Jean's Knitting

2012-01-28T08:29:00.001Z

Yesterday Iwent shopping with my husband on George Street, in search of grey flannel trousers. Wefailed. It was hard work. Today’s walk with our niece through the Devilla Forest is bound to be easier, however rough theterrain.

Murray lost, in five sets. It was soexciting I couldn’t bear to watch much of it. I don’t remember that everhappening to me before – even with Scotland ahead by a whisker in thefinal moments of the Calcutta Cup, I’ve always managed to peep from behind thesofa. Not yesterday.

It can’t beclaimed as a moral victory for Murray-- I doubt if there are such things in top-level sport -- but it was certainlya quantum leap forward (to switch clichés). Previously, at the end of GrandSlam tournaments when he came up against the big boys, he was swept aside instraight sets. Not yesterday.

And isn’tit odd, for one with a memory as long as mine for such things, to find aBritish player at No. 4 in the world and none of the three above him eitherAmerican or Australian?

The yarn ishere – madelinetosh DK “Georgia O’Keefe”, a good deal greener than I expected, but at least notblue and my husband seems rather taken with it. It didn’t come in the 7:30-9a.m. slot when packages often arrive. It didn’t turn up with the normal maildelivery. So I gave up and started forming cross remarks in my head, since the PO had contracted to deliver it yesterday on theconsideration of all that money the day before.

But then itdid turn up, just before lunch. Pics soon – today I must hurry.

The otherthing that turned up yesterday was the new VK. If somebody wanted to take acouple of years and knit straight through a magazine, blogging about it andthen publishing a book – that’s what people do – this would be the magazine togo for. If you were thinking of engaging me for the job, I might ask to be letoff the home furnishings – cushions and an ottoman cover; I don’t have anottoman. I might also beg to be excused the gloves (hate knitting fingers) andthe beaded shawl (beads are against my religion).

But thepoint of the exercise would be to do everything, so that might be consideredcheating. And the shawl is by my friend Candace Strick.

Moreseriously, the one that really grabs, at first glance, is No. 12, the twistedpullover by Roberta Rosenfeld whom I have never heard of. Alpaca, and apartfrom other considerations a brilliant use of that droopy yarn.

I’d bettergo make some sandwiches to leave behind for my husband.

2012-01-27T09:04:00.001Z

I heardfrom the PO as hoped, paid the charge (you don’t want to know), arrangeddelivery for today, and now can only sit here breathless, waiting for mymadelinetosh yarn. I don’t dare go across the square to get the newspaper. They’rejust waiting around the corner for the chance to put one of those Dread Cardsthrough the letterbox.

I can whileaway the time watching the tennis. I am a great Andy Murray fan, unlike anyoneelse I know. If he wins this morning (Djokovic) he’ll win the tournament, Ithink – but that’s about as big as “if’s” get.

Tomorrowour niece and I are going for a walk, as we occasionally do. This is a moreambitious one than usual, in Devilla Forest near Kincardine.(TERRAIN: track & path; HEIGHT: negligible – that’s the kind of walk I like.)We will see a standing stone marking the site of the Battle of Bordie in 1038, when King Duncan and Macbeth defeatedthe Danes. When I read that I wondered for a moment if that was the battle at the beginning ofthe play – would we be able to find the ashes from the witches’ bonfire? But no– Shakespeare says that battle was at Forres, against Noroway.

If we getlost, as is all too likely since the forest is criss-crossed with paths andneither of us is very bright, we can find ourselves by walking south. That willeventually bring us out on the main road on which we arrived. We could probablydo that by remembering that the sun is in the southern sky, but I also recalledthat there is a way to use one’s watch as a crude compass. I looked it up onGoogle – how did we live? before Google – and today mean to practice, since Iknow how Edinburghis oriented. I may have acquired a Survival Skill.

Comments

Stuffedpig’s stomach sounds just like haggis, Charlotte.

It’s the“Moor” colorway which my husband finds “outré” for a gent’s sock, Mary Lou. We had feared that“Anthracite” would be too blue – he doesn’t like blue – but it’s fine. I’d knit“Sizzle” for a female, so he wouldn’t be called on to judge it. I am steamingaway down the foot, and should finish a ball of yarn today – that always feelslike progress.

I boughtonly two 50 gram balls this time. That’s not enough, I knew it wasn’t. I’ll finish off with something from the odd-ball bag. “Anthracite”, in thiscase, will do nicely. The demarcation comes well down within the shoe. It hasproved acceptable in the past to do this, and it reduces the cost of the socks quite a bit.

Here’s today’s oddity fromZite, stash haus. I’m glad you like them.

I got spammed today -- it doesn't often happen. All comments on posts older than a fortnight are automatically presented to me for moderation -- they are 99% spam. Comments on new posts go through Blogger's system, which is pretty good at spotting junk. But today I got seven or eight long identical junk-comments from India on recent posts of mine, I had to delete them one by one. I hope I've got them all. Boring and -- as far as I could see -- pointless, rather than malicious or obscene.

2012-01-26T09:22:00.000Z

We enjoyedour haggis, yes, thank you, Kristie. One gets used to it.

I have beenhaving connectivity problems this morning. BT Broadband Desktop Help popped up of its own accord and sorted theproblem, whatever it was, by re-starting the router. But things remain verysluggish.

I’m stilldecreasing gusset stitches on the Outre sock, and have started Oliver’ing.Thanks for the colour-names of the KF "random stripes" range, MetroRebecca(comment yesterday). The one I want next is “Sizzle”, a sizzling red. But threepairs of socks, at least, after the Outre, stand between me and that goal.

I trackedthe Jimmy Bean package. It’s been in Britain for a whole week. Thelatest note, yesterday morning, says “Payment of charges – item being held,addressee being notified”. So I should hear from it today, I would hope.

I havedecided to do a st st stripe for the Sky Scarf on the last day of each month,to mark the passage of time and the seasons. Maybe on the first day of the next month, as well. I like the way it's looking. The secret, I suspect, is a big stash of greys and blues. Pic soon.

I was goingto share some tidbits from Zite, but the link process is so slow this morningthat I may have to leave it and go eat my porridge.

-- Acleaner at Paignton Zoo has knittedthe gardeners, one by one.

-- Knitters are being urged to knit cushions,using British wool, to be presented to Olympic athletes as souvenirs. I won’tbother with the link. I hope all British readers have seen the brilliant BBCseries “Twenty Twelve”. It’s a mock documentary about planning for the Olympics, currently being rebroadcast on BBC Four on Wednesdays and we’reenjoying it every bit as much as we did the first time. This sounds like anidea straight out of one of their brainstorming sessions.

-- The “SwissCheese Scarf”, free on Ravelry, looks fun. It’s rather like that VK one Iknit last year. I gather from theraineysistersthat this one is done with a myriad of one-row buttonholes. I felt myself a bitshaky on that front when I was putting the second one into the Japanese shirtin Strathardle last week. This scarf would certainly allow one to perfect the technique. Itlooks terrific in its Kauni yarn, too.

-- I subscribe to Knitting Daily which is mostlyInterweave trying to sell me things. I am mildly interested in “Sockupied” andmay have a look at the latest one when they perfect it for the iPad. At the moment they say it’savailable, but I can’t find it in the App store.

This is a funnyone: Becca seems to think – she can’t be serious – that the trouble withlearning to knit is that one soon has too many sweaters. And that the solutionmight be miniature knitting. Whatever – the miniature sweater shown isbreathtaking.

2012-01-25T09:17:00.003Z

Miscellaneous

-- I forgot towish us all a Happy Year of the Dragon on Monday. Happy Burns Night, at least.

-- Dawn foundthe link to the New Yorker piece about PresidentRomney at the G8. Tamara and Sally (comments yesterday), I have read theNew Yorker for most of my life and now give subscriptions to my four childrenas well. Thomas-the-Elder reads it on his iPad, somehow floating on hismother’s subscription. I could do that, but prefer paper.

Alexandermade me an alphabet book for my 70^th birthday, now well in the past.N was for “New Yorker”. He reproduced the two covers nearest the date of mybirth in 193x and 200x – they were remarkably similar in palette and tone.

I’ll haveto have a look at the jigsaw puzzles, Sally. That’s a time-waster Iparticularly enjoy.

-- TheHistoric Knitting Group produced a link yesterday to the Richard Ruttcollection at Southampton University. The 19^thcentury British knitting books have been digitised and are available free todownload. An amazing resource. There is a tantalising note at the beginningsaying that Msgr. Rutt’s interest in Korean knitting is reflected in hiscollection – alas, for that, apparently, one has to go to Southampton.

-- The branchof Waitrose I patronise doesn’t have any craft magazines, so my search for KnitNow continues.

Knitting

You maydeduce from this preamble that I have little to say today. I have turned theheel of the 1^st outré sock. Gretchen, it’s the “Moor” colorway fromthe new “Random Stripes” set. There are six. “Anthracite” and “Moor” are thedarkish ones – the rest are more spectacular. I’m having such fun that I wantmore. If one were to venture on knitting a necktie -- not me, thanks -- "Moor" would be a rather good choice.

2012-01-24T09:19:00.001Z

I enjoyed my Monday, just as hoped. I did a Sudoku and shopped and cooked and washed and ironed and cleaned abit and knitted a lot and went to bed feeling that the edges of the chaos whichsurround me had been pushed back just a little bit.

The firstoutré sock is within hailing distance of the heel flap. I hope to reach ittoday. I love what's happening.

I think theJimmy Bean package is somehow trackable, and I may try that if it doesn’tdeclare itself today or tomorrow.

Miscellaneous

I learnfrom the Historic Knitting Group this morning that Laurie Kynaston (good Greekname) is spending a yearknitting her way through “Weldon’s Practical Needlework” as re-published byInterweave. She must be young, to have a year to spare!

Victorianknitting patterns seem suddenly to be everywhere. Perhaps Franklin started it with his articles in Knitty.Sharon Miller’s “Love Darg”book is a brilliant example. Donna Druchunas is at it in the current issueof Piecework. I’m not seriously tempted, but it’s interesting reading.Interesting, too, to think about the other women knitting serious sweaters forfishermen and farmers at the same time, unknown to Weldon.

Don’t worryabout me and Knit Now, Roobeedoo.I had a look at the website, but they didn’t seem to offer a single copy, or adigital version for my dear iPad. I don’t think Waitrose, where I shop, is ontheir distribution list, either, although I’ll look when I go today. I’m oftenin Tesco – eventually I’ll track it down.

Your day inEdinburghsounds enormously jolly!

