With Love from Glasgow

When you read this, I am currently on a much-needed break. The past year has been a whirlwind of activity and I was startled when I realised I hadn't had any time off since Christmas 2012 (when I had the flu so I am not sure it counts). I have spent some days on Aberdeen with family and now I am making my way towards London (where I'll be at the Pompom Magazine Christmas Party - hope to see you there?) and then Denmark. Hopefully I'll return with my batteries recharged and some major decisions made. I will be knitting whilst I am away - I am currently collaborating with Quail Books on an exciting project and I'm also working with Knit Now magazine on what promises to be their best issue yet - but I am not stressing about deadlines for once. But first I am really happy to unveil a collaboration with my original partner-in-crime, Ms Old Maiden Aunt. We had so much fun running our Sherlock-inspired project in 2012 that we wanted to do something similar this year. Instead of doing a three-month long club, we decided to do a one-off kit that combined our love of Scotland, local history, and Art Nouveau. We began working on this some eight months ago  so when Lilith received the small booklets last week, I whooped.

The Tenement Tiles pattern is inspired by the late 19th century tiles found throughout the Victorian apartment blocks ("tenements") in Glasgow. The pattern booklet includes a small essay about the tiles and Glasgow - the story of the tenement tiles is absolutely fascinating (it involves both cholera and false teeth!) and I have also included photographs of some of the tiles in my neighbourhood.

I see these late 19th century tiles every single time I leave my home - the entry way to my tenement is tiled with deep green titles depicting stylised lilies. Lilith and I began working on how to work the tiles into a design and the obvious solution was colourwork.

The Tenement Tiles gloves come in three sizes and the kit includes an exclusive Old Maiden Aunt colourway that won't be available anywhere else. We were really passionate about trying to capture a slightly weathered green-grey and Lilith came up with a colour that just blew me away. It is the exact shade I had in my head when I first started sketching all those months.

(An addendum: Glasgow's the first place I have really felt at home and it feels so very poignant to have worked on something so quintessentially Glaswegian at a time when Glasgow has been hit by tragedy.  It feels even stranger to be writing about my beloved home when I know this blog post will be posted when I am not here. Glasgow has a reputation of a hard, tough city but it is a city of beautiful architecture, amazing art and (most importantly) an incredible community spirit. )

Many thanks to the overwhelming response to my post about appreciating hand-knitting. I have much I want to say in response to your response but first I have some travelling to do. Also, in lieu of a big gift guide for the knitters in your life, I have compiled a small Pinterest board of some good gift ideas.

That awkward moment..

.. when the media decides to call you an expert .

(thank you Alison for the commemorative photo)

What the Kids Do Today

My local Unnamed Major Supermarket is the gift that keeps giving. It used to be really dodgy, then it was given an Unnamed Major Supermarket Extra! overhaul and is now twice the size and twice as dodgy but does its thing twenty-four-seven. Going to Unnamed Major Supermarket is always an adventure. What will it be today? Junkies in wheelchairs fighting over a cat on a leash that doesn't belong to either of them? A happy birthday card saying "Daddy, I love you more than chips"? Shady Lady having very suggestive mobile phone conversations in the middle of the Tinned Food section? Junkie challenging Mormon preacher on Hitler's Christianity? Or will it be as mundane as being elbowed by Angry Old Lady Who Doesn't Want That Luxury Hummus (And What the Hell IS hummus) But Doesn't Want Me To Have It Either.

All these stories are true.

But today my Unnamed Major Supermarket adventure was different. I was sending a birthday parcel to my BFF and the Post Office lady looked at me: "Is it one of those yarn swap parcels the kids do today?"

.. let us just pause and rewind..

"Is it one of those yarn swap parcels the kids do today?"

My Unnamed Major Supermarket just gets weirder and weirder.

(Also, it just dawned on me that I was identified as A Knitter by the Post Office lady. Note to self: must wear fewer layers of wool if I am to blend in with native population)

Addendum: If you are struggling to find me a gift, I'd be perfectly happy to accept Lord Byron's copy of Frankenstein, inscribed by Mary Shelley.. This Hark! A Vagrant! comic is wonderfully on-topic.

Biking in Glasgow

I have been biking in Glasgow since mid-March (so, two months). Here are a few observations. First, though, you should know this about me.

a) I am Danish and have been biking since I was two or three.

b) I grew up biking in a small rural community in Denmark with no cycle paths.

c) I spent the majority of my adult life biking in Copenhagen which is an enormously bike-friendly city.

d) To me, biking is not a sport or leisure activity. Biking is a mode of transport - a way from getting from A to B.

