This is my 1,500th post.

It’s rubbish-collection day, and the gulls are making an almighty mess of Drummond Place. So far I have protected our own black plastic bag by rushing angrily out the door from time to time, but I can’t keep it up all morning.

Nor is it conducive to blogging.

So, guess what? I cast on a Christine Duchrow jabot in Cashsilk yesterday. Heavenly stuff, finer, I think, than the Princess’ Gossamer Merino, but so far I can handle it. I didn’t even try to rechart the pattern. It occurred to me that I am not attempting an historical reproduction, I am trying to knit a jabot for James. So it doesn’t matter if I misunderstand the chart here and there, as long as I proceed symmetrically and plausibly.

I used to have a reading knowledge of German – that helps somewhat. But it wasn’t Knitting German, it was Ancient Historical German, so it doesn’t help all that much.

Tamar, there are people who have knit the Princess twice. Like climbing all the munros in Scotland again, after you've climbed them once. But I don't think it's for me. The Unst Bridal Shawl and the Wedding Ring Shawl, as written, both require purl rows in the border -- not for me, either. If I knit one of them, I'd wrap a stitch and turn around at the starting point. I've done that once -- it leaves a line.

And the Queen Ring Shawl, as written, has lots of sewing at the end.

So I'll confine myself to the jabot for the moment, and think about that stole in Heirloom Knitting.

I didn’t get much further with the cardigan sleeve. And today is the day I mean to tackle lace-grafting and finish the Princess, if I can keep my eye on the ball.

Vegetables (reprise)

The Fishwife was right. The opium poppies have appeared among my vegetables. And MaryLou is right, too – it isn’t a bumper year for poppies. A few fell to the hoe last week, but I tried to preserve as many as possible.

Anxiety

I am almost paralysed by fear now that the CT adventure is so near. We drove back to Edinburgh last Saturday, as you know, and summer Saturdays are great days for weddings. It was easy to spot the Wedding Guests in pairs in the streets of Blairgowrie – the elegant, uncomfortable clothes; the slight air of anxiety – they clearly weren’t going shopping; and, a dead giveaway, him in a kilt.

After all these years of co-dependence, am I capable of acting independently? is part of my anxiety. The other part is, how are we all to move around Old Saybrook? From hotel to sister’s-house to Griswold Inn to wedding-venue to breakfast-picnic-on-the-beach? It’s not like K*rkmichael, where you can walk from anywhere to anywhere. There will be a lot of “us” with few if any cars – three of my four children, 9 of 12 grandchildren, 2 spouses, and I think one girlfriend and one boyfriend. And, no doubt, an awful lot of everybody else. I remember taxis as rare and unreliable, in that part of the world.

The thing to do on that one is to print out some Google maps and start calculating the distances which could be walked if need be. I’m good for five miles or so, as long as I don't actually have to walk to the wedding looking anxious in my new clothes.

Here we are home. Good week – although not much knitting, despite resolutions, and the garden is far too dry.

Funny, because Perthshire had newsworthy flash floods the day before we drove up. We passed sandbags in Milnathort (which had featured in the television news), and in Strathardle itself (a short strath, as straths go) there was a “Police Slow” sign followed by 100 yards of streaks of mud on the road. But we were, and are, bone dry, and the burn is very low. The weather kept promising rain during the week, and then wandering off and forgetting to do it. It was only on Friday that I really hunkered down and started carrying gallons of the stuff to my poor vegetables. It’s heavy.

Freed of grass-cutting (at an expense which continues to horrify my husband) I find plenty of strength for vegetable-growing, and again spent the time digging weeds out of long-neglected corners and edges and reveling in the tidiness of the result.

There is still much disappointment – a row of carrots and another of beets so sparse (thanks to the slugs, I’m sure) that neither will produce even a plateful. And, of course, no salsola soda whatsoever. I re-sowed, although experience teaches that seeds-in-July rarely if ever succeed.

On the very substantial other hand, the garden is on stream. We’re eating. The lettuces I bought in last time have flourished. We had daily salads, augmented with my own rocket/arugula. We had another sorrel soup. We had two meals with mange-tout peas. Next weekend, when the Greeks are here, we should have real peas, and will certainly have the wherewithal to attempt a summer pudding. (Recipes are all like the one in the link – but my husband is adamant that the fruit should be red currants only.)

The climbing beans are climbing – and the runner beans are in bloom. Surely there will be some beans by Games Day? I usually enter the “collection of four vegetables” class (took a Second, once) and the object is to be able to do it without including potatoes. That I rarely achieve, but with runner beans I might make it.

Knitting

Despite sloth, I am well advanced with the second sleeve of the Child’s Cardigan, and should advance still further today. I must have knit most of the Princess under the influence of cider, but don’t feel that lace grafting is compatible with it now. That’s for tomorrow.

