pop into my head.

Interestingly enough, I only have these problems with spoken language, not written. I'm sure there is a perfectly good (neurological) reason for this.

However, I refuse to believe there is a valid neurological explanation for the way the Danish language is being mangled by people who really ought to know better. Danish is being invaded by English - and it is not even correct English in many instances. I have never been a militant language purist (the way I acquire and use language prevents me from being too holier-than-thou) but I think I am becoming an old grumpy lady. WHY write "den perfect carwash du altid har drømt om" when the correct phrasing would be "den perfekte bilvask du altid har drømt om". WHY WHY did my gran's woman's weekly write about "en crunchy banankage" when Danish already has several words meaning "crunchy" AND most of the magazine's readers do not understand English in the first place? WHY WHY WHY would a major national newspaper gleefully write "livet er one long bundy jump" in the middle of an interview with a Danish designer thus mangling BOTH Danish and English? I nearly cracked when I was sitting next to a bunch of Swedish golf-buddies on the plane back to Scotland who kept shouting "EXACT!" but I'm told that is a valid Swedish expression which admittedly feels a bit deflating after I've been foaming at the mouth since Monday night.

Last day of my holiday today. I shall celebrate with some knitting and some tidying. I finished reading David Mitchell's latest novel last night but I need to mull over it before writing anything about it.

Selected Highlights

• Learning how to use a lucet. I love the Danish word for it: "at nulre".
• Biking around Copenhagen. Easily the best way to navigate Cph City.
• Being told I'll get a sewing machine for my birthday in February.
• Walking around the new prehistory section of The National Museum. It's really good.
• Having way too much good food - and bringing back various specialities.
• Finding a beautiful hand-embroidered table cloth for just 50p.
• Spending time with people who really really matter.

I have a few rants to share - the state of the Danish language, how embarrassing people can be in an airport, biased TV-journalism - but I'll save them for a rainy day. Likewise, I have a few knitting-related things to discuss but I'll get back to them after I've done the laundry (it is so good not living out of a suitcase) and unpacked my things.

It's good to be home. I just miss people already.