Politics

I’d beinclined to bet that the president will be re-elected, and I’ll be glad when ithappens. But things are grimmer than they were four years ago. His presidencyhas been a disappointment in a lot of ways, although I think his criticsunderestimate the effect of the world’s economic problems and of theextraordinary polarisation of American politics. As you say, Woollybits.

And themoney they spend on getting elected is terrifying, as you say, Catdownunder. I thinkboth of these factors (polarisation and spending) have become exponentiallyworse since I was young and lived there and experienced presidential electionsfirst-hand.

No, all Imeant was that if Romney is the candidate I can sit back and watch thegoings-on without undue anxiety. President Gingrich might be paralysed at home,but what would he do to the world?

The Shoutsand Murmers page in (I believe) the last New Yorker but one imagined PresidentRomney working a meeting of the G8 in the style he apparently applies atpolitical rallies. It’s very funny.

2012-01-23T09:15:00.002Z

It seems a long time since we have had a Plain VanillaDay-day around here, but now one looms. No extra people (dear as they are), no income tax,no piercing cold, no snow to fear. Just Monday. Very welcome.

And a Monday that begins with good news – Joan Schrouder emailedme to say she is going to be teaching on thiscruise and will have a day free in Edinburghin June. (Trouble is, I have archived her note before noting the date – and nowI can’t figure out how to retrieve archived items in googlemail.) This may bethe same cruise and the same free day on which I failed to meet Myrna Stahmanlast year.

Joan and I met when I did a three-day shawl course with herat Camp Stitches on the shores of Lake George in what must have been 2000 – aday each on Shetland shawls, Faroese, and Orenburg.It would be wonderful to see her again. Her husband will be along – they havenever been to Europe before.

(Ahah! I haven’t found the archives, but Joan’s note and myreply are there in Sent Mail.)

Sky Scarf

Skeindalous, I don’t think the Sky Scarf needs anytransition to the colours of Friday morning. I was able to use scraps that Ihad dyed myself of Strathardle lichens during my Lichen Phase, and I used threeyarns in that day’s bump, as I have done before. A sky-colour back and forth,teamed with russet in one direction and red in the other.

The three bumps since, here in Edinburgh, have been dullsville itself.(Fancy! The spell check accepts that word!) Are morning skies better in thecountry?

I get a new percentage point tomorrow.

Moor socks

I finished the ribbing of the first sock, as hoped, and amsteaming down the leg. I showed it to my husband, who was taken aback. “A bitoutré.” (The system put the accent on for me.) He cheered himself with the thought that the socks will be almostentirely concealed by trouser and shoe, and I am going ahead. It will be interestingto see how often they get chosen from the drawer.

I have pretty well decided to press on and finish. Thepackage from Jimmy Bean with the yarn for the sleeveless vest should arrivethis week, heralded no doubt by a card from H.M. Customs & Excise about howmuch I have to pay. But it can wait for a fortnight.

That will leave Van Gogh and Hundertwasser and a bonny skeinthat Kristie gave me before I am back to where I was last summer,sock-yarn-wise.

Non-knit

I am a bit disconcerted by the South Carolina primary result. Me and a lotof other people. I don’t think President Romney would be an entirely bad idea –how long since we’ve had a businessman? Truman? But President Gingrich would betruly terrifying.

2012-01-22T08:37:00.000Z

Wechickened out. The trip was a success, really – the house is fine, water,electricity. No tiles seem to have come off the roof, no trees are down in thegarden. I think January’s storm was worse in Edinburgh than there. It was extremely cold,but we stood up to it. However, on Thursday afternoon it snowed, and again thatevening, after an intermission. We got scared and came home.

Our houseis down by the burn, some metres below the level of the road to the village.The driveway curves up through the paddock, then runs straight across the edgeof a neighbour’s field, and finally, after the last gate, reaches the road in ashort, sharp upward burst. So, too much snow, we’re stuck.

In fact,there wasn’t more than two inches of snow and we got out without difficulty. Ihave been left feeling embarrassed, to be defeated by a wee bit of weather, andalso shaken by good old timor-mortis-conturbat-me. One declines so gently, andone continues to go about shopping and cooking and ironing and occasionallypushing the vacuum cleaner around, and scarcely feels the gradual diminution.

But there,we were up against it. Our last big struggle with snow was four years ago – Iknow because it was the day after the Iowa caucus where Obama beat Clinton, andall through the struggle I promised myself I would think about that happyoutcome when we were finally on the road to Blairgowrie. That time, we got allthe way to the last gate by ourselves – it took all morning. Then some angelscame along that scarcely-used road, thinly disguised as winter sports enthusiasts, and pushed us up thelast little bit.

My husbandcertainly couldn’t do now what he did that day, and I doubt if I could. Nevermind: here we are, safe and warm in Edinburgh.

Knitting

The sky onThursday morning was “Look! The morn, in russet mantle clad/ walks o’er the dewof yon high eastward hill”. I didn’t have any russet with me, and had to settlefor some of the other colours in the sky. But on Friday morning I saw this:

whichcouldn’t be overlooked. So I took the pictures and knit the day’s stripe when Ihad been reunited with my stash.

I am nearlyfinished, all but a couple of yards, with the first skein of the madelinetoshsock yarn which is turning in to the Japanese shirt. That lets me calculate howI’m doing, and I don’t think I have enough. The initial calculations were basedon st st. I’m knitting garter stitch, which is hungrier. So I’ll order somemore. I’ll enjoy that.

Back here,I’ve started the “moor” socks, and should finish the ribbing tonight. They aremore colourful than “anthracite” and I’m not absolutely sure they will beacceptable. I’ll go down the leg a bit and let the yarn settle into its actbefore I ask my husband to pronounce. If he says no, I’ll have to rip – no oneelse among my sock-recipients has so much circumference in the leg.

2012-01-18T08:54:00.000Z

Snowshowers forecast, adding to anxiety. But I think we’re going to attemptStrathardle anyway. If we live to tell the tale, I should be back here at theweekend. Here in Edinburgh,this morning, it is warm, for January, and damp. Today’s stripe in the SkyScarf is grey again. The scarf so far, indeed, is a rather pleasant study ingreys. Blue scarcely figures.

I finishedthe anthracite socks, polishing off the last few stitches, the Kitchener’ingand the tidying, during this morning’s osteoporosis half-hour. So at least Iwill have one evening with “moor” when we get back.

You havepersuaded me to keep the income tax rebate for something other than VintageKnits. And Roobeedoo, your blogentry has sent me off on a quest for Knit Now magazine. I was thinking justyesterday how it is the knitted accessories (hats, mitts, scarves, socks) thatget used the most – but I didn’t know there was a whole magazine devoted tothem.

I don’talways buy books with much expectation of actually knitting from them.Sometimes it is just a vague thought of enhancing my “library”. But there is nodoubt that the ones which actually get used are the ones which become part ofthe family. It was particularly nice, knitting those Christmas tree baubles, toadd Arne & Carlos to the party. And a significant part of the pleasure ofknitting the Grandson Sweater in ’10 was moving Susanne Pagoldh’s “NordicKnitting”, which I have long enjoyed, into the “used” category.

What arethe books I use, or have used?

Off the topof my head:

MaryThomas, Barbara Walker, Vicki Square’s book of schematics for basic shapes[there are other such books that would do as well, I think], the Zimmermanns,mother & daughter; Kaffe; Sheila McGregor, Gladys Thompson, BethBrown-Reinsel, Margaret Stove, Sharon Miller, Gladys Amedro, Lynne Barr. Quitea few, in fact, and I must have missed out several. I’m pretty sure I’ve never knit a Starmore or a Debbie Bliss,although they occupy quite a bit of shelf space between them.

And Irealise that’s not true, as soon as written. My failed entry in last year’sGames, “Aran sweater, any size” is Starmore-based.

And thenthere are the books of techniques I might get around to – double knitting,brioche knitting, shadow knitting. Ihave had “Knit Swirl” down from the shelf the last few days, trying to thinkahead to the day when I finally tackle a big Koigu project. It would be hardwork to adapt one of those to Koigu, but probably worth the effort.

2012-01-17T09:02:00.006Z

Well, thetax is filed, and so large a refund promised that for a while I wondered if Ihad done something wrong. I think it’s OK – income was pretty flat-line forthat year, but for some reason they deducted a lot more tax thanpreviously. Last year was the first timeI left the job as late as January, as most of the population apparently does.Getting it done then gave me such a lift into the new year that I sort ofdrifted in to doing it late again. No lift this time, at least, not yet.

We’re planningto go to Strathardle tomorrow, for the first time in quite a while. Both areapprehensive, fearing our frailty. But the forecasts are pretty good (=no snow)and we’re not afraid of cold. It’s time to try. If we have water and power, wecan manage. And if we don’t, we can turn around and come back.

It will begood to be reunited with the Japanese shirt. It’s got one buttonhole so far. Ihope I can remember how I did it.

Thinking ofthe shirt, and Stella’s kindness in writing the pattern for me, reminds me thatthere is a not-uninteresting article in the current Knitting magazine about thecraft of pattern-writing. Am I slightly horrified to learn that some designersnot only don’t knit what they design, but don’t even have time to write thepatterns?

I shallhave to take the Sky Scarf along to the country. The designer doesn’t mentionthat aspect of things – but few us will spend all 366 days of 2012 (it’s LeapYear) under the same sky. A dull, uniform grey this morning, with the faintesthint of pink.

The socksare within two evenings of completion. My current plan is to start the nextpair, KF’s random stripes in “Moor”, and get the slight tedium of the deepribbing out of the way, before relegating socks to their normal role oftravel-and-waiting and starting the sleeveless vest my husband wants. Whichdepends on the arrival of the Jimmy Bean package, but I’m sure it won’t belong. Or if the Moor socks are utterly wonderful, and my husband likes the effect, I might just carry on -- that would take care of his sock drawer for a good long time.

Miscellaneous

Fizz, it’s grand to have you bloggingagain, and the Norwegian hat is beyond cute. So is the daughter.

Catmum andKateCrafts, many thanks for the list of podcasts. I hope to get started duringthe long winter evenings in Strathardle (with no television and no newspapers).

Should Ispend the income tax refund – I feel I’ve earned it – on Vintage Knits?

2012-01-16T09:11:00.003Z

Again, very little to report.

Here is a first pic of the SkyScarf – and I get to award myself another percentage point today! I introduceda new refinement this morning – the sky was essentially a pale blue, anothercold, fine day in the making. But translucent in the east, and with a few pinkclouds in the west. What one knits every day is in fact two rows, one garterstitch bump, using two yarns together. This time, I changed translucence for pink at the halfway point.

That dark blue at the beginning isa pre-dawn reading, made while Helen was here. She wanted me to do it at 8 a.m.every day. I am sliding towards 8:30. Presumably as the light strengthens andspring approaches, there will be more and stronger blues.

