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.

Linkage

Link dump day! + Europe, Explained: a nice map which summarises it all for confused non-Europeans. + Puppets need puppets too. + Vegetarian-friendly roadkill carpet + The prettiest yarn shop in Denmark? I like my yarn shops over-stuffed, but if you like minimalism.. + Sweden has its own Etsy-like site. + This is a real film: Tiptoes stars Matthew McConaughey as a "normal-sized dwarf", Gary Oldman as his, er, dwarf-sized dwarf brother and Kate Beckinsale as the love interest. Peter Dinkdale features as a a crazy French radical dwarf. I kid you not. + 13 Alien Languages You Can Actually Read. + This is what happens when knitting gets serious. Like, REALLY serious. Sock Summit 2009. Check out the graphics. + Maia Hirasawa: The Worrying Kind. A stunning, stunning cover where I don't think you need to know the original to appreciate it. + Jar Jar Binks salad + British Library's treasures. You could spend an entire afternoon just faffing about (well, I could). + Field Notes. I covet. I covet badly.

A Beautiful Day

It's going to be a beautiful day so the bluebirds sing. I have booked myself a short, but much-needed flight home to Denmark in May. I need to spend time with the Danish part of myself, I have decided. Going back is always odd because it invariably ends up being a long series of meet-ups with everybody I have ever known in Denmark. I cannot remember the last time I spent a few hours in Copenhagen just, you know, hanging out with myself. I am not complaining. It just feels strange after having spent fifteen years in Copenhagen and suddenly the way I engage with my city is transformed. I think this is something most expats experience.

Linkage, then:

+ When I read "Glasgow Artist Restores Lost Mural" on the BBC website, I knew exactly who and what they were talking about. Wooh! + Cover Versions: "Classic records lost in time and format, remerged as Pelican books." + Speaking of which .. Pelican paperbacks. I used to own a lot of them. + Art-House Book Trailers. Just as vile as the name suggests. + CraftGawker. Look, be inspired, create. + This Is Not A Riot: An effective, non-violent response to riot police. (I miss going to demonstrations) + The Fall of the Spanish Hapsburgs, or why marrying your first cousin is a bad, bad idea. See also this pictorial guide to the Spanish Hapsburgs. Ouch. + As seen everywhere on the web: Uncomfortable plot summaries. To wit: "Groundhog Day: Misanthropic creep exploits space/time anomaly to stalk coworker." + And as seen on John's blog: "Over the weekend, sharp-eyed Cassini-watchers on unmannedspaceflight.com noticed a series of way-cool photos on the mission's raw images website." Mindblowingly cool photos.

I finished reading The Time-Traveller's Wife. It was rather "girly". I have also begun yet another knitting project: Geno in duck's-egg-blue milk-cotton. It's rather lovely and very summery.

Bibliophilia

Do you think reality TV beckons me? I'm thinking of entering one of those "Britain's Got Talent!" shows with my uncanny ability to acquire a massive amount of books without spending much money. This week's haul is pictured to the left. Fourteen books adding up to a whopping total of £4.50. Okay, so the top one was a bookmooch and the bottom four were purchased with a five-pound note I found on the street, but it is still not bad going.

The selection is suitably eclectic (for me, anyways): some bestsellers, some fluffy Georgette Heyers, a historical novel which had been recommended to me by my old mentor, some Booker nominees/winners, a bonafide classic and some slightly obscure novels.

I'm a chapter into Heyer's Cousin Kate and will also start Crumey's Mr Mee as soon as possible.

Some links for your perusal:

• When disability becomes superability: Aimee Mullins: ".. the myth of being dis-abled, the truth of being super-abled, why individual shifts in consciousness work and a new definition for wearable art. " (thank you, David)
• The Forbidden Railway: Travelling from Vienna  to Pyonyang: "In September of 2008, two Europeans go by rail from Vienna to Pyongyang without asking permission or going through the official North Korean travel agency." A fascinating travelogue with photos from inside North Korea. (via)
• My arty uncle finally has his own website. I grew up with his paintings on the walls and today David and I have one of his collographic prints in our living room.
• Nine Words You Thought Came From Science, But Actually Came from Science Fiction. Zero-gravity, anyone? Like the commentators, I'm slightly irritated that Karel Capek has not been given credit for "robot" (I did a secondary school project on early science fiction novels, you see).
• Finally, James Earl Jones recites the alphabet. As good as it gets.

I Was Just Here. Where Did I Go?

Kirsten Marie, my good friend and erstwhile bookish.dk contributor, visited Scotland this week. We spent a few days walking around Glasgow's West End, drinking coffee, and I talked her into buying some expensive Japanese yarn(!) too. It felt really good to talk in Danish again and I really enjoyed being able to make culture-specific jokes (like quoting Lars von Trier's Riget in a wholly inappropriate context). Walking around with Kirsten Marie, I realised how much more settled I feel here in Glasgow now than I did just a year ago or so. I can navigate Glasgow now and do so with ever increasing confidence. Vegan food? Oh, go to Sith, the 78 or Mono. Fair trade, you say? Bolshie's the place. Arty? There's a really great mural just down by Kelvinbridge subway station. Okay, so I wouldn't be able to point you to the local gun range, but I wouldn't have been able to do that in Copenhagen either

Knitting-wise, I have done a lot in the last few days owing to the fact that Kirsten Marie has been bitten by the knitting bug and not only demanded to be taken to yarn shops(!!) but also thought knitting in public to be a perfectly agreeable way of spending her holiday here. So I only have 6" to go on the body of my green cardigan before I can start the sleeves. I am still unsure about which buttons to use. Having been VERY monogamous with my knitting lately, I am dying to cast on one or two new projects (I never have more three WIPs on the go - I know it's sickening) but first I need to re-organise my stash. Other Half had to get something in the closet behind my yarn containers and everything's now all a-jumble. It's really lucky that I love organising books and balls of wool.

A few random links from the last few days:

+ The Other G20. My postcode happens to be G20 and a BBC journalist went to see what it's like here. One comment at the buttom nails it: "The schizophrenia of the postcode is emphasised by a local running joke: those originally from Glasgow who live in G20 say they live in Maryhill; those who have moved to G20 to the middle-class developments refer to it as North Kelvinside". I live in .. North Kelvinside. + Seven Abandoned Cities and Towns of Europe. Beautiful urban/rural decay. + Cornify: "the #1 unicorn and rainbow service worldwide, giving websites sparkle around the world." Yes, Cornify is really for all your unicorn and rainbow needs. + Sound Comparisons: accents of English from around the world.

Gallimaufry

Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers have teamed up to make an adaptation of the children's classic Where the Wild Things Are. Growing up in Scandinavia, I confess I had never heard of this book, but the trailer looks stunning (and turn the volume up - the chosen song fits perfectly). Via John, aquarists at the Blue Reef Aquarium in Newquay have uncovered the identity of a mysterious coral reef killer. Like John says, the accompanying picture really sells the story. It looks like really bad CGI from a D-list Monster Movie of the Week .. but it is not. Ew.

io9 lists The 7 Deadly Sins of Religion in Science Fiction which feels a bit lazy as they mainly focus on Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who with a bit of Heroes and the odd Star Wars mention. What? No, X-Files with their beatification of Dana Scully? I'm also rather unsure about the attack on the use of cargo cults.

On a similar-ish note: what do you get if you divide science by God is a strange little article:

The bizarre nature of quantum physics has attracted some speculations that are wacky but the theory suggests to some serious scientists that reality, at its most basic, is perfectly compatible with what might be called a spiritual view of things.

And so the journalist proceeds by asking random scientists about their spirituality and we are all somehow supposed to jump to startling conclusions about quantum mechanics, the existence of God and what not.

Oh, let's just end with a BBC headline which I first saw thanks to Anna: "God will not give happy ending!" Oh damn.