Ravelympics: Third Day Adjustment

Goodbye Clandestine sock pattern. Hello Spring Fern pattern. So much better. I'm now playing catch up. Watching the Olympics here brings home that I no longer live in Scandinavia. The Finland - Russia ice hockey game was just mentioned in passing, the cross-skiing events barely gets a look in (Denmark has always been crap but we'd always show some support for Norway) and we do not get wall-to-wall coverage of the figure-skating events. I remember growing up and getting to watch all the figure-skating qualifying rounds; now I get edited highlights of the top three athletes. But, I do get to see events like speed skating and the luge which I have rarely seen before. In fact I stayed up very, very late last night just to see who won the luge. Ooh, the excitement (and subsequent day of tiredness).

I'll leave you with a little link I have been saving for rainy day like today: Hipster Puppies. Unsurprisingly I'm finding this photo absolutely hilarious and I may have said something like this when I was twenty-one and unbearably pretentious.

Ravelympics: Second Day Qualms

As someone I know would say: "That's a whole lotta sock you got going on there, girl". Truthfully I am not happy with my first/last socks. The pattern, Clandestine, is really fun to knit from a knitterly point of view: twisted stitches, increases, decreases and wrapped stitches. I look forward to every new row and have that "just one more row" thing going on. But, really, the resulting fabric is busy. No, it is more than just busy, it is fussy. The dictionary definition of "fussy" actually sums up this sock perfectly: "filling with ornament what should be empty space".

I was just about to turn the heel last night after an evening of intense knitting and then I glanced at the heel flap, looked at the leg pattern and then looked at the heel flap again. The heel flap was everything that the leg wasn't: elegant, tidy and, well, pretty.

What is a girl to do? I did what any knitter these days would do (probably): I went to Ravelry and posted about my predicament in several groups. The Ravelympics Sock Hockey group suggested that I should frog my halfway-done sock and seek out another pattern. "It is not defeat; it is regrouping your troops and rethinking your strategy," one knitter said. On twitter, friends doubted it could be that bad. I decided to sleep on it and here I am.

That heel flap sure is pretty, isn't it? I wish the entire sock could be that like. At the end of the day, I would like a pair of socks that I am proud of - not from a knitterly point of view, because I do not need knitting validation, but from a "look how pretty my socks are!" perspective. I have suddenly turned into a project knitter, it seems.

So, I am regrouping and rethinking my strategy. We are off to a life drawing class today, so I will not have time to knit anything until tonight. This should leave me plenty of time to decide whether to frog or to continue. Funnily enough I think I have almost already made my decision.

Waiting For the Ravelympics 2010

Funnily enough I finally feel like my knitting year is starting. I have been planning my Ravelympics project for a long time and I have been holding back on various projects because I knew that mid-February would be busy in knitting terms. I have chosen to knit my first pair of socks and right up until a few hours ago I was unsure about which pattern to choose. I had almost decided upon Bev Elicerio's Hourglass socks, but then I could not find my 2.5mm dpns and the pattern was known to have some flaws, so I decided against it. Komet became a contender as did Crystals 'Combs & Cables, Snickets, and the Dream Twister Socks. Tweets flew back and forth with me seeking advice and inspiration from seasoned sock knitters.

I do not expect to get bitten by the sock bug, to be honest, so with that in mind I decided to knit something that was clearly a ca-pi-tal let-tah Sock designed by someone who herself is a ca-pi-tal let-tah Sock Designer. For my first and only pair of socks I might as well go all out and so I am going to knit Clandestine by Cookie A in Araucania Ranco.

I cannot wait to cast on.

My birthday turned out to be lovely. I am yet to receive all my presents as my grandmother may have tried to ship inflammable substances to the UK and gotten herself into a bit of bother with the Danish authorities over that.. but I am sure it will all be just fine. My mother gave me beautiful buttons (among other things) which is almost as close to crafty gifts as I got this year. I am trying hard to destash, you see, but as my destashing attempts somehow end up with me getting bags full of Kidsilk Spray and Kidsilk Aura, I asked for no birthday yarn. Gasp, horror.

Next project (after the socks): my Summer Tweed top.  After that one I shall have to cast on for Clothilde which a certain blogger gave me as a surprise birthday present. Yes, the knitting year has finally begun.

A Long Post About You Know What

Someone brought the camera with him to work, so I cannot show you all the things I have been working on lately. I am playing around with a few yarns: Rowan Lima (a great review by Clara Parkes), RYC Cashsoft DK and Rowan Felted Tweed. I'm knitting up a small sample of Lima just to see how it responds to textured stitch patterns, while the Cashsoft DK will be given a test-knit to see how it works with 'everyday' stocking stitch. I started some mitts in Felted Tweed some weeks ago. I was particularly intrigued by how the Felted Tweed responded to being knit on 2mm (US 0) needles. It is a real treat swatching and playing with these yarns - just figuring out how they respond to needle sizes and types of stitches. I may finally have become a real knitting geek because at the end of it all I will have very little to show despite all my efforts.

I can, however, give you a little glimpse of yet another shawl I am working on. The photo was taken last week when we still had snow. This will be my fourth shawl since 2010 began and I am a bit .. shawled out now. I am knitting Kiri which is a top-down version of the lovely Birch shawl by Sharon Miller. I would have knitted Birch except it calls for 2-and-something balls of Kid Silk Haze and I only have two balls of KSH Liqueur. The shawl is working up really well. Just one more repeat and then the edging.

I sometime wonder where I fit in. Am I a Danish blogger due to my nationality? Do I qualify as a British blogger because I write in English and live in Britain? I read many Danish knitblogs, but I do not really feel part of the Danish knitblog scene because I do not meet up with anyone at Danish knitting events nor do I knit any of the popular Danish patterns in the yarns currently de rigueur in fair Denmark. But Lisbeth K obviously thinks I qualify because I was  given this little "creative blogger" insignia by her. Thank you, Lisbeth! I am not usually one for internet memes, but this is delightful.

The little award comes with obligations. First I am to share seven facts about myself and then I am to pass this award to seven others.

1. My favourite colour is somewhere between peridot green and moss green.
2. Peridot is also one of the very few gem stones I wear (along with amber, moonstone and pearls). I rarely wear jewellery, though.
3. I used to have fuchsia-pink hair. I was being very ironic in that special early-twenties way.
4. I like my own company far more than I like being around other people. I am not anti-social (indeed, I am not) but I need a lot of solitude and quietness in order to be at my best.
5. My perfect home would be an 18th C cottage with an open fireplace, bookshelves lining the walls, worn leather sofas with handmade throws and a sleeping dog. Unfortunately this sort of cottage does not sit well with my other requirements: a local Fair Trade coffee shop, a Mediterranean deli around the corner and excellent public transport.
6. I would still really, really, really like a dog. And the handmade throws.
7. My birthday almost always coincides with seeing the first few snowdrops/vintergækker.

I am passing this on to Paula (one of the most multi-talented creative people I know and a fantastic friend to boot), Ms Mooncalf (who is slowly taking over Scandinavia with her crafty blog and thus deserves a Scandinavian creative blogger award),  Bells (for inspiring me daily both through her projects and through her words), my dear friend Kathleen (whose projects always fill me with awe and admiration - her Hap Shawl is my favouritest project ever), Anna (who thinks amazing thoughts about crafting and also conjures the most beautiful things out of seemingly nowhere), Meg (because she uses her crafty talents for nefarious things such as steampunk costumes and awesome jewellery) and finally Louise of Garn & Gammelt (a recent blog discovery but I love, love, love her style and creativity).

The Accidental Woman

One of my favourite places in Glasgow has to be the Botanic Garden. When I first moved here, we lived less than three minutes away by foot and I always made a point of walking through the Botanics whenever I was walking to or fro work. Nowadays we live slightly further afield and my journey to work takes me another route, so I only get to wander around the Botanics on my days off. I like visiting often, so I can keep up with what is happening: that tree has lost its flowers, the little robin is nowhere to be seen, the cocoa plant has a new pod etc. And in winter, the greenhouses provide great knitwear photo opportunities! Yes, 'tis my own Feather & Fan shawl. Apparently these shawls are like salted peanuts: you cannot have just one.

I finished reading Jonathan Coe's The Accidental Woman yesterday. Coe is one of my favourite contemporary authors and his What A Carve Up! is a brilliant dissection of Thatcherite Britain while I push the very affecting The House of Sleep on most of my friends. The Accidental Woman was Coe's debut novel and owes more to Coe's admitted obsession with experimental stylists like Alasdair Gray and BS Johnson than any of Coe's other books. From a technical point of view, The Accidental Woman is actually very good. The narrator decides to take an average, dull person, Maria, as his subject and the resulting novel is really about the narrator's attempt to construct "a novel", the writing process and the struggle to fit Maria into a conventional novel. The novel leaps confidently back and forth between the primary narrative and the behind-the-scenes bits which is rather astonishing considering this was Coe's first novel. However, the technical feat does make the book feel very dated (in a 1980s-high-on-metafiction sort of way) and the novel itself is deadly dull. Anyone teaching narratology might get a kick out of it, but, really, most people would do far better to read Coe's later books. They are equally well-constructed but also have the added benefits of plots, interesting characters, humour and political outrage.

Oh, and I watched the recent RSC/BBC production of Hamlet last night. I have seen several productions/versions of Hamlet in my time (that's what you get for the double whammy of being a Dane and studying English) and quite enjoyed the newest version despite a very, very, very hammy Ophelia. Oh, and I liked how the newspaper had headlines written in Danish..

She Comes Scattered

Just a little peek of my just-off-the-blocking-board shawl. It's beautiful, it's warm and it's mine. Sorry. I notice how my projects travel by colour. I had a green phase last spring/summer, then recently I have knitted a lot of blue-ish purples and pink fuschia, and now I appear to gravitate towards rich reds. I hope I will never have a pastel phase. I do not think I'd be able to keep my sanity. Anyway, proper photos to come this weekend after Official Photographer and I manage to have a full day together. Official Photographer called me this morning to let me know that Crowded House will be touring the UK this spring and that tickets go on sale tomorrow. I have written about this before, so it suffices to say that Crowded House provided the soundtrack to most of my life. I connect places I have lived or been with their songs, and although I no longer listen to them on a regular basis, they are "my band". For one glorious moment I contemplated seeing every Scottish gig, but then I checked ticket prices and also remembered that I will be on my way to West Yorkshire for work reasons when they play Aberdeen. If you had told me ten years ago I would have to forego seeing Neil Finn live for matters involving sheep, I would have thought you mad.

Anna has written an interesting post about her relationship with "things", crafting and feminism. I enjoyed reading it. You may too.