As for the sock, the gusset decreasesare finished and I am Oliver’ing along.

Zite came up with a couple ofknitting podcasts this morning. Both were a quarter of an hour long, “The PaulyKnits” and “Knitting Samurai”. Both were episodes in on-going series, and both startedso slowly, with the presenters hard-pressed (it seemed to me) to fill up thetime they had allowed themselves, that I never got to the knitting in either ofthem. I think I prefer prose, but I am willing to be confounded. Can anyonerecommend a podcast?

Zite’s other contribution thismorning was an interesting post from knittingyarn.comabout vintage patterns, including a link to the Vintage Purls websitewhere choice out-of-copyright patterns can be downloaded free. Knittingyarn.com goes on to recommend the newsecond volume of “A Stitch in Time”. I am tempted.

Were people really all that muchsmaller 70 years ago? Or did designers just design for the Duchess of Windsorand expect everyone else to be able to adapt the patterns? Extreme slimness isvery conspicuous in early Vogue Knitting Books.

Non-knit

The tax is ready to roll, I hope. Ilogged on to the government Gateway site yesterday, just to make sure Istill could. “Tayside00” and the name of one’s cat won’t do as UserID andPassword when one is dealing with the government.

The operation with the car wentsmoothly yesterday. The cathedral is not far away, it’s just that it’s uphill.We left 20 minutes before the off, and that was time to drive my husband up,bring the car back, and walk up myself.

Shandy, you are right that it would besensible to call a taxi, but it goes against the grain. All our prosperity inold age is owed to the fact that we never take taxis. (Follow that link for afascinating post from Shandy about samplers, and an account of as bizarre anaccident as you are ever likely to hear of.)

2012-01-15T08:48:00.003Z

Sundays areeven more fraught than they used to be – the new drill is that I am to drive myhusband up the hill to Mass, then bring the car back and walk up myself. Thatmeans what constitutes for him a very early start, and for me, less time to cook lunch -- which must be ready as soon as we get back. We are going to apply for aDisabled Parking Permit which will simplify things considerably but so far,after nearly a week, we haven’t even got the application form.

I enjoyed knitsofacto’s sky photographsand also, although they have nothing to do with knitting, the “From Where I Stand”project on Flickr to which she links. Thanks, Robin. I’ve also had a look atSky Scarves on Ravelry. I was abashed at how simple-minded mine is, compared towhat I found there. People are coding the daily temperature, choosing asignificant number of stitches, incorporating patterns. What I like about thisproject is that it is so simple and do-able. Ten minutes at most, most of whichis spent untangling skeins.

Another good thing is that if I get bored and stop doing it, I'll know right away that the project has been abandoned. It's impossible to kid oneself this time with the idea that one will get back to it soon.

I am aroundthe heel of the second anthracite sock, and starting to Oliver it. I rememberthe first time I turned a heel, at the age of about 12. I had formed a vagueimpression somehow (from books) that heel-turning was a supremely difficultthing to do. I was astonished to find that all you have to do is followdirections.

When Idiscovered the Internet and thereby Patternworks and thereby Socka sock yarns,nearly 20 years ago now, I bought a $1 plain-vanilla sock pattern along withthe first order of yarn. I have internalised it by now. There were one or twoslightly fancy pairs of socks in those 20 years, but I prefer to drift alongletting the yarn do the fancy stuff.

I had amoment last night, approaching the heel, when I wondered if I could remember.The first two rows involve some simple numbers. What were they? After that it’s automatic. Iremember once driving along a motorway and wondering if I knew how to drive.Which pedal is the clutch? Which the brake? Which foot do I use on which pedal? Fortunately myfeet remembered. And I got the numbers right for the heel, last night.

Miscellaneous non-knit

A bigHockney exhibition is about to open at the Royal Academy,or else it already has. The newspapers are full of interviews with him whichcontain some interesting and amusing stuff. The line I liked best was when hereported his mother saying, when she first came to visit him in LA, “Whydoesn’t anybody have their washing out on such a nice day?”

The incometax went swimmingly yesterday – I think I’m finished. I’ll let it marinate fortoday, and then hope to file it tomorrow morning.

One of the aspects of this so-far easy winter which I am particularly enjoying, is the fact that it really can't be blamed on Global Warming. The previous two winters, here in Scotland, have been of record-breaking savagery. An easy one now can only be One of Those Things -- and very welcome.

2012-01-14T08:55:00.001Z

What asatisfactory object a sock is! Just the right size, scarcely any finishingneeded (especially for one like me who loves grafting), always welcome. I oftensuspect my loved ones of getting their hand knits out specially when I’maround, and if so it’s sweet of them, but socks get worn out. I know becausesometimes they come home to Mummy for darning.

I’m inmid-heel flap of the second anthracite sock at the moment.

Anearly-uniform dull grey for the Sky Scarf today. Now that I’m a couple ofinches into the project, the overall effect is becoming more pleasant by theday. And I look forward keenly to the season when we start getting some blues involved.

I boughtCarol Feller’s “Spoked Cardigan” pattern from Interweave yesterday – yetanother sideways cardigan for my Koigu stash, although top of the Ideas List onthat front remains something from Knit Swirl. I’m reading a lot just now aboutthe Vogue knitting jamboree in NYC, and saw a pic somewhere in theprocess, of a Knit Swirl jacket. Yes!

Never sucha year for a superabundance of projects. And there will be something, stillunknown, to knit for the Games. It’s enough to make me entertain the hope that

Scotland

doesn’t win the Calcutta Cup.

Non-knit

I can’tprove this, but it’s true.

Yesterdaymy husband wanted to go to Marks and Spencer to get himself some grey flanneltrousers in the sale. In the event, there was no sale and they didn’t have anygrey flannel trousers, but that’s not the story.

There usedto be two if not three branches of M&S on Princes Street and we disagreed aboutwhich one survived. So I Google’d it and found a Google map which clearlyshowed M&S on Leith Streetat the foot of Carlton Hill, opposite the St James’s Centre, perhaps as much ashalf a mile from the real M&S. But I can’t prove it, because I Google’dagain just now and it has been restored to its real location.

We saw a wonderful evening sky from the bus on the way home. Perhaps after I finish the present scarf, I could start another with sightings taken in the late afternoon.

I had atough time with the Income Tax yesterday. It all went swimmingly on Thursday,but yesterday I ran into some missing vouchers, if that isn’t too much of anoxymoron, and had to reconstruct events from bank statements. I think I’m stillon target to file on-line on Monday leaving the rest of the week forStrathardle. I am encouraged to read in American blogs that winter is easy, sofar, on the east coast. Weather often travels west to east across the Atlantic.

2012-01-13T09:08:00.000Z

And yetanother day when inspiration lacks.

But alsoanother day with pink in the Sky Scarf stripe.

Here arethe socks – photography has done better than expected at conveying the natureof the wonderful yarn (KF Random Stripes). In most circumstances, they don’tlook as stripey as that. In real life they come across as a dark, solid colourwith slight variation.

I shouldreach the second heel flap today. The “Georgia O’Keefe” yarn is on its way – Ihope there will be time to get the next Random Striped socks started (“Moor”)before the package arrives, just to see how the brighter stripes work.

I was inJohn Lewis yesterday – not picking up a prescription, this time, but buyingsheets in the sale – and looked at the sale yarn. I knew I could trust myselfto resist. Quite a lot of Rowan’s KF Colorscape Chunky yarn in differentcolorways is available in big skeins marked down from about £12 to about £9. Iwasn’t tempted, nor was anybody else, much – the sale was nearly over and thereit all was. The price, and the thought of how quickly one of those big skeinscould be knitted, made me feel I wasn’t quite as absurdly extravagant as Ioften seem to myself to be.

Non-knitmisellaneous

I’m hard atwork on our income tax, and hope to file it this weekend and so leave us freefor a trip to Strathardle next week if the weather holds. At the moment, Januaryis at its most ideal. I need to start working on the seed-and-potato order, andI need the actual garden to inspire me. Also, it’s time for some (Jerusalem) artichokesoup. And there might be some Brussels sprouts in my new vegetable cage – thatwould be exciting. And there’s compost and manure to spread which should havebeen done months ago.

Archie rangup from Athenslast night in a state of some anxiety about SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act.I looked it up, briefly, and it sounds to me like a not unreasonable idea. Alot of intellectual property is being stolen out there. But will this be theend of the Internet As We Know It? Archie is not an online pirate that I knowof, but he clearly reads websites which have got him worried.

Helen andMungo went over to Glasgowlast week to see the Loch Fyne Mileses. Here is a picture of James, Alexander,Thomas and Mungo standing in front of the tenement where Alexander and Helenwere born. We were one up on the left. Our dining room bay window was thereforejust above the window you see partially obscured by that tree. The window ofthe room in which the actual births took place was next to the left after that.

2012-01-12T08:56:00.000Z

A ragbag,this morning.

Sky scarf

Today thesky was uniform in texture, cloudless? Glowing opalescence to the east on my left, darkening acrossthe dome. This is a fun project, not least for that moment of standing on thedoorstep at 8:15 and looking. I have decided to allow myself one percentagepoint in the sidebar for every four garter stitch bumps, so I get another onetoday.

I am toyingwith the idea – if you can’t disguise it, make a feature of it – of knottingthe ends and letting them form a fringe on one side of the scarf only. Tooweird? Twisted in wear, perhaps it wouldn’t look so odd?

Anthracitesocks

Thehospital visit finished off the ribbing, as hoped. I did the last couple ofrounds on the bus on the way home, and whizzed ahead with the leg later in theevening. Otherwise, not much. My husband put into words the sense of hisdecline in the last few weeks, since the night in a&e and the subsequentchesty cough. There is nothing they can do about it.

Sleevelessvest to come

Jimmy Beanwrote to say that the six skeins of Georgia O’Keefe in stock don’t match.Should they wait until the next delivery, or send something else? I told themto go ahead. They had similar anxieties when they were sending me the scarletyarn some time ago, and I found that the differences between skeins disappearedinto the delicious slight irregularities of the dye. I could of course wait andknit my Effortless (or Vitamin D) next after socks, but I’d prefer to pressahead.

Thots

I’ve beenbuying books (and scarcely looking at them). One is Meg’s & Amy Detjen’s“Knitting With Two Colours” which I would highly recommend. (I looked at itthis morning. It’s full of useful tips.) I thought, as I did so, about theperhaps-forthcoming 2012 Calcutta Cup Victory Sweater. Top of the idea-pile hadbeen something Norwegian, but I wonder if this would be the moment for thePrince of Wales joke: an all-over rotate-able design in two colours which wouldseem to flow unbroken down the sleeves, taking advantage of the fact thattwo-colour knitting tightens up the stitches into little squares.

