I Tried to Drown My Sorrows, But the Bastards Learned to Swim

Tomorrow my partner, David, and I are off to an arty little Halloween party. As I'm writing this, David is busy getting himself all Van Gogh'ed up. Both ears are still intact, thankfully.  I have chosen to go as Frida Kahlo, who is pictured to the left. Having a similar colouring as Ms Kahlo made it an obvious choice - plus I get to accessorise my outfit with my beautiful Laminaria shawl. I just need to find some statement ear rings and my outfit is complete. But look at that photo. Isn't it stunning? I keep meaning to write about what inspires me as a knitter (and as an artist - I splash paint on canvases occasionally). Art history is a huge source of inspiration as is vintage fashion plates and photography. I continue to be fascinated by how other people approach and use colour. This photo is a brilliant example: the red playing off the teal blue with small hints of pale yellow/gold(?) offering a bit of calmness. I can see those colours being translated into, say, some beautiful teal/red colourwork mittens with a tiny pale yellow motif around the wrist.

Speaking of colourwork, I started knitting the Selbu Modern beret the other night. I uncovered two colours of Sandnes Tove in my stash and cast on cheerfully. I completed eight rows of colourwork before admitting to myself that I did not like how it was working up: the grey main colour was overpowering the purple contrast colour. Time to rip out. I'm currently considering whether to use the purple yarn as the main colour and go grey for the contrast - or whether to dig deeper into the stash.

Wholly unrelated: if you want to chill out with a little flash game this weekend, may I suggest Small Worlds? It's short and you have no enemies to kill - but it is extremely atmospheric and, dare I say it, haunting.

Have a lovely Saturday, everyone.

(Title taken from my favourite Frida Kahlo quote)

The Staffordshire Hoard

"This is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England… as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries. Absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells." - Leslie Webster, Former Keeper, Department of Prehistory and Europe, British Museum

The UK's largest haul of Anglo-Saxon treasure has been discovered buried beneath a field in Staffordshire by an amateur metal detector enthusiast. The Staffordshire Hoard comprises of more than 1,500 individual items and most objects appear to date around the 7th century. You can read the entire press statement here.

I am incredibly excited by this hoard. One of the items which really intrigues is a strip of gold bearing a Biblical inscription. I'm excited because we don't often see examples of handwriting from this age as most writing would have been done on (easily perishable) wax tablets. The Lindisfarne Gospels date from around the same period, of course, but seeing writing employed outside a manuscript page is just really, really fantastic - particularly as you are seeing a religious inscription on an arguably secular item.

You can see beautifully detailed photos of the hoard on Flickr and while the Staffordshire Hoard website is currently struggling to cope with the number of visitors, I encourage you to seek it out.

Saturday Link Dump

I haven't done one of these in ages. Also: insomnia has struck.

• This is my new favourite cartoon. Strong words lurk within, beware.
• Robert Barclay Allardice - The Celebrated Pedestrian: "His most famous feat was the walking of 1,000 miles (1,600 km) in 1000 hours for 1000 guineas in 1809."
• Fancy Fast Food: "Yeah, it's still bad for you, but see how good it can look!" This one is particularly disturbing.
• How To Speak With A British Accent (youtube) is a series of educational videos teaching non-Brits how to perfect their British accent. Well, except that the videos are unintentionally hilarious. I've linked the "Unique Words" video but there are several other gems.
• My mum's local paper had a "best summer photo" competition. This is my absolute favourite entry. Nothing says "Danish summer" like a wheelie bin.
• Via John, the Armenians may be taking Eurovision a tad too seriously..
• The Beauty of Accidents. When a potentially ruined photograph turns out to be strangely beautiful and even better than what you had in mind. Something to keep in mind in these Photoshop days..
• Finally, it took a long time while for Casa Bookish inhabitants to notice but now we're all about Plants vs. Zombies. Pole-vaulting zombies! Dolphin zombies! Pea-shoots! It's maddeningly addictive.