Some background:

I moved to Glasgow in 2006. The six years between moving here and me getting a bike are the longest I have ever gone without a bike. Initially I decided against getting a bike due to traffic running in the left lane rather than the Continental right and then I was unable to bike for a number of health reasons. However, I had been toying with the idea for some time and I eventually bought my bike in March 2012.

What made you decide to get a bike?

We don't have a car in our household which means I had become reliant upon public transport. Public transport in Glasgow is not great: bus routes are frequently illogical, you cannot transfer from bus to subway without getting a new ticket, and prices have shot up in recent years. Add to that some rather unfortunate incidents on my most-used bus route and I had had enough. Time to get a bike.

So what is it like biking in Glasgow?

It is both better and worse than I expected.

Good bits:

• Cycle paths are readily available. I really enjoy being able to spot deer, foxes and swans on my daily commute rather than grim bus drivers.
• Navigating left-side traffic is not terribly difficult and it is far less terrifying than I had expected.
• Due to the nature of Glasgow, it is easy to find short-cuts and unexpected routes. You don't need to use heavy traffic roads unless you have a strange desire to do so.
• People are easily impressed. 'I bike to work' is mostly met with dropped jaws and compliments - even if biking to work only takes me 20 minutes. I am now an exotic creature!
• I feel an enormous sense of freedom. I don't have to wait for buses or trains. I don't have to plan my day around timetables. I can run my errands without any hassle.
• And I am losing weight! A nice side-effect.

Bad bits:

• Biking provokes people. I have had snack wrappers thrown at me from a passing car with matching verbal abuse. I have also had verbal abuse from random pedestrians. Also, teenagers have jumped in front of me trying to make me swerve into oncoming traffic which was an new and exciting experience.
• Cycle paths are not always ideal - for my money, cobbled streets are the work of the devil - and occasionally interesting to bike down (there is one part where I'm likely to fall into the canal if someone tries to pass me).
• Cars will often park right across your cycle path leaving you few options where to bike safely.
• Cars will also stop and block your way without any indication - and drivers will also open their doors without notice. I have had this in Denmark too although not to same degree.
• People associate biking with sports, so most of the gear available is decked out in florescent colours and is very over-priced (presumably because it is marketed as 'high-tech'). I sometimes wear a skirt when biking - this confuses many of the other cyclists who are mostly wearing Lycra.

Any tips?

• I try to make myself as big as possible when I bike on normal roads. I don't crawl along the kerb as I believe this'll make drivers less careful around me. Instead I bike maybe 3 feet away from the kerb and I make sure to exaggerate any arm indications I am making.
• I do not wear big florescent jackets  for the same reason as above. I believe wearing these jackets will actually make drivers less careful around me as the 'safety gear' indicates a certain level of invulnerability. I wear my normal clothes but add florescent strips at night (as well as lights, of course).
• I wear a bike helmet. I see people without helmet and while I used to be one of them, I wouldn't do that here in Glasgow.
• Get in touch with Sustrans who can provide you with info on local cycle routes.
• Assess your local landscape before buying your bike. I wish I had bought a bike with five or more gears, but I opted for a three-gear bike before I realised just how hilly Glasgow can get on a bike. I love my bike to bits, but it is not as practical as I would have liked.
• Be prepared to justify your existence on the road. Biking is not as much of an integral part of your average lifestyle (unlike Denmark) so you have to be prepared for some offensive comments and behaviour.

Finally, would you recommend getting a bike?

Yes. It is the best thing that has happened to me in a very long time.

The Wedding Blanket

This one has been under wraps for a very long time. I am a member of Glasgow Knit'n'Stitch - Glasgow's biggest knitting community with almost 400 members. When I first moved to Glasgow, I knew very few people and GKS was instrumental in me connecting with people outside my very small circle of acquaintances. One of my closest friendships is with Elaine of SoCherry. Elaine is getting married this year and this led to some of us discussing what to make her and Future Mr SoCherry. Originally we wanted to make them a quilt but once other members of GKS heard about our plans, the plans .. grew. They grew so big so rapidly that the focus was quickly shifted to a communal project - one that everybody could contribute to no matter their skill level or amount of time they could devote.

And so The Wedding Blanket project began.

We briefly contemplated using The Great American Afghan pattern book, but it did not have as many sampler blocks to choose from and several of our less experienced knitters expressed concerns.

Instead we chose to use a US knitting pamphlet - Leisure Arts no. 932 - which contains 60 different sampler blocks ranging from beginner-friendly squares to rather complex cables. It proved a great choice and I would heartily recommend the sampler to anyone wanting to increase their skill sets by making a blanket. You have a good selection of squares to choose from and all of the patterns are clearly written out.

We already knew that Elaine loves her Aran-style blankets and although we finally ended up with a mix of lace and cables, the emphasis is very much upon texture and cables. This also influenced our choice of yarn. Paula and I were in charge of the yarn-sleuthing. Again, we had a set of criteria: it had to be British, it had to be cream-coloured/natural, it had to be aran-weight, it had to be pure wool and it had to be superwash. We also had a budget in mind which made yarn-sleuthing even more fun! Eventually Lilith of Old Maiden Aunt came through for us and we ended up with an amazing yarn: superwash Bluefaced Leicester Aran. (Lilith is currently dyeing this base and fourteen GKS knitters can vouch for how incredibly nice yarn is! We feel very privileged that we were allowed to knit with it before anybody else!)

With everything in place, what followed next? Three intense months of knitting.

Elaine had no idea, of course. Parcels were exchanged under the table; secret meet-ups were arranged; Tam Shepherd's became our mid-city drop-off for parcels & yarn pick-up; cryptic messages were sent out; and at one point Lilith was distributing yarn from the back of her car in the pouring rain. Yes, it felt rather like we were running a drug gang!

Looking back it is incredible that nobody slipped up and that everything went so smoothly.

One GKS member even knitted her square in Australia whilst there for work. Another GKS member had yarn sent to her in Amsterdam where she now lives. I know several other people wanted to have taken part - Emma and Mags, I am thinking of you - but the planning stage was no more than a week at best. It was so touching to see just how many people were keen on getting involved and how much Elaine and her fiancée meant to people.

Then one Sunday not so long ago most of us gathered at Paula's house to finish the blanket. It was a very special afternoon watching squares turning into strips turning into sections turning (finally) into a blanket. I imagine making barn-raiding quilt would have been a bit like this: women gathered together making something. We worked at it from every angle - at one point one person was crocheting the double crochet edging and another person was crocheting the lacy edging on top. Chain gang, if you will pardon the pun!

And we finished the blanket!

From left to right: Alison, Fiona, Paula, Karie, Catherine, Janice, Lynette, and Julia.

Not present: Jules, Lisa, Kathleen, Eleanor, Kerry and Gloria.

Photographer: Lilith.

Gloria also created a beautiful scrapbook detailing how much work went into the blanket, how we had made it and how much it was a labour of love.

And we did think of it as a blanket of love. For me, personally, the blanket represents how much I learned from being involved with GKS; how my life has changed since I embraced being a Knitter; and just how amazing knitters are when they get together. We make things and we give so much of ourselves to others through our making. I made this blanket together with thirteen incredible women with each their own story - and we made it for a couple with their own story-making.

(I hope that made sense. I am not usually this sentimental!)

And then everything almost went haywire. We had planned a small knitterly hen-night for Elaine and we wanted it to be a surprise. On the morning of the hen-night Future Mr SoCherry texted me to tell me that Elaine had had to leave work due to a nasty migraine. Eventually we managed to coax her out to a quiet knitting night but certain members of GKS did have mild panic attacks prior to that.

Subterfuge was finally done away with - and we presented her with the blanket. I think she liked it.

Fourteen knitters, three countries, two continents, three months, fourteen hanks of Old Maiden Aunt BFL Aran and A LOT OF SUBTERFUGE..

.. equals one blanket of love.

Pattern: Elvan

It might come as a surprise, but I crocheted before I could knit. In fact, throughout my teenage years, I preferred to crochet. It was faster and much more immediate. It took years before I felt able to invent when knitting - but i was always able to do so when crocheting. These days I knit much more than I crochet as I find knitting gentler on my hands. I do teach a lot of crochet and there is a real dearth of patterns aimed at people who have only just begun to master the stitches. This is why I sat down and came up with the Elvan cowl. Elvan is free to download from Ravelry and uses approximately 200 yards of fingering weight yarn. I made my version out of the new Rowan Wool Cotton 4ply (so soft and warm), but I'd also love to see it made in an indie-dyed sock yarn. As with most of my patterns, Elvan is customisable, so you could use all of your awesome sock yarn and get a long cowl that'll wrap around several times. And, yes, if you can do a treble (US: double crochet), you can make this pattern. Promise.

I have made two versions of the pattern - one using UK terminology and one using US terminology. Make sure to download your preferred version.

It is a bank holiday here in the UK. I don't tend to work Mondays as a rule but even I can get into the holidaying spirit. Yesterday I went to see Alice & the Rampant Trio at Glasgow's legendary King Tut's club and I am nursing a tiny hangover as a result (two beers!). Today I am off to have dinner with good friends. Outside, right now, it is snowing cherry blossoms.