The matchis any moment now, in early February. It doesn’t belong there. In the veryrecent past, the Calcutta Cup was always contested on the last day of the FiveNations tournament (Six Nations, now, which spoils the symmetry). Now they slotit into the schedule any old where. The Loch Fyne family are coming over toMurrayfield for the occasion. Scotlandhas a reasonable chance of victory this year – surely a recipe for disaster. Weonly win when the odds are hopeless.

2012-01-11T08:52:00.000Z

Thewonderful anthracite sock fits beautifully. I am now halfway through theribbing of the second sock and hope to finish that aspect of it today duringthe tedium of hospital waiting. After that, pure pleasure.

I havestuck to the sizing stumbled upon for the previous pair – leg on 72 stitches,foot on 64. I go round the heel on 72 and then slip in some extra decreaseswith the gusset shaping. Knitting is forgiving stuff, as EZ memorably said.

And Iordered those six skeins of madelinetosh DK in “Georgia O’Keefe” from JimmyBean. Artist-wise, my husband doesn’t think any more of her than he does of VanGogh or Hundertwasser but this time he’ll just have to make the best of it.

An excitingday on the Sky Scarf front: there was some pink in the sky when I stood on thedoorstep at 8:15. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that it is being knit with twostrands held together, compounding the problem of ends but increasing thechances of echoing the sky.

Miscellaneous

…andspeaking of socks: The Sockladyhas been making herself socks with left-over Kaffe Fassett bits. The resultsare simply stunning.

Judith sentme thislink to a batch of choice post-war Vogue Knitting Books being sold thisvery day by the Knitting and Crochet Guild. Duplicates, I hope.

The historyof the Vogue Knitting Book is roughly this (I hope somewhere in theorganisation the true story is recoverable): The first issue was published inthe fall of 1932, simultaneously in the US and GB. The US then fell bythe wayside, but GB went on, twice a year without interruption, right throughthe war and up until the mid 60’s. The Americans joined in again in the latewar years. From then until the ultimate demise, issues were very similar butnot identical. The British ones had patterns for British yarn, and exclusivelyBritish ads.

(JeanShrimpton’s first big break was an advertising spread in the VKB, over severalpages. I don’t know whether Bailey was the photographer; it seems very likely. Insubsequent years, she appeared regularly as a model for the magazine itself. Weare about to have a television series about her and Bailey, or is it a movie?My guess is that the VKB will have been airbrushed out, but I may watch longenough to find out.)

After thedemise, a spin-off British-only magazine called “Vogue Knitting” was publishedfor four more years.

My owncollection of the Vogue Knitting Book, acquired expensively from eBay, is nowcomplete. But I think the last time I looked, I found that one of my “VogueKnitting”’s is missing. I can’t imagine why – I have never failed to buy anissue, nor thrown one away, in my whole life. The KCG is selling five of theeight issues from that series, and so I had better check this very morning tosee whether my missing one is on offer.

Here's a little gem from Youtube for you.

2012-01-10T08:50:00.003Z

Little toreport.

Socks

I finished the first anthracite sock, and it’s an absolutely super sock– although it hasn’t been tried on yet. I started the second one, and didn’tget very far. I start a sock (perhaps everyone does) by casting on all thestitches over two needles held together. Then slip out one of the needles andknit the stitches, in pattern, onto three needles. (I like doing the body ofthe sock on four needles, knitting with a fifth, but for some reason prefer one fewer when ribbing.)

Andfinally, on what amounts to the second round, I join the dangling confusioninto a circle. And this time I found, half way around the first circuit, that Iwas knitting with the long tail of the long-tail cast on. We’ve all done it. Iwas able to tink back, so didn’t have to start again.

We have aroutine diabetic appt at the Royal Infirmary tomorrow. Those appts always involve alot of sitting about, waiting for the results of blood tests. I’d like tofinish the ribbing.

Sky scarf

I stood fora moment on the doorstep just now with a handful of possible oddballs, lookingat the sky. None of the yarns looked anything like the sky. I wonder if artistsembarking on landscape have this problem – the sky doesn’t look anything likeoil paint? The scarf, in greys and a bit of blue, is looking rather well.

You’reright, Kristie, that theskeins tangle around each other, compounding the problem of all the ends. AndI’m sure you’re right, Tricia, that spit-splicing is the answer. I am usingmostly Shetland jumper-weight yarns which are fuzzy and adhesive and shouldwork splendidly. It would be good to be able to use half-a-width of colour, too– white for high-flying clouds, if 2012 ever gets that far. But I have nevermastered spit-splicing. Perhaps that can be one of my challenges for the year.At the moment, I am just bashing ahead despite confusion which is how I dealwith much of life.

Sleeveless sweater

I took thesleeveless sweater I’m meant to replace to the computer screen yesterday.“Bark”, as I thought, is the nearest madelinetosh colour to the original. JimmyBean doesn’t have any at the moment, but Webs does. But at bedtime my husbandsaid that maybe he’d like something more like the just-finished sock, dark,perhaps purple.

Applyingmyself again to the madelinetosh colours this morning, I am fired with the ideaof Georgia O’Keefe. Appropriate for an art historian. Her pictures arecolourful but she worked in charcoal at the beginning and end of her career andthat is presumably what the colour-name alludes to. Jimmy Bean has only sixskeins. I think that would be enough but will try to do the actualmeasuring-and-calculating today.

It would beespecially gratifying to use it since I have failed to interest him in Van Gogh orHundertwasser as an inspiration for socks.

2012-01-09T08:43:00.002Z

And here weare. Helen and her family are safely back in Athens, much missed. The tales she and Davidtell of Greek life sound like a society in terminal decline – professionalsalaries unpaid, addicts lying about in the streets injecting themselves in full view. Everyonein a position to do so is making plans to leave.

Mungosolved my computer problem – we didn’t need to wait for Archie. Right-click onthe top margin of the Google Chrome window and choose “maximize” from thedrop-down menu. When it comes to right-clicking, I’m still in the secondmillennium. You got it, FiberQat.

Knitting

I shouldpolish off the toe of the first anthracite sock today. It would probably be agood idea to Kitchenerit and try it on, as last time (when I had to take back the whole foot). I ambeginning to think of What Next? I have some more KF random-striped yarn in acolourway called Moor. One possibility would be to forge ahead and knit myhusband another pair of socks, in that. His sock drawer would then be in astate to last for a good while, and I love this yarn.

He wants meto knit a plain-vanilla sleeveless vest to replace one which has been worn todeath. I had been thinking madelinetosh “kale” but he says he wants the samecolour as before. That would be “bark”, more or less, but Jimmy Bean is out ofit. I’ll enjoy thinking about that one.

And I’mhaving a nice time with my sky scarf. You’re right about the problem of theends, FiberQat. The designer seems to have limited herself to six colours anddemonstrates in her video how to loop them up the side, but I’ve got my wholeex-Fair-Isle stash and can’t bear to impose limitations. It’s a lot of funlooking at the sky and choosing yarn for it. Helen has suggested that Istick to the same time each day, a good idea, I think.

Potentialfor anxiety, however. I am doing my looking between eight and eight:thirty -- there is no way that I have thought of to represent that magical dawn opalescence in yarn. I have to keep reminding myself that neither the Knit Police nor theMeteorological Office are going to object to my decisions.

Here is apicture of James and Alistair in Beijing,James in the big scarf of Rowan Cocoon I knit him for Christmas ’10.

We hadanother present-opening session on Saturday. Here is Fergus in his beanie.

And here –no knitting content – is Archie with the iPad.

2012-01-06T08:24:00.002Z

Where were we?

Knitting, first

There’s little to report. I’m sailing along with the anthracite socks, loving the colour, loving the yarn. My husband is wearing the KF hand-dyed-effect as his first socks of 2012, and seems happy with them. But my delight in having returned to proper, firmly-spun sock yarn is such that I won’t repeat the experiment.

I stumbled across Leafcutter Designs’ “Sky scarf” somehow, and started one yesterday. You cast on some stitches and knit two rows – one garter stitch bump – every day, the colour of that day’s sky. That’s it.

Life

Helen and her family are still here in GB, and we’ve had a lovely week. We didn’t go to Strathardle – we meant to leave on Tuesday, but there was a storm that day. I phoned a friend in Kirkmichael and learned that snow was lying. So we stayed home, and it was just as well, I suspect. It was an epic storm. We probably couldn’t have reached Strathardle anyway as the Forth Road Bridge was closed for much of the day. The Botanic Gardens near here lost 40 trees, I have been told.

Alexander and Ketki still have no land line, unless BT fixed it yesterday. What happened was that that lightening strike, described in an earlier post, fried the telephone line. I have heard of lightening doing that to the electricity supply, destroying available televisions and computers – indeed, I’ve known people to whom it happened. But I had never heard of lightening taking out the telephone. Now I have.

They have been told they were lucky the house didn’t burn down.

Since Tuesday’s storm, they have also lost the signals for their mobile telephones.

They have a flat in Glasgow, not much used except in emergencies such as this. Ketki had arranged with her bank to work from home in December and Jamuary, but can’t very well do that with all communication severed. So they are based in Glasgow at the moment, with Alexander going back to Loch Fyne by day to entertain the man from BT. Helen and Mungo went over last night to see them.

She will be back today, and the rest of her family – currently in Cheshire with David’s mother – will rejoin us on Saturday. Then they’ll all go back to Greece.

I am having trouble with Google Chrome, in that it opens in a window offset to the right, denying me access to the vital right-hand controls. All I can think of to do is drag it left – it won’t budge; and reboot – that doesn’t help. Archie will be here tomorrow. I am pinning my hopes on him.

He took this picture of me (coughing), with the iPad.

2012-01-01T09:11:00.000Z

Here we are– 2012. New years acquire a certain piquancy in old age.

Yesterday Imade the list of knitting-I’d-like to-get-done, and this time there’s plentythere. Today it is my practice to write down the first two headlines of thefirst news broadcast I hear; even the most boring examples, of which this year provides two,acquire some interest as time goes by. And I note what I have achieved/whathas happened in the year just past, and what I hope to achieve in the new one.

Some yearsI also try to notice and write down the main topics of my internal monologuetoday.

We don’tstay up for “the bells” – rarely have. But I like the idea of eating 12 grapes,Angel, and will put it into practice if I’m ever there again.

As for2012: the Greeks will arrive late this evening, so today I must wrap theirChristmas presents and make ready their beds. Helen wrote yesterday:

“We'll put the boys in the spare room and sleep in thedining room ourselves - if you leave the stuff out we can make up the beds whenwe get there. Remember it will be two hours earlier for us so we'll be prettysprightly.”

