Yes She Said

I bought myself two Christmas presents. First of all, I finally became a member of MetaFilter - still the best community weblog the internet has to offer. I have been lurking on MetaFilter for almost ten years, so it was definitely time to take the plunge and cough up those five bucks. My second gift to myself has also been a long-time coming. For years I have been circling Garthenor Yarns and their organic, sheepy goods. Their yarns are produced from sheep kept on organic lands and the yarn is spun with minimal processing and no dyeing. I finally cracked earlier this week and now my Shetland single ply laceweight in 'light oatmeal' has arrived.

Oh, but it is beautiful. It reminds me of the Faroese laceweights I have been using: the same self-assured simplicity and honesty that says 'this has worked for centuries, so why change anything?'. This yarn is as far away from novelty yarns or instant gratification yarns as you can get - and for my money it is all the better for it. Although I'd love to see Karise knitted up in this sort of rustic yarn, I think I'll end up writing an entirely new pattern for it.

Okay, I have also bought fabric but it is less an indulgence than a response to 'oh dear, I have just thrown out half my wardrobe'. I did try to find tops I liked on the high street, but eventually I just went to Mandors and bought several yards of pretty polycotton in their January sale.

I intend to make several Art Teacher tunics - I'll be tweaking the pattern, though. The original Art Teacher tunic had a zip which I confess never using as the tunic easily slips over my head. I'll also lengthen it a tiny bit, make it slightly more A-line and I'll try very hard not to have ironing mishaps during construction. Scout's honour (I was never a Girl Scout).

Finally, I'm going to read James Joyce's The Dead tonight. Why? The story takes place on January 6.

Joyce is one of those authors with whom I have not really made peace (having said that, I think that is everyone's relationship with Joyce). I have read Dubliners from which The Dead is taken. I have made headway into Ulysses and Portrait but never attempted Finnegans Wake. I could happily drown in a sea of Joyce's words - Listen, a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos - but I never connected with him the way I connected with TS Eliot.

Having said that, if you have not read any James Joyce and you recoil at the very idea, sit down and read The Dead. It is a fairly quick read, you won't need a spreadsheet to help you understand it and - best of all - it is wonderful.

Well Still Pretty Good Year

First task of the year: sort out the wardrobe. I should probably not use the word 'wardrobe' as that word implies system, thoughtfulness, and coherence. Most of my clothes stem from the frantic days of arriving in the UK with a suitcase of clothes and needing workplace-suitable attire. As a consequence, most of my wardrobe consists of cheap clothes bought in a state of panic.

Nowadays I lead the charmed life of a freelancer working within a creative industry with ties to fashion. Interestingly this means two things: 1) I have a great collection of pyjamas because I spend a lot of time working in my jammies, and 2) I have discovered that while I do not care much for fashion I do care a lot about style.

So I went through my wardrobe and threw out everything that did not fit, that needed a degree of mending that was at great odds with the intrinsic value of the item itself, or which had been too fashionable when I bought it and thus no longer stylish (I think of style as something which cannot pinned down to a particular time nor place - rather it transcends time and place).

Verdict: I need tops and trousers somewhat badly. I need basic cardigans. And I am not allowed to knit myself any scarves or shawls because I have a lot (note the phrasing: ..knit myself.. which means I can knit for others or for design purposes). I can sew some of the things myself, but what I really need is a focused shopping spree.

I hate clothes shopping.

My neighbourhood made national news yesterday after the recent hurricane felled a few trees, made several chimney pots collapse, and ripped roof tiles off. The police have closed off one street due to unstable masonry. I was safely ensconced at work but was troubled by the amounts of roof tiles I encountered on the way from work. One of the big trees in our back garden has fallen too. It is still blustery out there, but the worst has passed. In case you are curious, I live very close to where the fourth photo in this series was taken.

Knitting-wise: I'm swatching for a few designs. Reading-wise: I have finished two books so far this year, although the less said about the second book the better (it was not my idea).

Enter Here

This has stayed with me for a very long time.

It seems, as one becomes older, That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence— Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution, Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past. The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being, Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection, Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination— We had the experience but missed the meaning, And approach to the meaning restores the experience In a different form, beyond any meaning We can assign to happiness. I have said before That the past experience revived in the meaning Is not the experience of one life only But of many generations—not forgetting Something that is probably quite ineffable: The backward look behind the assurance Of recorded history, the backward half-look Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.

Today works by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Henri Bergson and James Frazer all enter the public domain. All eminent modernists or people whose work influenced High Modernism a great deal.

I am perusing The Dalkey Archive Press - that great publisher and re-issuer of modernist works (among other things) - whilst pondering what to pick up. I have pledged to read a modest twenty books this year - a modest amount as I want to read better books, not more books. I have begun by finally reading Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevinwhich is hopefully a step in the right direction? I am 150 pages into it and it reads like, well, a coiled-up snake waiting to strike (what an unsuccessful simile!). I have several books lined up: The Picture of Dorian Gray(in a beautiful edition given to me by D.), Jamaica Inn, and James Robertson's And the Land Lay Stillare the first three.

2012 is off to a quiet, thoughtful start. This is good.

Happy Hogmanay

Here's to 2012..

A Year in Books: 2011

2011 was the year when my boyfriend read more than 110 books. I am not sure if that number includes re-reads, but it might tell you a bit about our household. I read 45 books, up from 21 in 2010 and 38 in 2009. That tells me two things: 1) I read more crap this year which means 2) I was more stressed this year. I am nowhere near the 110+ books read by my Other Half - then again, he does not knit! 2011 was also the year I finally signed up for GoodReads which influenced my reading a great deal. As my profile shows, I found adding books somewhat addictive. I began reading more and - crucially - I began reading better books. I began using my local library a lot more and I kept track of my to-read list via GR too. Huzzah for getting organised!

The worst reads: Alan Hollinghurst disappointed me big time with the Man Booker long-listed The Stranger's Child. Hollinghurst is one of the finest writers of his generation, but TSC just did not deliver. It read like a reiteration of everything he has ever written filled with token, tired literary allusions. Emma  Donoghue's 2010 short-listed Room made me angry. The Testament of Jessie Lamb was long-listed for the Man Booker prize this year. The first chapter was spectacular: a dystopian novel with a feminist bent. Oh yes! Unfortunately life is cruel and the rest of the book was a poorly-constructed and badly-written teen novel. I felt like giving up reading after Zadie Smith's On Beauty. And don't get me started on Lev Grossman's The Magicians. I really read far too many bad books this year.

The honourable mentions: Margaret Atwood's In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imaginationwas uneven but well worth my time. While Atwood writing about other authors is not her at her most interesting, I really enjoyed the section dealing with her childhood and the general overview of genre.  Jasper Fforde redeemed himself with both the delightfully metafictional and whimsical One of Our Thursdays is Missing and the far more sinister Shades of Grey. Jonathan Stroud's The Ring of Solomon was good - Stroud is quietly turning himself into a very reliable source of entertaining YA fantasy novels - and actually the book rekindled my desire to read. Isherwood's Goodbye To Berlin and Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time were both unsurprisingly solid. Finally, Susanna Jones' The Earthquake Birdwas a quirky, psychologically interesting read which reminded me of Murakami mixed with early Iain Banks.

The very good reads: After a year of mostly disappointing books, I re-read a few of my favourite novels.

AS Byatt's Possession: A Romance was one of those re-reads. I love it with quiet intensity as only a lonely girl who grew up surrounded by books could love a book about lonely people surrounded by books who in turn love reading about lonely people surrounded by books. Another re-read was Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. It floored me.

My best new read of the year was China Miéville's Embassytown. How interesting that in a year when mainstream literary fiction faltered so spectacularly a so-called genre novel took on all the hard questions and pulled it off flawlessly. Embassytown is not only incredibly well-written and tightly-plotted - it is also a challenging, sophisticated read that delves into the philosophy of language and notions of identity. It is absolutely splendid and deserves as much praise as possible. How very silly that some people will not give it a try because it is speculative fiction, gasp.

Moving Forward: I am not such a fool that I will announce how many books I will read next year. I will crash and burn out if I make any such pledges. However, I do hope that I will read far better books next year. This year was a real downer in terms of quality - even the books I thought would be decent reads turned out to be on the dubious side of things (HOLLINGHURST!)

Margaret Atwood's In Other Worlds mentioned the concept of 'slipstream' books which can be 'defined' as "the fiction of strangeness". I looked into what kind of book that may be and the loosely-defined canon include so many of my  favourite books and authors that I will probably use the 'canon' as a source of inspiration (sans John Barth). I have never been able to pinpoint what type of books I enjoy but I might have a new vocabulary. We shall see.

(2009 entry; 2010 entry)

Where Did The Time Go?

Well, Christmas happened and Casa Bookish went off to Aberdeenshire without as much as a hey nonny, nonny. So, belated happy holidays everyone. I hope yours was a good one. I was given an amazing Danish knitting book: Mere Feminin Strik by Lene Holme-Samsøe. The Ravelry photos do not do it justice - it is well-conceived, clever, and luscious. It is split into four sections: 'plain' knitting, textures, cabling, and lace. Each section has garments as well as accessories showcasing the theme. The attention to detail is evident on every page and I really like how wearable the designs are. I have a couple of must-knit garmentss such as the stunning Cecilia which is knitted top-down and Lily, a bottom-up garterstitch cardigan, but I'm pretty sure I'll be knitting some of the smaller pieces too. So far Mere Feminin Strik is only available in Scandinavia, but seeing Holme-Samsøe's first book was snapped up and translated by Interweave Press, I'd be surprised if this follow-up book wasn't given the same treatment.

ETA: Interweave Press will be publishing a translated version in 2012 - thank you to Carol for the info - she's the translator!

Overall, though, we did try to give presents that would not only please the recipient but also support people we know and love. This included presents from Gabrielle Reith's Small Stories range and t-shirts from SevenHundred. I was also very humbled to see many people choosing to gift one of my patterns to friends over this festive period. Thank you!

Things are already in motion for a very lovely 2012 - I hope to catch with myself, you and everyone else before the clock ticks over, though.