I was touched to find how many people have been following her progress. I don’t feel any exultation in having nearly-finished. I miss her. Those last few repeats were like coming to the end of a book – my first reading of “Brideshead Revisited” is the example I can think of – which you want to go on reading forever.

I must have some lace, and I think James’s jabot is the direction to go. The cashsilk is here. Far too busy a week looms to think of going to Leith and looking at jabots at Kinloch Anderson, but I could try charting a Christine Duchrow jabot in modern terms and having a wee shot at it.

There you are. Finished. Four years and two months.

Not an FO yet, of course. There’s the grafting of the End to the Beginning to be done, and the repair of that moth hole, and loose ends to be tidied, and finally the blocking. I must do the grafting and moth-holing next weekend when we get back from Strathardle, while the edging pattern still precariously lodges in my mind. And I think I see a window of opportunity for the blocking: I’m due back from CT on the morning of Tuesday the 28th. Granddaughter Lizzie is going straight on down to London. My husband won’t return from London until the next day. That should leave me an unencumbered afternoon, on one of those days or the other, even allowing for sleep.

And my job in Strathardle this week, apart from my dear vegetables, is to knit the cardigan with single-minded fury.

Thank you for the advice about those sleeves, Lorrie. I always found when my children were small, that designers made sleeves too long. Or else my children had exceptionally short arms. And they (the children) weren’t terribly clever about rolling sleeves. Don’t worry here. If I shorten at all, it will only be by an inch or so, and shouldn’t be obvious to a judge as a design peculiarity.

Non-knit

Yesterday’s excitement was the arrival of my driving license.

We oldies have to re-apply every three years, and a good thing too. My old license expired, I think, at the end of June. I applied in April. My honest answers to the medical questions prompted them to send a supplementary medical questionnaire, which I answered in detail (with names and addresses of medical personnel) in May, on the day it arrived. All about eyes and Retinal Vein Occlusion and laser treatment.

So I’ve been anxious lately, hearing nothing, the more so because one of my magazines (cooking, not knitting) has recently failed to arrive. But here is the license. All is well. And the publishers are sending another copy of “delicious”.

So, we’re off to Strathardle and the vegetables. This is the big one: success or failure will be obvious, and it's essentially too late for remedial footwork. It was a long, cold, dry spring on the whole. When we left a fortnight ago, things were in great need of some warm weather to let them put on a growth spurt taking them forward to a stage where the slugs could wound but not kill. We got it (the warm weather) but so dry as to be thoroughly alarming – see the Fishwife’s report. These last few days have been warm and showery, perfect growing weather. What will I find?

Opium poppies grow as weeds among my vegetables – they seek out bare, cultivated ground as unerringly as pussy cats do. I love them, and always let a few grow and bloom. And wither in situ, so that there’ll be seeds for next year. (They’d probably get through even if I tried to root up every one, there are so many.) This year, I haven’t seen a single one. I know the tiny seedlings well and can recognise them from a very early stage.

Climate change?

See you Sunday, insh’Allah.

The Wimbledon men’s final was as exciting as you could ask a tennis match to be, and Mr Roddick was gracious in defeat, an over-used adjective here well-deserved. So that’s that for another year.

And where am I? The first sleeve of the Child’s Cardigan is about 10” long, out of a prescribed 14 ½”. I may shorten that a bit, as is my wont with children’s sleeves. The Princess is where we last saw her.

The vegetables on the doorstep are growing at an alarming pace. The “before” pictures were taken on June 23 – less than a fortnight ago.





















The Fishwife warned me that the tomatoes (her gift to me) would have to be staked. I hoped they could hold out until we got back from Strathardle at the end of this week with some proper sticks, but they are growing at such a rate that I have tried to hold them up with skewers.

What will I find when we get there? Not growth like this, I am sure. I can only hope that the slugs have left me something.

I was suddenly gripped last night by one of those panics. Three weeks from today I should be in CT, and the wedding will be over.

Thank God for the Internet. This morning I have ordered from Artyarns the skein of Lang Jawoll Silk I will need to finish the pair of socks which have been designated as airplane knitting. I located it long ago, but never actually got around to ordering. I have also booked my husband’s rail ticket to London, for Wednesday the 22nd, and bought from Amazon a copy of “How to Beat Your Dad at Chess” which I hope to work on in Strathardle with my Greek grandsons next week.

So I feel a bit better.

FiberQat, thank you for your congratulations to Thomas-the-Elder. I am told that his picture will soon appear on the Chambers website, but it doesn’t seem to be there yet. He had to have one taken before the decision was known, striking the right note of youthful competence without overdoing it. I look forward to the result, and will let you know.