But it won’t be two hours earlier: it’ll be two hourslater. They won’t be sprightly at all. Thewhole subject remains intensely confusing. The Chinese flew home to Beijing yesterday. Iasked Cathy (over the phone, the evening before) whether that meant they wouldbe flying towards or away from the New Year and we were hard put to work itout.

So I probably won’t be here forthe next week. The weather is remarkably open for the time of year, and Helenis game, and we’re thinking of going to Strathardle. If I can find anyone awakeat the insurance company, I can put her on our policy for three days, she says,and she’ll even drive. Barring a typhoon or the dreaded snow, even one full daywould let me get some serious things done for my poor vegetables. And a fewrows knit on the Japanese shirt.

As for knitting here, I pressedon with the anthracite ribbing. Nearly done. At midday, at a south-facingwindow, the stripes are wonderful; still barely perceptible in the evening.

Miscellaneous, knitting-related

Diana, thank you for probingdeeper into the Moray Firth Gansey Project. You’re quite right, the pictures of the Ganseyfestshow lots of colour. I would very much welcome some serious comment on thissubject.

I meant to tell you yesterday:Lord Kitchener is dead. He was the great-nephew, I believe, of the originaltitle-holder, the eponymous inspirer (presumably) of grafted toes on socks. Hewas in his 90’s. This will be the man I wrote to a decade or so ago, whoreplied eventually that he had never heard of “Kitchener stitch”. He had no heir, so I thinkthe title lapses.

2011-12-31T09:04:00.001Z

Thank youfor all the wonderful comments.

Donice, itis grand to know that you were listening to Kings College,too, on Christmas Eve – it’s part of the emotion of the moment, the link itprovides to absent friends. I’m glad you agree about this year’s boy.

Philhellene,I’m with you on socks. I always do 50 rounds of ribbing for gents’ socks. Idon’t greatly dislike doing it, but I’m always glad when it’s over – and Icouldn’t possibly contemplate toe-up, with that much ribbing coming last.

I did caston in anthracite last night, for the next pair, and am nearly half-way throughthe ribbing. I was astonished to rediscover how much I prefer conventionallyspun and twisted sock yarn, after recent weeks with KF’s hand-dyed-effect. Thejury will have to stay out on that yarn until we see how it wears. The finishedsocks are certainly lovely and soft. I did reinforce the heels – can’t hurt.And they look fine. But the gentle twist and the constant threat of splittingcertainly diminished the pleasure.

“Anthracite”is a KF random-striped yarn. The fun of those, as you know, is the way theyentice you to knit on and on to see what the next stripe is going to be, andthe next after that. But in mynon-OTT-lit sitting room I find, so far, that I can scarcely detect thestripes. I discovered, by peering, that I had knit a couple without evennoticing them. The effect is just anthracite, and that’s fine.

But I willtry to arrange life, next winter, to have something brighter on the needlesfrom mid-November to mid-January. Like madelinetosh scarlet. It does make adifference.

Miscellaneous

There was aprogram on Radio Four this morning, from 6 to 6:30, about the Moray Firth Gansey Project. The generaltitle was Open Country, I think. You could probably track it down on the BBCwebsite, but I doubt if it is worth your while. The point of the Gansey Projectis to preserve patterns and memories. Much was made of that. But there was nomention of the fact that Gladys Thompson did it 40 years ago. I suppose ifyou’re applying for Heritage Lottery Fund money, as the Gansey Project did, itis more prudent to keep Mrs Thompson in the shadows.

The programcould at least have said a bit more about colour. The word “mustard” did comein once. And they mentioned the herring girls and the fact thatthey, too, wore ganseys. I was alert to colour-references at that point, butnone came.

One of thespeakers mentioned “the book” – I wondered which one she meant.

Zite foundme a hat-knitting app this morning – and seems to have taken the article down,an hour later. It cost $2.99 and had a simple and obvious name, so a search ofthe App Shop should find it. I was tempted.

And whilewe’re on the subject of the iPad, have a look at Flipboard if you haven’talready. It’s free. James introduced me to it, and I had the great pleasure ofshowing Thomas-the-Elder, barrister and iPad-owner, who needed to be told by his granny because he hadn’t discovered ityet. I still need Zite to cruise the web for me in search of knitting news, butFlipboard is good too.

2011-12-30T09:02:00.001Z

Here weare. We’ve survived the solstice. Can we entirely trust them to have thrownthe switch Up There? But they’ve never failed us before.

We had agrand time at Loch Fyne, although my husband still hasn’t recovered much oomph sincehe came down with that cold three weeks ago. Rachel and her family are safelyback in London– it’s a long drive – and we are here. Alexander delivered us to the dooryesterday, whence he had collected us on the 23^rd.

Yesterdaymorning we were blasted from sleep at about a quarter to eight by a flash oflight which filled the room and the dull, popping sound, much magnified, of afuse blowing. My first thought was that the power point on the far wallopposite the window (into which my beloved iPad was plugged, chargingovernight) had exploded.

It was, infact, lightening. The house lost almost all power, a phenomenon none of us hadever seen before. Electricity, in our previous experience, is either on or off.But yesterday the Loch Fyne Mileses had lights which glowed dimly –so the linesweren’t down? – and nothing much else. They also lost their telephone (so nointernet). Ketki phoned from her mobile while we were being driven home, tosay that power had been restored. When I last heard, BT was promisingreconnection for sometime next week.

The iPad isfine.

Much tocatch up on, but knitting is most important.

Here isArne & Carlos’ bauble being hung on the tree by James-the-Younger, shortly after the start ofthe King’s College Carol Service on Christmas Eve. This year’s soloist – theboy who sings the first verse of “Once in Royal David’s City”, unaccompanied,to a listening world -- was particularly glorious. That’s the moment whenit’s all over; that’s when it starts.

Here arethe two Brownstones, a few days later, on Big Thomas and Little Thomas. Fit is not entirelysuccessful, in either case.

Here isalmost the last of the yarn, as a beanie on the head of Alistair Miles, James’and Cathy’s son. The fit is perfect, if I do say so.

Except fora sunless lull on the 27^th, serious gales blew incessantly. My husband couldn't attempt little walks about the garden, as we had hoped. I got lotsof knitting done. Those KF hand-dyed-effect socks are withinperhaps 20 minutes, perhaps less, of completion.

I used toknit socks on 64 stitches for all the gents on my best-beloved list, until my husband found a pair too tight and I switched to 72. This time, I finished and Kitchener’d the firstsock sometime last week. He tried it on and found the foot too big – “like aduck-billed platypus”. So I took it back to the gusset – the worst part of thatis deciding to do it – and knit the foot on 64. It seems fine.

When KF’srandom-striped Regia, colorway “anthracite”, arrived here some weeks ago, wethought it too blue. My husband is anti-blue. But now, in the solstice lighteven at midday, it looks like anthracite, and I think I will cast it on today, at least tentatively, for the next pair of socks.

And whenthey are finished – roll on, 2012!

2011-12-16T08:42:00.001Z

I thinkthis is the moment when I will bow out for awhile, perhaps to reappear in thelast week of the year.

Our plansseem to be in more than ordinary disarray.

n Myhusband’s illness puts a question mark over our journey to Loch Fyne nextFriday. And I’m not altogether sure I feel entirely hunky dory myself. We havelong believed that there is a sort of sub-flu one can get when one has had theinjection, and I think that may be where I am.

n Rachel’shusband’s dearly loved Aunt Franceshad a cerebral haemorrhage last weekend. Drs decided yesterday to withdrawventilation and let her die. Rachel and her family couldn’t possibly come toLoch Fyne – they are expected on the 26^th – if it meant missing AuntFrances’funeral. No one knows, of course, how long the dying will take. I am fond ofAunt Francesmyself, although knowing her but little.

n Alexandercooks on an Aga, which came with the house. Agas are generally regarded as thene plus ultra of cooking apparatus, although Alexander himself – a fussy cook –is not entirely pleased with it. Be that as it may, something has recently gonewrong. A Man is meant to come next week and put it right. If he doesn’t come orcan’t fix it, roast goose on the 25^th is out of the question. I’mnot much bothered with this one, although Alexander is – baked beans on toastwashed down with champagne would do very nicely.

Amongst myown right-now problems is the question of what to feed people today. James andhis daughters will be here at the end of the afternoon – the middle of thenight, for them, freshly arrived from China. James thinks the girls willjust want to go to bed, but I can’t meet them on the doorstep with the immortalline, “You’ll have had your tea”. I’ve got to offer something, and one of thegirls is vegetarian.

And Jameshimself (a Type 1 diabetic) has adopted a regime ofno-carbohydrate-in-the-evening. And my husband continues to protest that in hiscurrent delicate state he doesn’t want anything “cooked”, he just wants food.

Lying awakelast night, wondering if I was ill, I figured out today’s program. I’ll have alarge pot of water near the boil when they arrive. If the girls want food, I’llmake them spaghetti aglio e olio, a delicious dish of utmost simplicity oftenconsumed by young Italians in the middle of the night. And vegetarian. And thenthe rest of us can have Gino d’Acampo’s version of spag bol a little later andJames can leave out the spag.

Andtomorrow will have to look after itself.

As forknitting, I’ve passed the halfway point with the Pig Bauble and progressed withthe current sock. I am much struck with the emotional difference betweenmadelinetosh scarlet and KF hand-dyed-effect rhubarb, a dark purple. I ampleased enough with the sock which is emerging, but the process of knitting itcompletely lacks that scarlet boost.

2011-12-15T08:09:00.003Z

Today’sfirst hurdle is a dental hygeine appt. Fortunately the dentist’s office is nearand time-keeping good.

My husbandcontinues to improve, but is very weak. Apart from the illness, he has had noexercise since Saturday morning when we went to a book fair at the RadissonHotel. The halest of us is quickly enervated by lying about. James will be heretomorrow and Alexander and Ketki on Saturday. I will welcome their support andadvice.

Little toreport, knitting-wise. On the sock, I’ve picked up the stitches for the gussetand started decreasing and Oliver’ing. Thank you for the link, Sarah. Iam two or three rounds short of the centre point of the new bauble. It’s toughgoing, consisting as it does of areas of pig and areas of not-pig, so that thecolours have to be stranded, or rather woven, over considerable distances. It’s very tight, whichI think will be a positive asset, and the red tends to peek through the white,which isn’t too much of a downer in this context, either.

I’ll leaveit there and go make today’s list.

2011-12-14T09:04:00.002Z

Let’s keepcalm, and make a list.

