Unwritten

I always say that the best blog posts I have ever written are the ones I never post. Recently I had conversations with other long-term bloggers (I've been at this for over a decade) about why we continue to blog. One remark stuck with me:

Because I love it. Many new bloggers think it is a quick and easy short-cut to fame and fortune. It is not. It is hard work. I do it, because I cannot NOT do it.

I have been thinking about blogging and my blog's various incarnations. The posts I will never post but which I have written in my head so many times. Posts that would increase traffic, get linked and re-blogged, and maybe even get some attention from outside the blogosphere. Stories that will never be told because they are not mine to tell. Two go back six years. One goes back just a few weeks.

I am thinking of these blog posts as I watch big-scale news unfold here in the UK. People who told stories that were not only not theirs to tell, but also obtained illegally (allegedly, I hasten to add). I have a hard time believing that they told these stories because they loved writing or because they truthfully believed them important stories to tell.

Words are powerful - even in these increasingly visual times.

And I am sitting here on a Friday night and I think about my little, totally insignificant blog and I think about the written word and readership.

And.

I have been very good at walking away from my blogs when they became too unwieldy and too .. too widely read. I was always very proud of Bookish, my literary blog, but I was also relieved when I pulled the plug.

Fourth Edition has grown into something to be proud of as well. It chronicles my journey from being a stuffy academic to an odd-ball creative type. And I meet so many lovely people thanks to this blog. Sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed too. I continue to walk the tightrope: I am continuously torn between my desire to maintain my privacy and my need to write these blog entries.

Don't think I have not thought about walking away from Fourth Edition (because I have) but I also know I would just start over again. Lather, rinse, repeat..

I guess there was a point to this entry but I lost it along the way. I just remember what I was taught and what I went on to teach: always look for the gaps, the absences, what is not being said.

This is worth keeping in mind. Not just for blogging but also for news coverage.

Evidence of Knitting

"You know, you never post anything about knitting anymore," my friend said. When I looked back at recent blog posts, I was startled to find that she was right. I write a lot about potential knitting but I rarely post about Stuff Wot I Have Knitted. Clearly I need to make amends although I have not been knitting super-exciting things. The Skald shawl. Looks pretty, non?

I chose to knit Spring Trellis by Linda Choo which is a free Ravelry pattern (and well-written too). I ended up running out of yarn and had to omit the nupps on the border. I quite like the contrast between the lace and the solid border, but would have preferred the shawl with nupps.

The yarn was Sirri Tógv 1ply - a Faroese wool which I purchased on my last visit to the mothership Copenhagen. I loved working with it: it was rustic, sheepy, woolly, and beautifully unprocessed. However, it took five rinses to get all the natural lanolin out and instead of the soft, gorgeous fabric I had imagined, Sorri 1ply had bloomed to such a degree that my shawl looks like a cat has slept on it. No, like a cat has slept on it for weeks.  The marriage between pattern and yarn proved to be an unhappy one - the yarn would have worked far better in a simple garterstitch shawl - and lessons have been learned.

I have more Sirri yarn kicking about. I'll need to think carefully about what to do with it.

I got as far as the yoke on my Fenris jumper when I realised I had to rip it out. I loved that yoke, I tell you. I had combined Nordic motifs that I've known and loved my entire life - particular that wheel design which reminds me of the Trundholm Sun Chariot. The Chariot was found very close to where I grew up and the Bronze Age wheel motif is so .. it is part of my psyche, you know?

For the body and sleeves I used a pure wool aran (sold to me as bulky!) which I bought at a very favourable price in my mum's local supermarket. Denmark's great for yarn, I swear (although not so great in other ways but that's for another day). I used remnants of New Lanark aran for the colourwork yoke. A big thank you to Paula and Bronwen who gave me scraps that I'll incorporate - in that way the jumper won't just represent Denmark but also Scotland.

A bit of a departure for me: baby knitting! A colleague is expecting a baby and I wanted to make her something she'll actually use (rather than a fancy baby cardigan that'll languish in a drawer).

The patterns are from Erika Knight's excellent Natural Nursery Knits (probably my favourite baby knitting book) and I used oddments of Patons Washed Haze DK. I really like the booties, actually. They are knitted flat, then seamed quickly up the back. I managed to squeeze out a pair during one knitting group session. Score.

Finally, a black hat. I still need to do a modelled shot, but the weather has been too good!

I used some workhorse aran (again from my mum's supermarket) and got the general gist from a Norwegian hat pattern although I didn't follow the pattern exactly (I lost it, ok?).  I knitted this with winter in mind. Last year I knitted Intuitive and loved it for about two weeks before I lost it on a northbound bus. I am not going to face another winter without a black hat.

I'm currently working on a laceweight version of Karise. There won't be a separate pattern for the laceweight version - just some extra numbers added to the pattern.

So, yes, I do knit. Look! Evidence!

Larisa & the Halfway Point

How can this be July already? To celebrate, my Larisa scarf is now available to download for free from Ravelry. Recent events in Casa Bookish:

• We went to see the new Riverside Transport Museum here in Glasgow. It is smaller than you think and the interior is painted a strange lime-green hue which makes everybody look jaundiced - but it is an interesting space. It'll be good to see more imaginative projects shoot up alongside the Clyde river.
• When Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus: The Ring of Solomon is the third-most intellectually challenging book I have read this year, you know I'm in trouble. It was hugely enjoyable, actually, but I feel guilty for not reading Clever Stuff. Maybe I should consult this.
• Don't knit lace when you are tired and stressed. Trust me on this one.
• As a household of news junkies, D and I have been glued to BBC News 24 and The Guardian's coverage of the UK phone-hacking scandal. MetaFilter has a great primer if you are unaware of the scandal (and stay for the comments).
• I had a stressful day trying to upgrade my blog software which turned out to be incompatible with my host company's servers. As you can tell, I managed to work things out, but I'm always thankful for UK hosting suggestions.

Glasgow had her annual Two Days of Summer but we are back to heavy rain, grey skies, and woolly-wear appropriate temperatures, huzzah! I am tempted to re-start Fenris which I had to rip out as I had grossly mis-calculated my measurements vs sweater measurements. Are you still working on your summer knitting?

A Visit To Old Maiden Aunt & Other Knitting Plans

Old Maiden Aunt yarns had an open studio day/housewarming yesterday, but as I could not make it, I travelled out to West Kilbride to help Lilith set things up. Her new studio space is marvellous: there is a real shop front where she can display her yarns and host workshops with a huge, airy workshop space in the back for the dyeing and drying of yarns. Now, Lilith and I go back years (our friendship is an ace story I must remember to blog at some point) and I am over the moon that she has managed to build her business to a point where she has been able to get such a wonderful space for Old Maiden Aunt and that she has such a huge amount of support from the knitting community. It makes me so damn happy. It could not have happened to a nicer person.

Gushing over ;)

Lilith and I spoke about my Karise shawl and I realised that my inner diary was out of sync. I thought Knit Nation was this forthcoming week when it is actually the following week. I was going to release the Karise pattern tomorrow, but instead I am going to take advantage of the extra week to work out the laceweight instructions. I was always going to include laceweight instructions but thought I would have to do that with a later update. Not so .. huzzah!

My head is buzzing with shawl design ideas and I've begun using Pinterest as a way of creating micro-mood boards (Polyvore might have been more obvious, but I don't like that community all that much). I was watching a documentary on the Ballets Russes the other night and started looking through my old source books on early 20th C design. I've also been swatching a tiny bit, but I need to finish writing Karise before I let myself begin something new.

At the same time I am also yearning for a big, big project. This year has been a year of small projects that I finish relatively quickly, but I want to sink my teeth into a really juicy project. One that I won't finish in two weeks. I just have to bide my time, because I know my big juicy knit will be a colourwork project from Rowan Nordic Tweed (out on August 1st). I'm torn between three projects from that book, actually: a cardigan with intarsia reindeers(!) knitted in Rowan Colourspun and Kid Classic (it has a sort of faded, vintagey sense of glamour to it), a lusekofte-inspired jumper in Rowan Tweed (very fitted, very lovely), and a cool shrug/bolero/sleeveless cardigan with selbu-motifs done in a sort-of positive/negative colour way which is also knitted in Rowan Tweed (very, very cool looking and knitting it might hurt my brain).

Perhaps I should start by ripping out two half-sleeves and reknit them before I contemplate doing anything. A month .. I should totally be able to finish that red cardigan of mine..

Background Details

It's been that kind of morning.

"So, which textile degree did you do?"

"No textile degree, I'm afraid. I have a degree in English with a specialisation in print culture from a Danish university."

"Okaaaay, why did you move there to do your degree?"

"I'm .. Danish?"

".."

I posted this exchange on a certain social networking site and some good friends tried to reframe things for me.

Can't you just invent an explanation? "Well, I was really going to study in Rwanda, but then the plane crashed and ..."

"and after fighting of the packs of lions and the rabid wildebeests, I thought I'd..."

"... I thought I'd knit myself a fishing net so I could get some food. And then my clothes had got all tattered, so I knit myself some new ones, and that inspired me to go into designing."

"That's why most of my garnments are green. Jungle-inspiration."

Yeah, it has been that kind of morning: quite odd but very funny.

Hang on. Most of my days are quite odd but very funny. Hmm.

Weather With You

Hello. Excuse me while I pretend I constantly hang about grey wooden panels wearing a red woollen dress and a gawjus mossy green scarf/shawl. Okay, so I actually do that quite a bit but I rarely wear matching lipstick and have my photo taken whilst faffing, so there is that.

In short, we had a photo shoot for the Karise shawl yesterday. For some reason the sun came out just as I took off my cape and the sunshine just made everything so much easier. I am never comfortable in front of a camera (stand straight, suck in tummy, smile, look natural) but the photo shoot wasn't too bad.

Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you..

Hopefully that means tomorrow will be sunny too. I am heading out to West Kilbride to see Old Maiden Aunt's Lilith and her new studio. Her housewarming is on Saturday but true to form I shall be working, so instead I am heading out to lend a hand prepping the place for the hordes. Some sunshine would be most welcome as my train will have a view of the Isle of Arran - and Arran is just prettier when it is sunny.

Oh, hell. Here you go. That song. I don't actually like it, you know, but it is the sound of summer..