Friday January 31st, 2020
Books in January
- Murder on Christmas Eve edited by Cecily Gayford
A collection of 10 Christmas themed short stories by classic mystery writers
- The Trinity Cat Ellis Peters
- The Santa Claus Cat Julian Symons
- The Four Seasons Michael Innes
- No Sanity Claus Ian Rankin
- The Footprint in the Sky John Dickson Carr
- A Wife in a Million Val McDermid
- The Dagger with Wings G K Chesterton
- Cambric Tea Marjorie Bowen
- As Dark as Christmas Gets Lawrence Block
- On Christmas Day in the Morning Marjorie Allingham
- Prophecy by S.J. Parris
[read by Laurence Kennedy]
It's Autumn, 1583. Rumours and predictions abound. Mary Stuart's supporters, always scheming to usurp Elizabeth, take heart and advantage of the astrological year of the Great Conjunction (once in a thousand years), when the two most powerful planets, Jupiter and Saturn, align. Murders at the palace are dressed up with occult symbolism, but Bruno can see they may have a more political motivation.
John Dee appears as a character in this book, in which we see his diminishing influence at court and his leanings towards the supernatural. This and his use of a crystal-gazer (charlatan), finally leads to his leaving England. [Bruno of course is delighted to know him and have use of his library during this period]. - The Waters Edge by Karin Fossum
[read by David Rintoul]
I realise this description may contain >>spoilers<< (but probably best not to read this author expecting a traditional whodunnit).
A very sad tale (when are they not?) investigating the murder of a young boy. We see things from the perspective of the criminal (clearly bonkers), and the altogether weird behaviour of the male half of the couple that found the body. The death seems to be "natural causes" but clearly brought on by some kind of assault.
Weeks go by with suspicions of a "man seen in the woods" but no arrest - then a second boy goes missing. The police finally move in on the man guilty of the assault - but it is Inspector Sejer who deduces the even sadder fate of the second child.
Sunday January 26th, 2020
..and Relax…
Alison took me to a spa for my birthday - we had beauty treatments - see how relaxed and beautiful we look.
Saturday January 25th, 2020
Tutankhamun
Commemorating 100 years since the discovery of the now famous tomb,
I got tickets for this much-publicised event long in advance. I wanted to go as a sort of commemoration of my sister and I going to the exhibition at the British Museum in 1972. At that time, (amazingly to me, practically half a century ago in itself), we waited in a queue miles down the road, for what seemed like ages; it was a bit like viewing the Crown Jewels, or the Bayeux Tapestry - filing past. I think for today's event at the Saatchi Gallery, it was more free format, with the queuing pretty well-managed using timed entries - however, it was, predictably, really crowded.
From memory, the exhibition was smaller than 1972 - and, as made clear beforehand, did not include the trademark "mask", since after the stresses of that tour in the seventies, the Egyptian Government wisely decided the major treasures were not to leave their home in Egypt ever again. However, there were so very many of the "wonderful things" on view as well as a lot of really good use of multimedia, providing additional interest and mitigating the negative effects of the crowding.
Once outside the gallery again, we found the food market, and ate interesting scotch eggs for lunch "on the hoof" in the open air. [I chose a never-before-experienced fishy one, and can only say I can't imagine why I ever thought it might be nice...].
I see there is a museum in Dorchester housing a recreation of Tutankhamun's tomb and treasures. I have not been there (yet) but it seems well worth a visit if you can't get to Egypt.
There is also an intriguing Griffith Institute project (part of the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University), to make their many resources available on-line - including the records of Howard Carter.
(Harry Burton black and white photograph, digitally colourised.)
Thursday January 23rd, 2020
Tate Modern
Limbering up for a busy week ahead for me (I think I am busy when I do more than one outing a week.... there seems to be so much planning involved these days: packed lunches, flasks, tartan blanket....) we went to the Tate Modern. Given my supposed new-found interest black and white photography, I wanted particularly to see their exhibition of Dora Maar's work. She is well-known for her surreal photo montage work, (which coincidentally struck a chord with some of the current fiction books I have been reading). I found it interesting that she was a commercial artist creating arty photos for the fashion world and advertising. I think (I have read) that quite a lot of women artists in this period (which, post WW1, was an emancipation of sorts) took up photography to make a living, as it was a newer art form without the "rules" encompassing traditional art - rules which generally excluded women. I found her camera-less photographs she made in the darkroom in the 1980s very interesting - looking back, Rob had a phase of this kind of experimentation, probably in much the same time period.