Therereally needs to be a name for these last few days before the solstice, ofdarkness, fear, and hope. “Advent” is too mild. And I love your idea, Gretchen,of a “slow Christmas” movement. But I suspect we haven’t a hope.

My husbandhad a much better day yesterday, cough subdued, out of bed for much of the day.Antibiotics are clearly working. But he is still weak, and looks drawn, and hasexpressed doubt about whether he will be able to go to Loch Fyne for Christmas.James and his daughters (not, alas, Cathy and their eldest, Alistair) will behere on Friday. Alexander and his family will come over on Saturday, thebrothers’ only chance to see each other this holiday.

(We have agood local delicatessen and, if energy serves, a great one, Valvona and Crolla,not all that much further away. That takes care of lunch except for clearingthe Christmas card operation off the dining room table and I wonder if I havewashed the tablecloth since my husband’s birthday.)

And I mustwrap the presents for Alexander’s family and for Rachel’s (who are expected atLoch Fyne on Boxing Day) so that they can go back with him on Saturday, just incase we don’t make it. I’ve done the James-Mileses.

I am prettysure each one of you has a similar list. It doesn't sound so bad, anyway, when you write it down.

Knitting (amuch more manageable subject)

I did spend my osteoporosis-half-hour this morning with Arne & Carlos. I’m doingPattern 43, the Christmas Pig, which is interesting because there are only twopigs, not four – that is, the four sections of the bauble are not identicalthis time. I’ve got up to 12 stitches per needle, 4 more to go, and haveestablished the feet of the pigs.

And lastnight I turned the heel of the first KF hand-dyed-effect sock. I did reinforceit, which was irritatingly fiddly. My husband has one pair of Oliver’d socks,and likes them – I’m late, and won’t look up the link. So I’ll do that again.

We haveordered a couple of things from Amazon.fr in our day, the most recent a work onthe control of moles which had been recommended in the FT. This morning I had amessage from them, all in French, about some knitting books I might beinterested in. That’s what I call an algorithm! I’m afraid I ordered “Tricot-Modèles originaux et variants” simply because I felt so flattered. I’ll tellyou about it when it turns up.

Mark Lou, thanks for the tip about “strikkegarn”.I’ve google’d that, and sources seem to be plentiful. Maybe Dale has decidedto concentrate on selling ready-made sweaters and sort of abandoned Heilo. Doesn’t“strikkegarn” just mean “knitting yarn”? I remember Candace Eisner at Camp Stitcheson Lake George in ’99 telling us that she hadscoured the world for a man whose name meant “knitting” and when she found him,married him. Candace Eisner Strick.

2011-12-13T08:12:00.000Z

It soundsas if they’re going to announce in Switzerland today that they mayhave spotted the Higgs boson. It will be a feather in the cap of Drummond Place, ifso, as Professor Higgs used to live here. It was quite a while ago, and hewasn’t here long, maybe 18 months, but still, here. Drummond-Place-in-history runs rather to poets andartists – a Nobel Prize for Physics would be a bracing change.

My husbandis better. I consulted a dr by telephone yesterday, a facility our practice nowoffers as standard. I hope they all do. He agreed that the markers I mentionedyesterday were significant, and said that my husband must be seen if any ofthem regressed. He also thought that an antibiotic might help, and he seems tohave been right. At any rate, we’ve had a nearly cough-free night. It took allthe rest of yesterday morning for me to get across town to the surgery to pickup the prescription – paper, with an actual dr’s signature, is still required –and then to get up to Boots to activate it.

But I gotmy pensum of Christmas cards written in the afternoon.

On thesubject of Christmas: the pedant in me has noticed (Zite, again) that asignificant minority of people seem to believe that “the twelve days ofChristmas” refers to the period we are currently enduring. It does not. The12-day count begins on 25 December and ends on – wait for it – Twelfth Night.The first time I spotted that error, I assumed it was an individual’sidiosyncratic mistake, but it keeps cropping up.

I finishedknitting the second hat. My list of the year’s FO’s positively sparkles forDecember. There is still Arne & Carlos’ pig ornament to knit and take toLoch Fyne next week, but knitting, especially in December, is required tosooth as well as entertain. Christmas-tree-bauble-knitting is a lot of fun, and indeed addictive,but not soothing.

So, after tidying up the hat, I reverted last night to the KF hand-dyed-effect sock.Tomorrow is Wednesday. I’ll cast on the ornament during my osteoporosishalf-hour and trust it to knit itself thereafter.

The sock yarnstill slightly worries and slightly irritates me. The sock which is emerging isfine, wonderfully soft, and the sloooooooow colour changes are splendid. Butthe ball keeps falling apart and the yarn keeps splitting. We’ll see. I thinkwhen I was knitting in a&e the other night, I got into the swing of it andit sped forward like any sock. I hope that will happen again.

Zite foundme an interesting hat pattern yesterday: the Regina. Here is alink to the one Ziteillustrated which I think looks better than the designer’s colour scheme.It sounds fun, and madelinetosh DK is actually mentioned. What if I dipped intothe delicious pile of yarn my sister recently brought me for my Effortless (orVitamin D, as the case may prove)? I mustn’t, but I'm tempted.

2011-12-12T08:42:00.001Z

Well, GreekHelen got here through the storm and whizzed through a remarkable amount ofaccomplishment in her 64 hours in GB – including visiting a potentialschool for one of her boys in York, halfway fromhere to London.Rumplestiltskin himself would have stood amazed at the amount of ironing shegot done. It was wonderful to have a shoulder to lean on, instead of being ever the lean-ee.

The stormwas fully as bad as forecast, but kept strictly to the script. The Edinburgh airport websitehas what purports to be an arrivals board (maybe they all do). Nothing landedduring the afternoon but Helen’s flight, timetabled for 8:30 p.m., was shewnall day as “scheduled 21:30” – which was a good deal better than “cancelled”.The storm died down in the early evening, as predicted, and she landed at21:40. From her point of view, the delay was all spent in Athens airport. Her trip home yesterday wasutterly smooth.

And here weare with the solstice looming. I’m doing well with Christmas cards – five orsix a day, and I’ll finish by the weekend. Miss a day, and I’m introuble.

Knitting iswell in hand. I finished the first hat and thought it, simply, perfect. (It’sfrom Vicki Square’s“Knit Great Basics”, a book of schematics for various basic shapes in a goodrange of gauges. There are other such books out there. This was the first one Istumbled across, and I use it a lot.) So I didn’t try to translate Jared’sWanderer cap from “Weekend Hats” after all. Apart from gauge considerations, itinvolves a lot of purling which is less than soothing on a short circular.

I had arare burst of common sense, and weighed the finished hat on the digital kitchenscales, followed by weighing the remaining madelinetosh yarn. Not enough. Sothe second hat is striped, with Paton’s “Tapestry”, wool and soybean, fromstash. Do they still make it? I should finish this evening.

The onlyserious source of gloom just at the moment is that my husband has a cold andcough, which came upon him suddenly on Saturday afternoon. He has had his fluinjection and isn’t feverish and is alert and able to eat and read and expressopinions. I don’t, so far, think we need a doctor, and there’s not much doctorscan do for colds anyway. But anything is serious at 86 and I am concerned.

There is abright side even to that: we don’t have to go out for exercise-walks.

Miscellaneousknitting-related

Thinking ofthe sweater I am going to design when Scotlandwins the Calcutta Cup in ’12, I am surprised to find that Dale Heilo yarndoesn’t seem to be available in the UK. So far, I have failed to findthe words which would prompt Google to come up with continental suppliers, andthe Dale website itself isn’t much use. I’m sure, with the help of a Ravelrygroup, a solution can be found. I have used the yarn, and I want it for thisimaginary sweater, but I think I got it from Patternworks and paid duty tore-import it into Europe. I’m not going to dothat again.

Kate D. hasa super new pattern called Boreal, idealfor country walks this time of year. I don’t know the yarn she uses, ArtesanoAran, 50/50 wool-alpaca, but mean to find out.

2011-12-08T08:53:00.001Z

Greek Helenis meant to be with us this evening. And central Scotland (=us) is meant to behaving a serious storm, indeed is pretty wet and windy already. My considerableexperience of life suggests that forecast storms rarely turn out to be quite asbad as forecast, and anyway this one seems to be forecast to be worse in thewest (=Glasgow & Loch Fyne). Helen’s husband David is a worrier after myown heart, and will keep me informed through the day.

If I’m nothere tomorrow, it ought to mean that Helen is here. She emailed yesterday tosay that she would do the ironing, as long as she was allowed to cross it offthe list. Alas, she would have to enlist Rumpelstiltskin to get her throughthat pile, and it isn’t on the list anyway – it seems like cheating to includenormal, non-December things that have to be done all the time. Cook lunch. Washup. But it was a kind thought. We are greatly blessed in all four of ourchildren.

Little toreport on the knitting front. I’ve started the crown decreases for the redbeanie – finish this evening, perhaps. Zite showed me a red scarf pattern thismorning – never mind the pattern, a scarf in madelinetosh scarlet would lightup the winter all right. Thot for next year.

And I meantto say, a propos the little Brownstone, that mixing madelinetosh yarn fromvarious sources seems to work fine. Dye lot really doesn’t matter. That sweaterhas all three of my purchases – the first sleeve gets about to the elbow with the yarnoriginally ordered from Amsterdamfor Thomas-the-Elder’s sweater. Then it switches to that odd, unplyed yarn fromHappy Knits, and finally back to the original sort, this time from Jimmy Bean.The Knitting Police could find the demarcation lines, but I am perfectly happywith the result. Irregularities are all subsumed, to my eye, in the deliciousnot-quite-uniformity of the dye.

Zite alsoled me this morning to a video of Arne & Carlos at home. You can see it on their website. They are older than theymight at first appear, I am sorry to have to tell you. I went there hoping forsome hint of sweater designs from them, but there is nothing. I have formed thetentative intention of a funky Norwegian design for the 2012 Calcutta Cupsweater. I ought to be able to do it myself, anyway. First win your rugbymatch.

Non-knit

When I wasdistinctly young, I remember (I think) that Civil War veterans, one or two,still turned out for Memorial Day parades. Now Pearl Harbor survivors are getting pretty rare. Three whole separate centuries are involved here, counting me, the observer, in the 21st.

2011-12-07T08:49:00.001Z

List-makingis clearly the Secret of Life. I had another productive day yesterday and havereached the stage where there are only a couple of things to be tweaked – asever – on the main job, and the cards to be written. The dust and the ironingare accumulating at a dispiriting rate, but you can’t have everything.

I got theLittle Brownstone blocked (it was on the list). I’m pleased with it, perhapsmore than with the big one.