And don’t worry too much about my weight (yesterday’s comment) – the point here is that I have been following a maintenance diet ever since Feb., not too hard, as Janet says. And weight has been coming off. I’m never hungry, or if I am, I eat, having given some thought in advance to laying in a stock of not-too-damaging snacks. A small tin of Green Giant sweetcorn, eaten straight from the tin, is a favourite. No calorie counting, no hunger, no bad temper (an under-reported side-effect of Real Dieting). It will be interesting to see what the final plateau is, weight-wise. I miss my cider sometimes, though.

But, hey! it’s Sunday!

Knitting

Don’t worry, FiberQat, the Princess will be finished, and soon, although little was done yesterday and less, probably, today, what with cider and the men’s tennis final. I zipped along with the cardigan sleeve yesterday. I hope I can finish the basic knitting this week in Strathardle. That will leave considerable making up and edging and perhaps collar-ing to be done.

One more thing for me to order might be the yarn for Cully’s Hat from Schoolhouse Press. The two knitting categories for the Games this year, you will remember, are Child’s Cardigan and Knitted Hat, and it might be fun to try that one. I am finding it extremely hard to keep two deadlines in mind at once. I don’t have to finish the cardigan before the wedding; I have grasped that. But how much time does that leave? The Fourth Saturday of August is on the 22nd this year.

That’s any minute now.

Happy Fourth, everybody. As a general rule of life, I much prefer it not to be a holiday, but as holidays go, the 4th of July is a good one. You don’t have to love anybody, or buy them anything, or even cook for them. And there are fireworks.

Tennis

That was disappointing. I had been looking forward to sipping tomorrow’s cider as I watched him lose to Federer. I wonder again, as I did when he went out to Nadal last year, whether he’ll ever get quite to the top. He’s very, very good – but, great?

Rachel’s younger son Joe is working at Wimbledon – a rich source of temporary employment for the young of south London. (Joe is third from the left, in the bright blue sweatshirt, in the Grandchildren picture in my sidebar. He has just finished his first year at Nottingham University reading politics.) His job, as far as I understand it, is handing out champagne and canapés in one of the hospitality suites. He phoned in some excitement last night to say that he had met Virginia Wade, and she’s very nice.

Next time I see him, we'll be in CT. Joe is to be a groomsman at the wedding.

My blameless life

A new landmark at this morning’s weigh-in. I started off, you will remember, at x stone 12. This morning, I reached w and one-half stone: w stone 6 ¾, to be precise. (There are 14 pounds in a stone.) I think it is now permissible to say that I’ve lost 20 pounds, especially as the regime began on Ash Wednesday, a week before the weigh-ins started. No-one seems to have noticed, but the results are beginning to be very slightly perceptible.

The profile view in the bedroom mirror remains unappetising, but no longer terrifying. Waistbands have eased. There’s less of an obstacle between me and my shoelaces.

If I can continue to live blamelessly (lo-cider, no sugar, careful with the fat) forever, and I don’t see why not, really, I might hope to dispatch another 10 pounds. Below that looms scrawniness.

I wonder how QueerJoe is getting on? He reported a 10-pound loss in early April, using McKenna’s book and an MP3 player, but hasn’t mentioned the subject since.

Knitting

Interesting what you say about the Kinloch Anderson jabot, Tamar. I must get out there and have a look. I went ahead and ordered a skein of Cashsilk yesterday – if I can’t knit with it (cf Franklin and that DMC cotton) I can revert to the leftover Gossamer Merino from the Princess.

I’m halfway through the penultimate edging repeat. I could finish today, I suppose. I don’t want to.

I also got a cardigan sleeve started during yesterday’s tennis. I mean to take it along when we go to Strathardle next week, and this time I mean to knit.

“Pshaw!” I remarked yesterday to my fishmonger. “World No. 1 and I have never heard of her? Venus will blow her away.”

Mr Bee begged to differ, but I think he may have had Safina mixed up with the beautiful and formidable Dementieva. (You couldn’t make up a name like that.)

One of the many things I like about the Williams sisters is the slight air they have, in those little interviews, of finding the whole thing rather ridiculous.

I didn’t get to watch much yesterday – my husband abhors all sport except the most boring one of all, the Boat Race. And besides, he won’t go out if I don’t totter along with him, and he needs the exercise. And besides, again, there were things that needed doing in town. Today is another matter. Providentially, we’ve got to wait in for the delivery of some computer paper.

Knitting went well yesterday, too. I did a repeat and a bit of the Princess edging – only two rows and two repeats to go. And finished the body of the Child’s Cardigan, back and fronts, this time with the shaping correctly placed. The most we can hope for today is to cast on a sleeve.

I think the next thing to do is to order some Cashsilk and start messing around with jabot-design. Clearly, there is no single way to do it. The set (jabot and cuffs) offered by Kinloch Anderson looks particularly fruity.

Big news on the family front: Thomas-the-Elder has finished his Pupillage at 4 New Square and become a full-scale barrister with a tenancy there. I don’t know what most of those words mean, but I know that this is a major event. No more hurdles to leap. Now he just has to win cases.