Side-stepping emancipation - she is also the subject of in a number of her lover Picasso's paintings with whom she was notably involved for a number of years.
We then drifted into the Dóra Maurer exhibtion. She trained as a graphic artist in the fifties, and in her career of over 50 years, she has worked in almost every medium, from film and photography, to painting, performance, and sculpture. The exhibition has 5 rooms following her career, focusing on the themes of movement, displacement, perception and transformation. The breadth of her work - in colour geometry, and trempe l'oeuil - is fascinating.
Based on her idea to use vacant rooms in the Schloss Buchberg for permanent art installations, in 1982, Dóra Maurer provided a geometric colour installation as the first site-specific art work. Gertraud and Dieter Bogner now house a unique collection of such conceptual artworks.
Finally, we viewed exhibits by Yin Xiuzhen, a (female) Chinese experimental artist who explores issues of globalisation and cultural identity. This is called "weapons" - but at the time we viewed them we did not know what they were and interestingly Rob saw only "some kind of musical instrument perhaps". The "missiles" are made using fabric from second-hand clothing; the worn textiles are stretched over a frame of extendable curtain rods and metal hoops.
The exhibit in the Turbine Hall was the rather spectacular (and large) Kara Walker's Fons Americanus, inspired (in a negative context) by the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace.
Tuesday January 21st, 2020
1917
An excellent film and definitely worth the awards and all the general hype.
"Inspired by his grandfather's experiences as a soldier in World War I, the writer-director Sam Mendes has made a harrowing combat picture by way of a suspenseful, beat-the-clock thriller about two British soldiers on a dangerous mission in northern France in April 1917."
Friday January 17th, 2020
Fleetwith
I'm making Fleetwith using some rather nifty little helpers that I want to share - one is an app from the web, and the other is a little invention of my own.
The App:
The Fleetwith pattern is made up of 5 panels, which each have different repeats, so I felt that for the first time ever that an app might be better than a piece of paper. The right app turned out to be Knit Counter Lite (for the iPhone in my case) - which does very simply exactly what I needed, and is, astonishingly, - free. It is so good that I would pay for the full product; however, one of the main differentials is that Lite is limited to only one project - but frankly I hope never to have more than one project as complex as this on the go at the same time...
Knit Counter is set up so that as you increment the rows it also rolls round the counters for the repeats, independently, so you always know where you are in each panel.
The Stitch Markers:
To separate the panels, I started by using a huge number from my collection of stitch markers, trying to match them in pairs for each panel. It gradually dawned on me that it would be quite useful to have the markers labelled according to the name of the panel. I looked for markers with letters - and found some but they were mostly in sets A-Z and rather expensive so I decided to make my own. I ordered beads from Spoilt Rotten Beads with exactly the letters I needed (6xE, 4xA, 4xB, 2xC, 2xD), and made the markers using Coats (vintage?) 0.5mm wire following a method I found on YouTube. It was not quite a simple as shown - I used Araldite glue and it was difficult on such a small scale, and I was nervous about the flimsiness of the fine wire needed to go through the holes in the beads.
Luckily, the result is better than I could have imagined. The markers are delicate and smooth, so don't get in the way of the knitting, and seem quite robust so far...
As a footnote: I wanted to knit this rather complicated and LARGE project (capacious sweater and cowl) and started with the best of intentions using some vintage stash wool in a lovely cherry colour. However, it turned out (don't ask about a swatch) that after I had completed a couple of inches I realised that Rowan Valley Tweed is not actually a 4 ply, so the tension was not right, but also that even though in theory I had plenty of the vintage (thinner) wool, it's yardage did not match that of Valley Tweed.
Fast forward: after loads of unravelling, moving to larger needles, adapting the pattern to be very slightly less capacious.... and using my nifty little helpers, it's all going swimmingly.