Here it iswith the target shirt from Strachur Primary School superimposed. I’ve done pretty well.

I figuredout how to suppress the flash on my camera when we were talking about colourbefore, but yesterday, despite much button-pressing, I couldn’t do it. In fact, however, the top picture isn't too bad.

I spoke toRachel on the phone at the weekend. She took the big Brownstone to London after my husband’sbirthday, and I had been mildly worried about not having heard from her sonThomas-the-Elder about it. Was it so ill-fitting that he could find no words?But barristers are surely highly trained in suppressio veri & suggestiofalsi. It turns out that he has been in the Maldives, wherever they may be, andhasn’t seen it yet.

The hat iscoming on well. Hats are fun. I bought “Weekend Hats”, another prettyunnecessary book. The world is full of free hat patterns. I like Jared’s“Wanderer Cap”, however, and may try to adapt it to madelinetosh gauge for thenext hat. I think I’ve got plenty to time to finish two before The Day.

And I mightmention that I’m sort of proud of myself for using up the excess madelinetoshso thoroughly, instead of stashing five skeins for the moths when I finishedthe big Brownstone.

Well, it’stime to get on with today’s list. Here is a picture of my sister on her recentbirthday, wearing the shawl I knit for her 70^th.

It’s Amedro’scobweb lace wrap, with lace patterns from Heirloom Knitting substituted. Itoccurred to me yesterday that I have knit that shawl for all three Helens. Iknit it first for Rachel, for her 40^th birthday. Then her daughterHellie asked for one. Then my sister Helen. Finally, last year, my daughterGreek Helen.

Who will behere tomorrow, I think.

2011-12-06T08:35:00.001Z

The listwent well yesterday. I have adopted a variation of your suggestion, catdownunder. One of theitems on today’s list is, make tomorrow’s list.

The baubles

and cards are on their way to the US. (I don't know why the red one should have come out bigger. Same needle size. Same white yarn.) The application for the newparking permit is in the mail. Once when my mother was moving house, and in afrantic state similar to my current one, a neighbour advised her, start withthe job that bugs you the most. That’s sound advice, except that it soonteaches you what Hercules had to put up with, with the Hydra. No sooner is onegone, than you remember two more. I have no hope of getting through today’slist.

I had a FlyLady phase, some years ago. Her first instruction is, polish your sink. That’sa good one, too.

Thank youfor the suggestions about easing the burden of cooking. We lived off Marks andSpencer’s ready meals when I broke my arms (one arm at a time, some yearsapart, but the same Marks and Spencer). The result is that such meals come (for me) witha permanent penumbra of pain and discomfort. I will investigate, anyway.Waitrose, where I shop, has a whole wall of ready-meals, and another cabinet ofready-to-cook. I tend to sweep past. I’ll look at Wiltshire Foods, too, Shandy. And thanks.

I thinkMeals-on-Wheels is just for people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to liveindependently. C. had them a year ago in the weeks between coming out ofhospital after her operation, and going into the hospice to die. I don’t thinkshe was very good at eating them, but the visits were welcome.

I finishedthe Little Brownstone, as hoped. Blocking it is on today’s list, and I hope tohave a pic for you tomorrow. I’ve cast on a plain-vanilla beanie after a certainamount of agonizing over how many stitches to go for. It’s looking good.

Zite has,curiously, taken down the item about Vitamin D. Things usually linger there forthree or four days. Today’s interesting suggestion is Setsuko, named,surely, for the designer of my Japanese shirt in distant Strathardle, but notactually designed by her. It’s distinctly OTT and doesn’t quite qualify for theHALFPINT list, but I’m glad to have seen it. It makes a positive virtue of thestretchiness and droopiness of alpaca.

I was gladto read your enthusiastic reports about Vitamin D. I’ll wander through theprojects in Ravelry when an idle moment looms – there are lots (of people knitting Vitamin D, not, alas, of idle moments).

Pandas

We’ve gotthem, as you must know. I have been wondering what Darwin would make of them. I have never heardof such a mal-adapted animal. Reluctant to breed – the female is fertile foronly two or three days a year. Twins are often born, but the mother thenusually abandons one of them. The cubs are tiny, the smallest, in proportion toadult size, of anybody in the animal kingdom except marsupials. Then there’sall that insistence on bamboo – but they have unusually short intestines and sodon’t absorb nourishment readily and so have to spend all day eating. (Ournewspapers are full of Facts about Pandas.)

Now, inlate 2011, their cuddliness pretty well guarantees that they won’t be allowedto go extinct. But cuddliness would have been no use to them through theevolutionary millennia.

2011-12-05T08:23:00.001Z

I cast offthe Little Brownstone and finished writing and addressing the American-bound Christmas cards yesterdayand am rewarded this morning by a really bad attack of Seasonal Panic/Fear ofthe Dark. The only possible thing to do is make a list and starting strikingthings off it. (The important thing about a list, if it is to allay panic, isthat it contain a few quickly-done items, such as ‘iron handkerchief’. Strikingthem off then soothes. The first thing to do today is to fill out, write acheque for and send off my residents’ parking permit application. I got in areal mess over that one last year, when the reminder got lost in the post.)

Knitting-wise,the ambition is to finish the Little Brownstone and cast on a hat.

I wouldalso like to finish off those baubles, including crocheting little chains forthem, so that they can be dispatched to the US along with the cards. It willrequire a post office visit. So the baubles had better be promoted from theKnitting category (self-indulgence, leave until evening) to that of Christmas(action urgently required).

There arethen three presents still to be dealt with, and disks-full of my husband’sfiles to be converted into Word and dropped into Dropbox. Then perhaps a brieflull – no, that’s rash -- before domestic Christmas cards and present-wrapping.

It doesn’tsound quite so bad when you break it down like that.

Or maybe itdoes, against a remorseless background of cooking and dishwashing and darkness.

Zite foundme another interesting-looking swirling, droopy cardigan pattern yesterday,bizarrely named VitaminD. I have just bought and printed it as a possible alternative to theEffortless for my new madelinetosh yarn. One would want it slightly longer, perhaps.

Maureen in Fargo, I think maybe Ineed a lesson in getting things into my iPad, and maybe I need to look atGoodReader. For the moment, I think I prefer paper that I can write on andspill coffee on. But with the price of printer ink being what it is…

The Sunday Times mentioned yesterday that Mr Salmond had been to the ball, but said nothing about James's jabot.

Non-knit

Don’t miss thelink China Doll provided yesterday to unexpected goings-on in Edinburgh libraries. I ama fairly assiduous reader of the Scotsman. I knew nothing about this. Absolutely magical.

2011-12-04T08:39:00.001Z

The ball inBeijing…

James saysMr Salmond was there, but left before the dancing.

It almostgives me hope that one day someone will get married, and I will see thePrincess shawl in action.

We had agrand time at the Portrait Gallery yesterday, and I greatly look forward togoing back soon and seeing some art. The impression is splendid. Our niece andI had coffee in the large & excellent café and then did some small butuseful shopping in the equally excellent shop. And looked at only the tiniestcorner of ground-floor art including a resident Vetriano (private collection onlong-term loan) which may at last silence the critics who complain that heisn’t represented in any national collection.

But themain thing so far is that that wonderful first space, which we have loved andmissed for so long, is even better than before, with an additional fresco’dgallery open above.

Knitting

The LittleBrownstone ought to be finish-able in another two sessions, even allowing forunderarm grafting and loose ends.

Thanks forthe help with hats. Daisy, I’ve downloaded and printed “Strib”. It looks justwhat I’m after. I watched people’s heads yesterday in the Portrait Gallery,John Lewis, & the street – that is very much the favoured shape. Watchcapscan be too hot, even in quite cold weather, and the double layer of ribbing canroll down over the eyes if not secured.

Ruth andHat, I will explore Knitspot & WoolleyWormhead. Now I’d like a couple ofmonths for uninterrupted hat-knitting.

While weare recommending websites to each other – Zite came up with this one for me theother day, Yarnista’s “17 things I do notwant to knit”. I do miss “You Knit That?”

Grannypurple,I thought that was an interesting remark of yours, that downloadable patternsmay be affecting the quality of patterns in magazines. You can see whydesigners would prefer that path. Annie Modesitt often writes eloquently aboutmagazines and copyright, with me not paying too much attention. But I think thegist is that when magazines re-sell patterns for download, as they often do,the designer doesn’t get much, if anything. Whereas when they sell themselves from their ownwebsites, they get everything. We even pay for ink and printing!

In oldentimes, women’s magazines printed quantities of patterns every week or month,Woman, Woman’s Own, She, doubtless others. The indomitable Woman’s Weeklymaintains the tradition. But in the 50’s and 60’s, I used to wonder whether thepatterns were not often fed to the magazines from the spinners, and sometimesrepresented ideas which were slightly too adventurous to be produced as one ofthe spinner’s own leaflets.

2011-12-03T08:53:00.001Z

Today is mysister Helen’s birthday. She is 75, which seems absurd – far more absurd thanmy own even greater age. Happy Birthday Helen, anyway.

Today is also the day of the Beijing St Andrew's Night Ball.

Yesterdaywas a little bit better around here, progress-wise. I advanced the Christmas cardsslightly, and finished the short-rowing at the back of the neck of the shawlcollar on the Little Brownstone and began knitting back and forth around thewhole collar. There’s lots of that to do, but I think I can now say that thefurther shore is in sight.

The thingabout Christmas knitting, apart from stress, is that it makes you feel you aregetting-on-with-Christmas when all you are doing is knitting and ignoring more urgent chores..

There willbe enough scarlet yarn, and enough time, to turn out a hat for one of thoseobstinately empty squares on my Christmas-list spreadsheet. (I am not organisedin many ways, but I find that that helps a lot, once one’s total ofgrandchildren moves into double figures. It is useful to be reminded what onegave each of one’s loved ones last year and the year before – and sometimes onespots a good present idea which can be transferred from the past into adifferent branch of the family. If nothing else, just sitting there and staringat the list is often productive of thought. You’ve got to “hide” the rows whenpeople die.)

A watchcap?A beanie would be quicker. I’ll have a wander round Ravelry. I’m thinking boy,so nothing too fancy. There might even be time and yarn for a second hat, withstripes to eke out the remaining scarlet if necessary. Or even if not.

Woolly Bits, I don’t know themagazine “Knit” (and don’t like the sound of what Vivienne says about it).Maybe I ought to look, just once. I think IK started out to be themagazine you are looking for – “Beyond the Basics!” was the slogan. But theysoon abandoned that approach. (Do follow the link to Vivienne’s blog – lovelybaby, lovely sweater.)

