Making, Mending, and Doing

February has been a good month so far. With several deadlines met, I now have a bit more time on my hands and this has resulted in a lot of crafting time which I have used well. Making: I have finished writing a brand-new shawl pattern which I hope you'll love as much as me! I have also finished knitting the sample shawl which has lived around my shoulders ever since. I'm yet to shoot the pattern photos as my model is currently overseas, but it won't be long until the pattern's released.

I have begun a lovely crocheted shrug in a new Rowan yarn, Creative Linen, in a gorgeous apple green. So far I am zipping through the shrug as the pattern's an easy two-row repeat. It'll be ace for wearing this summer. And I have a baby project lined up as my friend Katherine is expecting a boy very soon.

Mending: I finally took pity on my winter coat.

The coat is clearly on its last legs - in fact, it has been on its last legs the past three years - and I probably shouldn't even be seen wearing it in public. Unfortunately I have been unable to find its replacement (why is a classic pea-coat in warm navy or black wool that hard to find?) and so I keep dragging it out of retirement.

Anyway, I sat down to repair the holes in it - I crocheted some small, decorative (and practical!) patches which I sewed on. Inspired by Kate I then replaced the dull black buttons with some lovely red vintage buttons. The coat is still on its last legs, but at least I don't feel totally embarrassed to be seen wearing it in public.

I have more mending to do: David's jumper has been worn non-stop for two years and the bottom rib is now in tatters and will need to be reknitted. Any tips on reinforcing ribbing?

Doing: I turned thirty-mumble-mumble yesterday and we went to Edinburgh for the day. We caught the FCB Cadell exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art before heading down to the refurbished National Portrait Gallery.

Cadell was one of the Scottish Colourists - a loosely bound group of painters working in the 1920s and 1930s. I'm easily excited by anything early 20th century (particularly 1914 to 1925-ish), so Cadell and his cohorts should be right up my street. The Colourists are a touch too post-impressionist for my taste, though, and although Cadell edged close to a sort of Matisse-esque Art Deco by the mid-20s, his work proved too polite and too safe for me. I left the exhibition feeling a bit grumpy because I have always admired Cadell's paintings in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and suddenly faced with a whole exhibition he felt wanting and limited. Maybe the curating was at fault - the transitions and contrasts in Cadell's style were never really explained and the obvious queer aspect to his art was not even mentioned.

The national Portrait Gallery has recently reopened and as a result the place was heaving. We only had time to peruse a couple of the galleries - predictably enough I swooned over The Modern Scot (where I discovered William McCance - a painter and book designer clearly in artistic thrall to Wyndham Lewis) whilst David enthused over Romantic Scotland, a photography exhibition.

I could write an entire blog post on the political implications felt throughout the Portrait Gallery - but I'm possibly too influenced by the novel I am currently reading - the very excellent And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson.

And so it goes.

Blocking Shawls - Experiment no. 1

A cautionary tale ahead. Sometime ago I had a run-in with some Danish knitters. They were asking questions on how to block a shawl and I replied with my usual answer (I include a longer version with all my lace shawl patterns, by the way):

Weave in the ends of your shawl, but do not trim off the ends. Then soak your shawl in lukewarm water for 15 minutes rinsing it gently afterwards. Wrap your shawl in a spare towel to blot out as much water as possible. Do not wring your shawl. Pin it out and leave it to dry for a few days. Unpin, weave in ends, then wear with love and pride.

I was told in no uncertain terms by a series of people that I was wrong. Instead of soaking shawls in lukewarm water and then patting them dry, I should put them into the washing machine to spin them before pinning them out. I don't mind being told that I am wrong, but this advice ran so counter to logic that I decided to experiment a bit.

In the name of knitting science I grabbed my Mosswell, my version of Elizabeth Freeman's fabulous Aeolian Shawl from Knitty, and I put it in my washing machine. I chose the absolutely lowest setting possible on my machine and the absolutely gentlest spinning cycle - and then I hoped for the best.

This was Mosswell before my experiment:

This is Mosswell now:

No, the photo is not blurry. My shawl felted quite dramatically and is now roughly the size of a bib.

So, what went wrong? I shall stick to my guns and say: "the washing machine is what went wrong". Unless you have a really state-of-the art washing machine (perhaps?), I would stick to soaking your shawl in the sink/tub and patting it dry with a towel. You have much greater control over the process than if you were to just stick it in a washing machine and hope for the best.

Also, if you have spent 2 weeks to 6 months on knitting a shawl, why not spend another 20 minutes (of which 15 minutes is the shawl soaking and you drinking coffee) on preparing it for blocking?

Have you any experiences with blocking that you would like to share? Leave a comment - I'd love to hear from you!

In Her Soft Wind I Will Whisper

Lady on the left? My great-grandmother. She would have been ninety-six today. The photo was taken in the early 1950s outside her cottage and she is with two of her sons, K and T.

I have several photos of her; my other favourite is from the 1930s when she was approached by a travelling salesman who wanted her to become a hair model. I presume she shot him one of her withering glances. The photo shows her with long, gorgeous hair. I was told it was chestnut-coloured. The photo is black/white.

I was lucky enough to grow up around her. She minded me when I was pre-kindergarten and I spent most of my school holidays in her cottage. Her cottage did not have running water until I was maybe seven or eight and never got central heating. I can still envision her sitting in her chair in front of the kerosene-fuelled stove. She'd knit long garter stitch strips from yarn scraps and sew them into blankets. I think she was the one who taught me to knit. She was certainly the one who taught me how to skip rope.

