Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Candles at Dawn

I took ten copies of the new CD down to Rough Trade East today, which I'd been meaning to do for a while. I had taken some of the old CD down there a couple of months ago and accidentally laundered the receipt, rendering it into grey flabby flakes, but I was delighted because they had sold most of them and they paid me.
We shuffled receipts for a while, theirs haphazardly piled in a big grey box, mine neatly clipped together after an evening's panic-stricken scrabbling last night. They tried to call Rough Trade West to see if they had stock left but the phone was engaged for ages so we did more shuffling and I left happy, diving straight into Rokit for a red winter cardy.
Afterwards, I went with my pal to Tatty Devine. She's photographing window displays for Art College reasons, and we looked at the photos on their wall (and there was one of the beardy chap from The Duke of Uke there) and all their fab jewellery. I was particularly taken with the little mirrored angel wing earrings, and also the swallow tattoo earrings, but having a swallow tattoo anyway, I suppose I don't really need those. The girls in the shop were more stylish even than the jewellery and looked as though they had been carefully crafted by a master-jeweller themselves.
We went into a fantastic hat shop, that had trilbies with fair-isle brims, pom-pom hats with little black lacy veils, and a pork pie brimmed hat with a knitted bit and a pom pom at the top. If I had £90 to spend, that's where I'd spend it.
I was vaguely looking for an indoor hat for McDad, who gets cold extremities. I'd thought of a red fez with a dandy black tassel, but he has quite a large head and I'd be sure to get the wrong size. Ideally, I'd knit him a cosy cloche but I think I am too busy; my finger-exercise regime is spent on developing new geetar fingerpickin' styles. It's the trial'n'error problem that I have with knitting, really- I often have to unpick it and start again, or use unexpected gatherings and ruchings to disguise my mis-shapen botch-ups.
Maybe I could sew him a nice stripy flannelette Wee-Willie-Winkie hat? His cats would probably recoil in terror, but it might stop them from pestering him.

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