Last Thing

Tonight I'm a cooking an almost full-blown Danish Christmas dinner (only 'almost' because I'm only serving one type of meat). We decided to make this a tradition so every time we celebrate Christmas in the UK we get a Danish Christmas dinner a week later and vice versa. It's a new tradition, though, and it is the first time I'm cooking the dinner on my own. We are having duck breasts (scaled down from an entire duck) with two types of potato (boiled and sugar-glazed potatoes), braised red cabbage and duck gravy. Normally I would also serve roast pork but it is nigh impossible to get the correct cut here in Scotland unless you order it well in advance. For dessert I'm serving risalamande with hot cherry sauce. I bought the cherry sauce when I was in Denmark in November! Food is such an expat thing, I tell you. I never used to care so much about traditional Danish food as I do now. I saw tea rusks in my local supermarket today and could almost taste hot elderberry soup right there and then.

(And seeing this little guy try out salty licorice (salte fisk!) made me beam. He's a very cool kid even if he says that salty ammoniac licorice requires "an advanced palette".)

Happy new year - happy Hogmanay - godt nytår! I'm off to try and balance four pots cooking at the same time..

2010: The Year In Knitting

In 2009 I completed 32 knitting projects. On the surface of things, I have not been nearly as prolific in 2010 but I have been busy doing other knitterly things: I have been teaching a great deal, written up various patterns and have generally enjoyed working within the knitting and crochet industry. I have met some fabulous designers, teachers, vendors, spinners, farmers, and knitters along the way. I would not want to change all of these things for the world - but I would like to finish more than 2 and 3/4 jumpers within a year! My two most used knits of the year? My Art Deco shawl  and my Haemitite shawl.

I have previously waxed lyrically about the Art Deco shawl but I am happy to wax lyrically again:

I used a free pattern and an inexpensive acrylic/wool yarn to make myself a big, toasty shawl. It was a modular knit, my first, and I certainly became very adept at picking up stitches (I reckon more than 2500 stitches were picked up during this project). The shawl quickly earned its keep during the big freeze of January 2010: I used it as a lap blanket in the flat, as a shawl when sitting by the computer, as a scarf when out and about , and as a headscarf during blizzards. Throughout it kept me warm and its warm, spicy colours cheered me up. A year later it has been machine-washed and tumble-dried with no discernible damage nor has it shown any wear'n'tear from being used so often.

My Haemitite shawl was a very quick knit, but the quickness of the project belies just how much use I have gotten out of it. I knitted a Kim Hargreaves pattern in some Rowan Kidsilk Aura in a neutral colour - and I practically live with this scarf around my neck 24/7. Its neutral colour means I can wear it with most of my wardrobe, it also packs lightly and - best of all - it is the warmest scarf I own. It is now looking a bit worse for wear, so I think I shall have to give it a good soak .. and maybe knit myself a second one? Here in Britain Kidsilk Aura has just gone on sale in the John Lewis department stores, so I think I might succumb..

2010 was the year I participated in "10 Shawls for 2010" on Ravelry (well, I joined the group and knitted 10 shawls - I actually did not participate in the group activities) so it is unsurprising that my two favourite objects turned out to be shawls. 2011 will be my year of hats and I'm really looking forward to that. I recently lost my Intuitive hat whilst on my way to Aberdeenshire so I will be wanting to replace that asap. A Karie with cold ears is not a happy Karie!

Apart from hats, my only knitting resolution for 2011 is to knit from stash as often as possible. 2010 saw my stash grow quite rapidly thanks to lovely gifts and work-related stash enhancements. I hope to keep the stash somewhat under control, get the masses of yarn organised, and to knit up some of my many odd balls. Modest hopes, eh?