Kristie, my subscription tothe Knitter is not Zinio, but an app of its own. If I ever find anything therethat I Must Knit Right Now, I’ll get back to you to work out a strategy to getit on paper. At the moment, my immediate mental project list is at least sixmonths long (finish Christmas; have a sock-blitz to fill up my husband’s drawera bit; knit him a v-necked vest; my Effortless; a gardening sweater forRachel’s husband Ed). It would have to be a pretty good magazine pattern toinsinuate itself into that plan.

And then ofcourse Scotlandwill win the Calcutta Cup in 2012, how could they not? and I will want to knita sweater to commemorate that. And it will have to be done in '12 -- that's the rule.

I am goingto meet our niece this morning in the newly-reopened Portrait Gallery forcoffee and maybe some art and maybe some Christmas shopping, so I had betterpress on now with my porridge.

2011-12-02T09:00:00.001Z

Miscellaneous, again.

Yesterday was remarkably unproductive – I musn’t allow many more like that, if weare to get anywhere this month. I was reading Robert Harris’ “The Fear Index”,which was part of the reason. It’s depressing, because none of the charactersis sympathetic, but brilliantly well constructed and utterly up-to-the-minute.

-- I didfinish the body of the little Brownstone, and picked up stitches for the shawlcollar, and established the rib. That’s something.

-- Thank you,as so often, for your help. “Alazarin” on Jimmy Bean’s website doesn’t lookscarlet at all, just sort of interestingly red-y along with brown. But the bitsof pink and yellow you report, Tricia, don’t sound to my husband’s taste. MaybeI’d better eschew it. “Kale” is another possibility, to add to yesterday’slist. One of my recent madelinetosh orders came with a little twist of that, totempt me, and it did.

-- The sockyarn I ordered on Wednesday turned up on Thursday, Kaffe’s “Random Stripes” forRegia. “Anthracite” turns out to have a disappointing amount of blue in it – myhusband is permanently anti-blue. But he likes “Moor” although ostensibly morecolourful.

-- Barbara,you will be able to buy individual copies of “The Knitter” for yourKindle/iPad, so it should be easy enough to try it out. I feel I’ve beenawfully slow to get here. It’s wonderful that Britain has a proper, seriousknitting magazine of its own. I don’t know what I’ll do if I ever actually wantto knit a pattern (when one wants paper), but for the time being am very happywith an electronic subscription (and no clutter).

-- I guessI’ve got to have a go at Emily Ocker, when I start the third bauble. That onedoesn’t have to be ready until 3:05p.m. on the 24^th – when the boyin Cambridge starts singing Once in Royal David’s City and we start decoratingthe tree. I could finish it off that morning, if need be, although that wouldmean taking stuffing to Loch Fyne. So it can wait at the end of the Christmasqueue, for the moment.

Alexanderphoned yesterday to say that Rest and Be Thankful has been blocked by alandslide again. A lot of money has been spent recently on landslide-defenceswhich are meant to prevent this from happening. “God thought otherwise”,Alexander said. I am sure we will all manage to get there somehow. It is easierto stay calm when one isn’t “doing” Christmas oneself.

-- I am gladyou are finding Margaret Stove’s decrease trick useful (=the stitch the needle enters first, for any decrease, winds up on top). It has certainly savedme many hours toiling through the books trying to find the effect I want. Iheard it from the woman herself, here in Drummond Place. She produced it with atouching, scientific diffidence, wondering whether there might not still be adecrease out there which would prove her wrong.

-- Phylliswrote to me yesterday with this linkto a video on the Philosopher’s Wool site about how to knit two-handed Fair Isle. I have watched it with interest. The generaltechnique is perfectly familiar. But I have forgotten, or never knew, how towind the yarn around left-hand fingers for proper control and tension. I mustwork on that.

2011-12-01T09:00:00.001Z

Miscellany

-- The Scotsman newspaper said yesterday that our FirstMinister, Mr. Salmond, is going to

China

“at the end of this week”.What more natural than that he should drop in on the Beijing St Andrews NightBall, on Saturday, and have his eye caught by a particularly fine jabot?

Not many of the men will be wearingjabot-and-Montrose-jacket, although it is by no means an eccentric or OTT wayto appear. Long, long ago when I was young and going to a ball myself, I wasstanding at a haberdashery counter in Glasgowbuying a yard or so of inch-wide black velvet ribbon to wear around my neck,lacking jewelry as I did. (I learnedsomething useful at Oberlin.) A young man was there, buying a jabot. (Is thispossible? Could they be had over the counter like that, even in the 1950’s?)

And I thought at the time, there is no country in Europe in which a man can turn himself out so wellwithout joining the army. It’s still true.

-- My husband said yesterday that he would like meto knit him a v-neck sleeveless, to replace one I knit long ago. So long ago,that I have no recollection of doing it. It would be as quick and easy to knitas a sock, he said, and is probably right. The prototype appears to be roughlyDK, and has lots of holes in it. The biggest and worst is over the right bosom(so to speak) – not moths, in that case, although they appear elsewhere, butthe things men carry in an inside jacket pocket.

I had a look at Jimmy Bean thismorning. I think there are some madelinetosh colours which could get by thecensor – Alizarin, Bark, Moccasin, Twig. What does “Alizarin” mean? Thespell-check here in Word surprises me but not being surprised by it.

So I’m thinking about that. Andit shows the importance of not buying yarn too far in advance. My Effortless (forwhich the yarn is here) is receding, although I am confident of finishing it in2012, if I’m spared.

-- The new Knitter whizzed down from out-there ontomy iPad yesterday. It is a seriously good magazine, no doubt. Maybe I'll stop worrying about the fact that I seem to have subscribed in perpetuity when Ithought I was buying three months.

Cottonand Cloud is one of the blogs I follow. Her delight is touching thismorning, at being on the cover. And I mean to have a look at the videos sheoffers. I have been aware, knitting these baubles, that my two-colour, two-handtechnique could do with some tweaking.

Actual knitting

I didn’t quite finish the body of the Little Brownstoneyesterday. That should happen today. Nor did I do anything about thenearly-finished baubles. I did write a couple of Christmas cards for the USofA.Angel, I note with interestyour system of bauble-knitting – and I still want to do one more for Loch Fyne.Could I bear Emily Ocker’s cast-on, fiddliness-wise? I’ve never actually tried it.

St Andrew's Day

2011-11-30T09:01:00.001Z

I spentthis morning’s osteoporosis-half-hour (for it is indeed Wednesday again)stuffing the second Christmas tree bauble. It remains to crochet chains forboth of them, and close the bottom holes. No photographs, because my camera hastaken to demanding a battery change after every half-dozen pics.

So the nextthing is to polish off the American Christmas cards – none got done, yesterday– and take them and the baubles to a post office. Not so easy, now that ourlocal one is gone. By next Monday? Should be do-able.

And it iswithin the bounds of possibility that I will finish the body of the LittleBrownstone today. I solved yesterday’s problem (I hope) by putting in threesets of decreases on the purl side. (I have divided the work for the deepshawl-collar-hole.) Looks all right. We shall see.

I usedMargaret Stove’s wonderful rule-of-thumb, mentioned here before: the stitch theneedle enters first, for any decrease, is the stitch that winds up on top. Itworks just as well when you’re purling and “on top” refers to the other side –the right side – of the work. So p2tog, when you flip it over, looks like ak2tog, and an SSK on the right side is replaced by that most awkward ofmanoeuvres on the purl side, p2togtbl.

It’s true.

Sock yarn

What withthe sweep of recent events, I forgot to mention that my new sock yarn is here.The Van Gogh, I am afraid, is too full of light shades for my husband’s taste.No loss – I knit for plenty of ladies who will be pleased to wear Van Gogh.Hundertwasser – I am becoming increasingly fond of that man – is more possible,although there are light shades in him, too, and a possibly alarming amount ofpurple.

It’s nevereasy for me to guess how a variegated yarn is going to look when knit. The onlything to do is to cast on Hundertwasser and see what happens. Alas, my husbandnow gets bigger socks than anyone else on the list, so if he doesn’t like theresult, it may have to be frogged. Or knit for Alexander, possibly? He’s gotquite big feet.

So thismorning – it’s still November, right? Life is both depressing and stressful,right? – I ordered some more yarn: Kaffe’s newest additions to the Regia designline – “anthracite” and “moor” in “random stripes”.

Non-knit

We wentyesterday to see the “fine pictures” to be sold at Lyon & Turnbull in a fewdays. And weren’t tempted by anything, I’m glad to say. It was the first timemy husband had been out since Friday night’s excitements. I thought he seemed anotch slower and frailer even than before, but that could have been just thegloomy effect of dark, wet, windy November. I was glad, again, that we are here(Edinburgh) andnot there (Strathardle) and have begun to entertain the idea of not going atall before Christmas.

2011-11-29T09:09:00.001Z

Here weare, and for the moment will remain. My husband wants to finish the currenttask he has assigned himself – I must then translate his files into Word anddrop them into Dropbox. I’m not sorry – I’m afraid of the dark, and of sn*w,and, still shaken by Friday’s adventure, glad to be here where help is onlyseconds away.

The bignews on the knitting front is that the Beijing St Andrew’s Night Ball is thiscoming Saturday. Preparations (and dancing practice) are well advanced, and Ihope to be able to show you a picture of the jabot in action soon.

Itflickered across my mind that maybe James would like a pair of “Argyle” kilthose for Christmas – hose knit in his tartan. But they cost £200 on the KinlochAnderson website (scroll down), and that’s a bit much. I have only seensuch things once that I remember, on the calves of the son of a dear (andwell-dressed) friend, at his father’s funeral. It was an impressive sight.Kinloch Anderson says that they are hand-knitted. Is that possible, even for£200? I feel there must be an antique hand-operated sock-knitting machine involved somewhere.

I got onwell with knitting, and with Christmas, yesterday. A couple more rounds of thecurrent bauble, and much raglan decreasing on the little Brownstone, and thefirst three Christmas cards written. Barbara, like you I put a message, howeverbrief, in each one, and like you I enjoy reading the duplicated summaries ofthe year which some card-writers enclose. What I really hate are the cards frompeople I am seriously interested in and haven’t seen or heard from for a whilewho just sign their names.

But at ourage, the main function of a card is to tell the recipient that the sender isstill above ground, so I can’t really even complain of a simple signature.

Knitting

I see, justnow, that I have miscalculated the number of rows in the raglan decreases.“Repeat the above six rows three more times”: I have added that instruction inas 18 rows, when of course it is 24. I’ll have to consider the whole thing, andpossibly frog quite a bit. Or speed up the decreases somehow, to absorb the sixextra rows.

That is avery interesting remark, