The Traveller's Lament

I visited London yesterday for a work-related event. I had to get up at 4am to make it to my 10am meeting and I wasn't home until 11pm. It was a very long day - not made any easier by my sudden head-cold. I was sitting on my flight last night and seeing it was a clear night, I could follow our path moving northwards through England. After the pilot informed us we had just passed Manchester, the lights below started become more and more scarce. I leaned against the window. Some time later I saw a massive flood of light in the distance and seeing that the flight path would not have taken us towards Newcastle, there was only one city that could be that big, that lit-up: Glasgow. Home. My body and mind relaxed in that moment with that undefinable, warming sense of belonging there. I have spent so many years feeling like I did not belong somewhere that I still bask in the glory of being home.

Knitterly content: I have three Finished Objects to show off, but no photos so that'll have to wait. I only have one WIP which is completely disgusting. I do have one project in mind which I'll start later today..

I have also read several books recently. I'm in a very Victorian mode at the moment.

A few links and quotes:

The New Statesman published an excellent column recently: "You should have your tongue ripped out": the reality of sexist abuse online.

While I won't deny that almost all bloggers attract some extremely inflammatory comments -- and LGBT or non-white ones have their own special fan clubs, too -- there is something distinct, identifiable and near-universal about the misogynist hate directed at women online.

I contacted the columnist afterwards and told her briefly about my own experiences with "interesting" comments on my old literary blog. A male blog reader started stalking me in real life claiming I was "putting it out there" and I had to get the police involved (which was problematic in its own gender-political way).

Nowadays my blog is .. well, I guess this is a craft blog, of sorts, which is situated within a mostly-female space or community. There are still gender issues at play within this 'community'  - first of which is "can we even lay claim to this being a community", of course - but it is definitely a different set of issues.

Sarai Mitnick of Colette Patterns went to Quilt Market and was slightly ambivalent. However, I was struck by one thing she wrote:

My impression is that crafty women today (and I include myself) are interested in all kinds of handmade stuff, including clothes, items for their homes (like quilts), food, gardens, you name it. It’s all about bringing the magic of the homemade into every aspect of our lives, of living a life of creativity and meaning, of renewing and reinvigorating a range of traditions.

Finally, have you seen Margaret Atwood has knitted a Great Auk? She is on Ravelry too, of course..

FO: Alva

I just released a new free shawl pattern on Ravelry: Alva. Alva takes one ball of Rowan Kidsilk Haze Stripe (or two balls of regular Kidsilk Haze) and is knitted on 5mm needles. My sample is knitted using sh. 200 ("Twillight").

I designed Alva because while I love the new KSH yarn, there was a real dearth of patterns available for it. I wanted a simple, straightforward knit which would showcase the colours. Alva is designed for beginning knitters which is why the lace edging is optional (and written out rather than charted). .

I find it is very different to design for yarn support (which I guess Alva is) rather than design for myself. With yarn support, I keep the end user in mind: who would be knitting this pattern? What skill level am I aiming for? How can I make this even easier to knit? I want my design to be accessible to as many people as possible. This is a fun challenge - and actually more than a challenge than it is to design for myself.

My Karise shawl is currently being knitted in a KAL on Ravelry. It was also designed for yarn support, but I took advantage of being able to play around with charts. S. of MooncalfMakes described Karise as having "..a kind of architectural quality to it, like wrought iron-work or granite carvings." I consider this a huge compliment: I find architecture incredibly inspiring and I hope Karise would have a certain sense of stillness to its lace. It is possibly the closest I have come to designing anything for myself.

I look around Ravelry and I see increasingly complicated lace shawls being showcased. In my own quiet way I guess I'm reacting against that trend. I just don't get it. I do not want to wear things that have 1001 details. I would feel overwhelmed, drowning in frills and bobbles and twisted stitches. I would much rather wear a carefully edited shawl, something understated, something knowing. Maybe it is the Scandinavian in me, maybe it is because I like sparseness in most things.

And William Carlos Williams and his This Is Just To Say was just as difficult to write as, say, Ezra Pound's Cantos (if not more), this liberal arts grad girl would like to point out.

On a whole other note, Fourth Edition is being moved about in the next few weeks. Stay tuned for disruption (unless I manage to work things out quickly).

PS. 'Tis now the season for CRAP light so until April, expect bad photos.

Almost There Or There-abouts

It's now November. Seriously, where did this year go? I remember I had plans to knit 11 hats in 2011. Clearly that did not happen. I look at my Ravelry page and I cannot see many finished objects - but I did knit and knit and knit in the 11 months we have had so far. 2011 has been the year of knitting swatches and tidbits relating to my work and has been sadly lacking on the personal knitting front. However, my dining table is currently littered with projects. Here is a list of what is on my table:

• One pair of fingerless gloves: almost complete. One glove just needs the thumb knitted and ends woven in.
• Rowan Kidsilk Stripes shawl: sadly not mine to keep but just needs another five rows + blocking and then pattern written up.
• Lacy shrug: Or how I turned one potential oversized knit into something wearable. I just need to crochet edging on one sleeve and weave in ends. (ETA: Done!)
• Snapdragon Tam: Alas, this is a tale of woe. I ran out of yarn 11 rows from the end. I bought the pseudo-Malabrigo as a one-off back in 2008. The hat has been ripped out and I'll need to consider what to make with the yarn.
• Lumley, or The Red Cardigan Of Doom: I need to reknit the lower halves of two sleeves, weave in ends, sew on buttons, ignore an unfortunate bit of grafting (that noone else will see, anyway), pretend it becomes me, and wear it on my London trip this forthcoming Thursday.

Apart from Lumley, all the other projects can be finished within a couple of hours, if that. And Lumley should only take half a day to complete ... (insert feet dragging)

One project that is not sprawling across the dining table? My Norn jumper. I finished knitting the lower half of the body, then split for the front and back, and am currently almost done with the back. It is just not on my knitting agenda right now with other things taking precedence.  I'm half-tempted to rip it all out (again) and knit the entire jumper flat like it actually states in the pattern. No real reason. Just a thought. Of course that way madness lies..

Future plans? I have a new design heading for release towards beginning of December and I need to knit the sample. I should quite like to make something from my Ravelry queue too - just a hat or some fingerless gloves as I really do not have the time for another garment-size project. And I need to make a rather big present in time for it to get shipped across to Denmark for Christmas.. fortunately this present is machine-sewn rather than knitted.

Phew. I think I need to get cracking. Fortunately my new needles have just arrived.

Ghost World

With great joy comes great heartache, so my great-grandmother always said. One of the hardest things about being an expat is that I am far away from people who matter very, very much. My dearest and best friend and her boyfriend visited us last week. I was overjoyed to see them arrive and I was unsurprisingly miserable when they left again. But we did have a lovely week together.

Highlights included watching the ever-changing skies over Loch Lomond (pictured left), having an afternoon pint of local brew in The Falls of Dochart Inn (out of tourist season significantly less Brigadoon than I suspect it'll be in high season), doing the obvious Monty Python jokes at Doune Castle, buying yarn at New Lanark, playing Munchkin in the evenings, having a tremendous dinner at Fanny Trollope's and .. just hanging out with some of the best people I know.

Of course I was also working my usual hours and trying to deal with paperwork, so things were slightly less relaxing than it could have been. I also miss our guests in a raw, unsettled way. Still, I feel nourished and ready to tackle what is ahead.

What is ahead? I am heading to London for work next week, so I need to prepare myself for that. I also have a couple of patterns to write and a lot of things to finish. Somehow I have also talked myself into a rather big homemade Christmas present that needs to be finished by early December.

Ulp.

Finally, and wholly unrelated, I went down to Occupy Glasgow's camp yesterday and I had to laugh out loud when I saw a sign saying "Daily Mail, We Don't Respect You Either". How marvellous.

The Truth About Magic Loop

Ever since I discovered the Magic Loop method, I have been a convert. Not only do I knit everything on circular needles but if the pattern calls for knitting in the round, I will invariably use Magic Loop rather than seek out double-pointed needles. I confess that my love for circs has very little to do with current knitterly trends, but rather that I like knowing I have all the needles I need at hand. I used to spend hours searching for that elusive fourth DPN but no more. But using my circular needles for Magic Loop comes with a price. My needles do not last very long. The needle tips are not the problem; the cable is.The method puts an awful lot of stress on both the joins between the tips and the cable, and the cable itself.

I once bought a cheap set of circular needles off ebay. Friends did so too and are still knitting with theirs. The cable on mine snapped within a week. Then I bought some Pony Bamboo circs which quickly became my favourites (yes, above the much-praised KnitPro needles). They had a lovely grip to the surface which made them perfect for knitting with slippery fine yarns as well as thicker, coarser wool. The tip itself was slightly blunt which I actually tend to prefer for lacework and the cable was beautifully supple. It took three years of constant use before the cables started snapping - then within two hours this past week both sets of circs had cable-malfunctions.

I began looking into possible replacements. Sadly Pony no longer makes the exact same needles, so I opted for some wooden Addi needles out of curiosity. I wanted a strong cable (for obvious reasons) but I also wanted the friction you get with wooden needles. I did pause before placing my order: being a lace knitter I'm particular about the join between the needle tip and the cable and regular Addis irritate me with their annoying tiny little bumps.

Why not Knit Pros? I own and I adore my KnitPros. Their cables are very strong and the tips is simultaneously smooth and 'grippy'. However, I do have that annoying tendency to misplace things - KnitPro tips included. As I could not find non-interchangable circs in the required sizes, I had to look elsewhere.

I have a lot of things in the to-do pile and I have a lot of things in the almost-finished pile. Hopefully my needles will be with me soon..

Whatever Makes Her Happy

Pictured: everyday life in Casa Bookish. I am knitting. He is solving the cryptic crossword.

As for my knitting project, it is something I have been meaning to knit for years. I bought some pseudo-Malabrigo Worsted about three years ago, then Ysolda Teague released the Snapdragon Tam pattern and I just knew I was going to combine the two someday. But like most of those certainty-projects I have simply been saying "one day" for far too long.

I needed to knit something that was all about me after having done so many work-related projects recently. I cast on whilst heading north and then I pursued my project in a very fulfilling leisuredly manner. This means I have not had a set rows to finish every day, I have not picked it up at set times, and I have not come to groan at the sight of it. This is a satisfyingly selfishly slow knit.

(Insert Händel's cry of Hallelujah here)

I did worry (and continue to do so) that I shall run out of yarn. I took to Twitter to ask plaintively whether people could sooth my nerves (they could) and then I looked at my projects page. I made a Snapdragon out of one skein of Malabrigo Worsted just last year. They say your memory is the first thing to go.. but just to make sure I have also weighed the hat-in-progress and measured that against the remaining amount of yarn. Because I can get that obsessed about knitting.

(That reminds me of the time that my lovely knitting partner-in-crime E. walked up to waiting staff at our local haunt and asked if she could borrow the kitchen scales as she needed to weight a rapidly diminishing ball of yarn. They never looked at us the same.)

In other crafty news, today I attended a lovely crochet workshop with Carol Meldrum. Whilst I am a deft hand at crocheting, joining crochet motifs in an orderly fashion had always eluded me before today. I'm happy to report that not only did I manage to follow Carol's instructions and join four lacy squares - I also worked out how to join lacy hexagons .. all by myself! I was a tad smug until it dawned on me that I should have learned these tricks about thirty years ago. I foresee many beautiful crochet blankets in my future - I have several blankets/scarves favourited already and soon it shall be my turn.

Oh, whatever makes her happy on a Saturday night..