The Art of Being

After spending the afternoon drawing, laughing and singing at Dr Sketchy's (brief nudity, beware), it was a bit of a downer heading back onto Glasgow's streets to find that Rangers winning the football league equalled people heckling other people and a lot of drunken aggression. Sectarianism is such an ugly thing and never fails to scare me just a little bit. It's been a week of settling back into Glasgow, then. I have been a bit quiet - much preferring my book and my knitting projects to social interaction. Saturday we did go out to West Kilbride - which markets itself as Craft Town Scotland - to visit the Old Maiden Aunt Yarns workshop. Following my recent yarn adventures, I decided against buying any yarn but I did commission Lorna of Chookiebirdie to make me a customised handstitched needle case. Weakness, thy name is Karie Bookish.

Finally, our good friend Gabi Reith has been involved in a big, big art project on the East Coast. She has taken a derelict building, covered it in fabric and decorated it with a giant sketch. It's very cool. See for yourself, if you don't believe me.

Random Is the New Black

We have found more clay pipes by the Forth and Clyde Canal - here is one of the nicest pipes, if not exactly the most intact.. Notice also the rather interesting shards of china in the background. We've identified one piece with the Willow Pattern but the rest remain elusive. Interestingly we've found tiny bits with lettering (be still my beating heart!) and other bits with what looks like fishing huts.

Swine flu has been confirmed around 12 miles from us. I'm expecting an outbreak of panic here which will involve people looting tissue paper, tinned soup, hand soap and cans of lager from our local supermarket. In other words, I'm not worried, although my mother might be once she realises how close I live to Monklands Hospital (i.e. not very close but in the same country). As a Dane I feel obliged to inform you that pork products are perfectly safe to eat. Mmmm, bacon.

Only one random link today: Vidders Talk Back to their Pop-Culture Muses.

"For decades, Americans sat in front of their televisions and watched — just watched — their favorite shows. (..) But one group of fans has interacted with their favorite television shows for more than three decades. Vidders, as they're called, make unauthorized underground videos using clips from the shows. Each vid compiles dozens of clips from various episodes, all set to a song."

To be perfectly honest, I've seen a handful of these fanmade vids and most of them are .. not very good. The formula goes something like this: one plaintative love song - say, Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love". Then take the lyrics and pair with with your fandom of choice  - so, when Leona bleats "Time starts to pass.." you insert pictures of Captain Kirk/the Doctor/Six looking at a watch. Lather, rinse, repeat .. But unsurprisingly there are some mindblowingly good vids out there. This is the best I've seen.

PS. Happy birthday to regular commentator and offline compadre, Darth Ken. I love you, man.

Do Not Feed the Culture Vultures?

Glasgow does visual arts so very, very well and every year we get the added bonus of a four-day art fair. Guess what? It's that time of year again.. Today we went to the Glasgow Art Fair and enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Last time we went, we nearly ended up buying a Lucy Campbell painting (specifically one extremely similar to this one). We both liked its fairytale qualities and I felt strangely comforted by its Philip Pullman-ness. Today I'm glad we didn't buy it. I think Campbell has her definite strengths but I think they lie within the realm of illustration rather than painting.

This time the Art Fair was visibly affected by the recession. Saturday afternoon was simply not that crowded and quite a few vendors confided that they were having a tough time shifting anything. Interestingly this year also saw galleries from Spain, Vietnam and the Czech Republic trying their luck. Diversifying or maybe the stands came cheaper this year? The Vietnamese stand was spectacularly crap, incidentally.

Ever the pop culture aficionado, Dave spotted Carl Moore's work immediately and was very, very taken with his Animals Who Want To Be Other Animals series as well as the Robot Dreams series. I'm not sure about the robots, but I loved the Animals series too.

Proving that I have way more taste than money, I headed straight to Jonathan Wolstenholme's watercolours (the cheapest one was £2,900 - that's a lot of sweaters!). The website does not do them justice, but try looking at The Descent of Books with its clever, humourous details or Murder in the Library which ticks all my boxes. Wolstenholme's watercolours may not be cutting edge or setting the art world on fire, but, gosh, they'd look nice in my imaginary library.

And for any woolshop/yarn shop (however imaginary), what about a few David Blyth prints? We had a good natter with David M. of Peacocks Visual Arts (who represents David Blyth), which made a nice afternoon even better.

On days like these, I just love living here. I really do. Art and beauty nourish my soul.