A snowy day bookmark knitting.

I am back from my weeklong blogging and people break. This day has already become fuzzy in our memory but let’s recall a fantastic snowstorm we had in NYC a couple of weeks ago. I thoroughly enjoyed it because I knew there are not that many snow days left of this winter. Also, I never got tired of watching the snow dance outside. Inside, safe from the mad white swirls, I read and knit a bookmark.

I have been collecting bookmarks (and have been losing many of them as the blog title suggests). My collection dates back to 1994. Many of those skinny and sturdy pieces of paper carry personal memories and invoke a great deal of nostalgia which I fully indulge in as I read a book. Still, there is a special place in my heart for the knitted kind, a relatively recent addition to my collection since I did not start knitting in earnest until 2007.

I am always searching for bookmark patterns which usually leads to disappointment because there aren’t that many out there. That’s why I was ecstatic to find a lovely bookmark pattern by Kiersten Brandt. It was so beautiful and perfect for a snowy day knitting project. I really appreciate Kiersten Brandt for posting her bookmark pattern in her neat blog linked below:

http://knitoneblogtwo.wordpress.com/

(if you want the pattern, click on “free patterns” at the top of the blog. The pattern is called “Backbone Bookmark”).

The snowy day bookmark knitting didn’t progress very far though, probably because I was completely mesmerized by the swirling snow:

I took a couple more days to knit and block the bookmark. I finished by making the long beady strand that sticks out of the bookmark (is there a technical name for that??). I made it extra long because I love to hold on to that strand as I read or behold the book that helps me feel safe(r) in a public place filled with people (a book is an escape from the world).

 

A beautiful bookmark has to find the right book and vice versa. Some books I know I will like a lot better if I had the right bookmark. flanking the experience. This union between a book and a bookmark really makes or breaks the reading experience for me, and I’d like to think that a good pairing makes the bookmark and the beloved book happy as well in their literary marriage. 

This vital task, however, is not an easy one. There is, of course, an art to matching up a bookmark to a book.  The bookmark must match not only the content and the tone of the writing but also the physical dimensions of the book. 

My snowy day bookmark first lived briefly and temporarily in a book of poems by Billy Collins called Questions About Angels. I love that little volume of poetry loaned to me by Al, but the pairing of the book to the bookmark was not a great one. My choice was a haphazard one: I immediately found I really liked the book and while gulping down its content, I grabbed the nearest bookmark which happened to be the snowy day bookmark. The book, however, is too thin for this thick and elaborate bookmark. and the long strand hangs awkwardly over a floppy cover. Though I loved the poems, I should’ve chosen a more fitting bookmark.

This will be my snowy day bookmark’s first true home: Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics, a book I got at a great price on Christmas eve and a book I plan on reading next week. Oh, I think this is a perfect pairing! The book has a nice hardcover and thick papers suitable for a bookmark like this. I especially like how the long beady strand thingy sticks out of this book.

A couple more examples of where my other knitted bookmarks live (I am using my knitted bookmarks as examples because those are the ones I have pictures of). The green bookmark shown below is my first knitted bookmark. The bookmark is designed by Nancy Miller and is published as “Lace Bookmark” in One-skein wonders: 101 Yarn Shop Favorites, a lovely volume edited by Judith Durant. By the way, Judith Durant edited a couple more “one skein” series after this book and both of them are great as well (that is a recommendation Alice!). Anyway, this bookmark is now happily living in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, a book I am hoping to finish via my 2010 literary resolution.

 

I knit a few more using the same pattern for myself and a couple of literary friends. The white one below, which I kept, is perfect for any Jane Austen novel, don’t you think? Unfortunately, my Jane Austen novels, with the exception of Northanger Abbey are bound together in a gigantic tome that comes with its own ribbon bookmark. So for now, my lacy white one below is homeless. I am thinking I’ll place her in Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion edited by Richard A. Shweder and Robert A LeVine but the cover for this book is the same white as the bookmark. I have to give this some more thought. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

By the way: I do very much like to knit bookmarks for friends as a way of wishing them great reading. Let me know if you would like a bookmark.