Look Wot I Made..

This is my first major lace work (bar two projects we shall not mention) and I'm actually pretty happy with it despite my overly critical eye. The pattern is called "Swallowtail" and it's a nice little shawl. It was knitted in lovely DROPS Alpaca (which is available in Danish yarn shops, hint hint!). The second lace pattern from the top was supposed to have tiny "knots" but they were omitted because I decided they looked like fuzzy brambles.

The shawl pin is a silver replica of a Bronze Age shawl pin found in a bog close to where I grew up. E. gave it to me as a token of love and friendship when I moved from Denmark. I think of her every time I wear it.

I also realise that I have actually posted a picture of myself on my blog for the first time in.. well, the seven years I have been blogging (bar the profile photo, of course). I have been hesitant in showing my face to the world but I'm figuring that most of my readers nowadays* will either know me offline or have me friended on Facebook. Besides, since my blog stalker experience** I have realised that no matter how hard I try to keep myself fairly anonymous, people can and will find out personal details.. So, yes, say hello to my face (and the lovely lace shawl).

* Ah, my hotshot literary blogger days are long gone..
** surely I have mentioned this before? Let's just say the police were involved.

Webs We Weave

How badly do I want this uppercase scarf? Pretty badly, I tell you. The scarf led me on a typographic journey of the net which yielded new interesting sites: the & Blog, Bembo's Zoo which is seriously cool, FontStruct which lets you design your own (very basic) typefaces, and, er, The Swedish Furniture Name Generator.

Hey, I can't be all arty and intellectual all the time!

How about A.S. Byatt on textiles, textures and texts, then? It marries all my loves: books, texts, literary theory and, ahem, yarn.

Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger on a spindle, the Lady of Shalott is entwined in thread, Silas Marner is enclosed in his loom - why have spinning and sewing so often been associated with danger and isolation? (..) We think of our lives - and of stories - as spun threads, extended and knitted or interwoven with others into the fabric of communities, or history, or texts.

The Dark Side

I'm hand-dyeing yarn right now.

Edit: Modus Operanti: First, I soaked a hank of merino laceweight yarn for about forty minutes in lukewarm water. While it was soaking, I mixed green food dye with a touch of blue food dye into about two pints of water. I added citric acid as a fixing agent. I heated up the dyeing solution in an old stovetop pot. When it was very warm (but not boiling), I took the soaked yarn and gently put it into the warm dye. The idea is not to agitate the yarn because agitated yarn = felt. I let the yarn simmer for about 35 minutes until I saw the liquid running clear. I turned off the heat and let it cool for ten minutes. The yarn was rinsed gently in very warm water as temperature shock would cause the yarn to felt. And now the yarn's drip-drying, huzzah!

Proper instructions here.

I'm reserving judgement on the end result but at least the merino's no longer pale yellow-green..

Stick A Fork In It

Today is World Wide Knitting In Public Day. That means I'll be bringing my needles and wool to the F.O.R.K. Gala (as well as a rug and a book and my patient Other Half). Meanwhile, The G delivers a deliberately misguided attack on crafters. I'm slightly disappointed.

I've been reading up on D&D 4.0 and so far it sounds intriguing - particularly the "streamlining of skills" bit which was something which always frustrated me somewhat with previous editions. It didn't feel entirely intuitive that certain skills - say Climb and Tumble - weren't connected (although 3.0 introduced the idea of synergy). I understand the new set of rules have implications for magic users but as I have never been massive on magic (I think I've only had one magic-using PC), it is not such a massive thing for me. You gamers out there, what is your take? Are you going to convert to 4.0 or are you holding on to previous editions?

Finally, because I can, here's something for the easily amused amongst you (and also me).

Just Call Me Ariadne

Friday afternoon I went through my yarn stash and decided to give some of it to charity. Okay, so it was some not-really-funky cheap acrylic novelty yarn that I picked up at the beginning of my knitting career (i.e. February), but it doesn't matter if the destashed yarn was cheap and nasty - I destashed yarn. I have also put myself on a strict yarn-diet after a very sinful yarn excursion with a handknitted pirate last weekend.

So here's what I'm not buying:
+ Natalie Yarn Yard's Wicked laceweight in grey-white-pink.
+ 10 balls of Debbie Bliss Donegal Tweed Aran in shade 11
+ 6 hanks of worsted merino wool in shade "Forest"

On a different note, I'm amused to see that I'm currently numero duo in Google's search for "fourth edition". I'm pretty sure that won't last very long seeing as D&D 4thEd is about to make serious business. Hey, this might be a really great time to re-purchase all the D&D 3.5 stuff that I gave away when I moved to Scotland..What did I say about not spending any money? Ebay, here I come..

The Bonfire of Good Intentions

If I'm going to have to rip out another effing row on the neckline on my effing sweater, I swear I'm going to toss the effing thing on the bonfire I'm going to build in our backyard. What do you mean "Well, it's your first attempt at an actual garment and you did abandon the pattern after the first three rows"? That's not the point!

The bonfire I'm going to build will consist solely of good intentions gone awry: my copy of James Joyce's "Ulysses" that I took with me across the North Sea in the misguided belief that I'd read it (and left my vintage Georgette Heyer novels in the discard pile while I was at it); the tins of dry yeast that have been sitting in my cupboard for a long, long time waiting for my bread-making to re-ignite; the clothes I was going to mend last summer but haven't; the plants I forgot to water after having declared 2007(!) the year I was going back to have plants in my home. Let's not go into my decision to re-reinvent cabbage.

Okay, maybe the sweater will not go the way of the plants or the culinary plans. Knitting continues to astonish me - not just the process of taking a string of X material, looping it in various ways using fancy sticks and ending up with a textile, but also the actual community surrounding fiber arts and crafts. I may be frustrated by a sweater refusing to shape up exactly as I had envisioned it, but the frustration is countered by warm and witty encouragement from the knitting community.

Just three more rows of moss seed stitch and I swear this'll be it. Grrr..

PS. I have actually begun reading again! Hooray!