A Year in Books: 2010

Here are two of the reasons why I blog: 1) I can keep track of things which would otherwise have disappeared through the cracks of time and 2) I am able to detect patterns. Through blogging I can keep track of how many books I read and learn that I read between twenty and thirty books a year. OK, one memorable year I did read 103 books but I had just graduated from university/unemployed, I was single and I had no net access/TV. 2010: 21 books, down from the 38 books of 2009 but a big up in quality. I started this reading year pledging to improve the overall quality of my reading matter and I'm pleased to say I stuck to it. I hope to continue this trend in 2011: quality over quantity. I'd still live to get a few more reads sneaked it but needless to say that my reading time is competing with my crafting time, so we'll see which activity wins out in 2011..

The worst books: I always knew that the Julia Quinn novel, Splendid, was going to be one of my worst reads of the year. A book set in Regency London should properly not have its characters sound as though they lived in 1990s Los Angeles, full stop. On the other hand Splendid was not the spectacular train-wreck that Scarlett Thomas' Our Tragic Universe turned out to be. I used to like her books until I realised she was essentially a one-note author hiding underneath a layer of pretend- counter-cultural-coolness - and Our Tragic Universe is not even that pretend-cool. If Julia Quinn is guilty of letting her cardboard characters slipping into a contemporary register, Scarlett Thomas is guilty of writing books she does not have the actual ability to write (I'll come back to this point later when discussing another author). Finally, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go was a huge disappointment.

The honourable mentions: Glen David Gold's Carter Beats the Devil was an entertaining book but one always destined to live in the shadows of Chabon's superior Kavalier & Clay (one of my top reads in the Noughties). I finally got around to reading Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White which was good but not anywhere near as breathtakingly brilliant as Faber's Under the Skin (see A Year In Books: 2009). Crimson was also "a novel thriving on exploring the dark side of society, and yet (..) polite enough to become a Sunday evening BBC costume drama" which continues to bug me a bit. China Miéville's The City & the City was a clever, well-written novel fusing crime fiction and science-fiction. The book was a touch too plot-driven for me but I really enjoyed Miéville's light writerly touches. Tom McCarthy presented himself as the heir apparent to James Joyce declaring his novel, C, to be 'the Finnegans Wake for the 21st Century'. Utter nonsense, of course. I thought McCarthy guilty of the same crime as Scarlett Thomas: attempting to write novels that are outwith their novelistic abilities. Unlike Thomas, though, McCarthy can actually write and while C does not live up to its billing, it is a fine conventional Bildungsroman disguised as an experimental novel. At times it felt like McCarthy had written his book especially for me with amusing High Modernist references coming right, left and centre. C is an acquired taste, no doubt about it,  but I liked it a lot.

The very good reads: David Mitchell is one of my favourite contemporary authors and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet did not disappoint. It is densely plotted, well-written and I felt bereft when the book ended. Quibbles? Not many. At times you could almost see Mitchell moving his characters around as though they were chess-pieces - that may not work for everyone but I did not mind - and the pacing was occasionally uneven with some parts moving slowly followed by rip-roaring action. Colm Toíbín is another of my favourite authors and Brooklyn turned out to be one of the highlights of my reading year. I'm not much of an emotional reader but I connected strongly with Brooklyn's depiction of the émigré experience. Finally, on Lori's suggestion, I read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five over the recent holidays and I was blown away by it. It read like a heady combination of Nabokov and Alasdair Gray. Not my last Vonnegut book, then, and definitely one of the best reads of 2010.

http://www.kariebookish.net/2010/03/books-2010-ishiguro-larsson/

And Then We Come To This Part

And away we went, up north.

The last few days prior to leaving for our mini-holiday were so busy that I did not get a chance to arrange for blog posts to appear whilst we were away. Judging by my own blog reader with its 100+ posts, I do not think any of you missed me much. Good.

During the journey north I revised my opinion of The Smiths' There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - particularly the lyrics going "And if a double-decker bus / Crashes into us / To die by your side / Is such a heavenly way to die" as the road was slippery and the bus was swerving dangerously back and forth. I clutched my beloved's hand and told him that I did not want to die by his side right there and then. He understood.

Time spent with family. Time spent laughing. Time spent looking at things in the grand scheme of things. Time being quiet and time being busy combined in a strange way

And then time to go back home. I have a cough and a sore throat throat to remind me of the perils involved in spending time with little germ-carrying nephews. And an aching heart too because I miss those little tykes already.

Presents, I had were given a lot and too many to mention. Tiny gifts from friends with big hearts. Big gifts from people far away. Liberty fabric and a cape from my partner (a cape! a cape!). I turned my book voucher into three books, one of which I have already finished and will be writing about shortly.

2011 is almost upon us. I never make new year's resolutions. I do, however, make promises to myself. One year I finally learned to swim. Another year I travelled to New Zealand. And then there was the year I left a rather poisonous job situation and made good on a tough promise to myself. I tend to make positive, affirming promises to myself instead of going "I'll give up chocolate!" or "I'll read Ian McEwan's entire back catalogue!".

In 2011 I would like to make things, specifically:

• Eleven hats. I did the 10 shawls in 2010 challenge which was hugely enjoyable. I need more hats and I'd like to knit some of the current chic hat designs such as Rose Red, the Grand Cloche, Fern Glade and Quincy among others.
• I'd like to sew myself something wearable. Something which makes me happy every time I wear it.
• I'd like to try a new craft - thankfully The Life Craft is just around the corner! - such as quilting, sashiko embroidery or paper-making.

Small, attainable goals.

First, though, I need to sleep and through some rest hopefully put the last few weeks into perspective.

The Holiday Special

What happens if you leave icing and Xmas cookies out and your partner happens to pass by..?

(and speaking of holiday specials..)

Be There Two O'Clock

It's a new week. And I completely forgot to write about the highlight of the previous week. Friday night my partner and I had an impulsive dance-a-thon in our living room when we realised that BBC4 was showing footage of Pulp headlining at Glastonbury 1995. When we first met, D. and I initially bonded over our shared love for early to mid-90s British guitar pop (some call it the 'Britpop' era but, really, that name was a media construct). Nowadays that era gets boiled down to "so, were you into Blur or Oasis?" because that was the huge (and nonsensical) story of the day. Did you hum along to Country House by cheeky middle-class Southern chaps Blur or did you bellow along to Cigarettes & Alcohol by authentic working-class northern lads Oasis? People knew who you were by which one you preferred - nevermind that Blur's drummer eventually became a Labour activist/politician and the singer from Oasis now dabbles as a fashion designer.

D. and I pledged our allegiance elsewhere (much to the frustration of a former boss of mine who thought she could pinpoint me by asking the Blur/Oasis question) and we both preferred Pulp and Suede.

Pulp used sparkly pop songs to deliver social commentary via great story-telling.  Suede glamorised working class struggles whilst referencing Byron and Andy Warhol and playing with androgyny. Suede soon descended into cringe-inducing banality (tellingly around the time their guitarist left to pursue other musical interests - he is now a record producer) but I still love their first two albums. Pulp's frontman, the charismatic Jarvis Cocker, now works as a broadcaster for BBC, and Pulp recently reformed to do some UK festival dates in 2011.

William Shatner(!) has done a great(!!) cover version of Pulp's most famous song, Common People, and Nick Cave has turned their anthemic Disco 2000 into something heartbreakingly beautiful. My favourite Pulp album is His'n'Hers from which Do You Remember the First Time? is taken (lyrics obviously NSFW). I cannot believe that song is now 16 years old and I'm in my mid-30s.

Time has been somewhat kinder to Pulp than Suede, but for old time's sake here is Suede doing a cover of The Pretenders' Brass In Pocket, a live version of So Young (still my favourite Suede song - so much gloomy romanticism!), and the awesome The Killing of a Flash Boy which will forever remind me of living in London in the mid-90s. Looking back it is unbelievable they got away with something like this at a multi-corporate awards ceremony or that my mum approved of me loving them so damn much.

So, yes, we danced around the living room in a totally cool mid-90s minimalist way. And it was the absolute highlight of last week.

(And in case you did wonder..)