Happy birthday, momse. We may not always have seen eye to eye, but we loved and understood each other. And I still miss you.

Title comes from this beautiful farewell song (youtube link). Post reposted from 2009, 2010 and 2011 with Momse's age amended. I continue to miss her.

This Bit of Glasgow

It has been a very long month. While January is seldom a cheerful month, this month has been a never-ending stream of tight deadlines, late night working, and battling post-flu malaise. Today I sent off one pattern submission that may or may not go into print (these things always depend) and it was so, so nice to be able to tick that one off the list. Now I just have to tackle the other entries on the to-do list.. Between deadlines, flu and whatnot I have found time to start work on a new shawl pattern. It's a really relaxing knit - one I can do late at night when my brain is too wired to sleep and too tired to focus - and I'm really pleased with it so far. Tonight I have been tweaking the charts and I had a really satisfying moment when I solved a particularly nagging row. I hate hate hate transitions that do not stack or flow into one another - unless I can see a clear reason why they do not stack, they just strike me as laziness on the behalf of the designer - and this one row just did not look right. The solution was right in front of me: moving decreases from the centre of the pattern repeat to the edges. Hooray!

My favourite bit on the interwebs this week? Reel Scotland speaking to John McKay who directed my favourite Sherlock Holmes-related BBC drama. No, not that one. Nor that other one. This one. The article is full of interesting takes on film-making, on working in TV, and on making things happen in Scotland. And then there is this great throw-away line that just made sense: "..this bit of Glasgow, our San Francisco."

My other favourite internet bits this week? This fantastic collection of Soviet science-fiction magazine covers. This grey airship bag from Etsy. And you can learn the most interesting feminist lessons in very surprising places.

Desolation Row

Years ago I briefly dated a guy we shall call Jay. Jay was a catch, I guess. He had an incredibly successful career and a beautiful Copenhagen apartment, he was handsome in his expensive suits, and his date nights were always carefully planned with foreign films and meals to match. Relatively quickly I realised that Jay had no friends, just colleagues. He had a family but he had no contact with them (nor any desire to speak about them). Jay was lonely and he had no idea how to transcend this loneliness. We went our separate ways relatively quickly - there was no connection and there never would be.

I watched Steve McQueen's Shame yesterday and for the first time in years I thought about Jay. The similarities between Shame's Brandon (played by Michael Fassbender) and Jay are superficial - the walled-up Self and an absolute inability to connect emotionally whilst seeming succeeding in life - yet I was struck by them. I hope Jay is happier now.

Shame has been marketed as a film about sex addiction and carries an 18 certificate (NC17 in the US) with much hype surrounding Michael Fassbender's nudity. I thought it was an intellectually engaging film - and very pointedly unerotic - and I don't buy that it is about sex addiction. The addiction is the symptom, not the cause. This review pokes at some uncomfortable things (spoilers).

Visually it is just stunning as you would expect from a director rooted in visual art: scenes are very deliberately framed, long shots are used to great effect, and the film is drenched in blue-grey hues. McQueen also uses reflective surfaces very effectively hinting at Brandon's fractured Self. I noted a meta-commentary running throughout the film: Brandon rides the New York subway a great deal and the trains have posters framing Fassbender's face: Medical Enhancement, A Work In Progress etc. Every single detail matters in this film.

Every single detail matters in this film, so I wonder about some  things. Brandon dresses in well-made, yet bland clothes and lives in a stark apartment where you would be hard pressed to find anything expressing personality - except for his records which are all on vinyl. We see him placing a needle on the record (Glenn Gould's The Goldberg Variations) - in a film so careful about each frame, that tiny detail nags.

My good friend Anne saw Shame yesterday as well and we had a long conversation over the phone about it. She liked it as much as me - although like is a strange word to use in this context. It is a thought-provoking film, it is a beautiful film, but it is not a film for everyone. I think it will stay with me for a long time.

On The Silver Screen

I have seen this link in various places today: Movies From An Alternate Universe. Asking the audience to re-imagine well-known films, the site wonders just who would have starred in a 1950s version of "Drive" or an early 1960s version of "The Hangover"? (The answers are obvious: James Dean is a proto-Gosling; Lemmon/Martin/Lewis are pitch-perfect too). It is a post-postmodern idea that does away with linear time and coherent history. The time is out of joint. Films we know to draw upon the past suddenly become the past - witness the almost lazy re-configuration of "2001" into a Fritz Lang Art Deco futurist epic - and so we have to ask ourselves the age-old question: what is really new?

Or you could do what I did with friends: continue the re-configuration of film history: imagine a 1980s version of "Brokeback Mountain"? A 1940s version of "Pretty Woman"? What about a 1960s version of "Lost In Translation"? The possibilities are endless - and intriguing.

More fun with film: Stephen Wildish is a UK graphic designer who has done some brilliant film alphabets (among other great work - seriously, check out his site). See if you can identify all of these: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

Finally, I like my pop culture hot & irreverent served with smart snark. I get it from Pajiba most days and I like many of their features such as the Career Assessment and their Guides to everything under the sun. It is not highbrow but it's funny. For slightly more highbrow pieces, I would recommend  The Hairpin's look at Classic Hollywood (it is hardly Pauline Kael but it mixes its Classic Hollywood gossip with astute film readings) and also Clothes On Film which delivers sharp sartorial analysis.

PS. Most of these links would quite possibly not be available or would contain illegal material if SOPA & PIPA were made law. Just in case you wonder why you the non-US citizen should care.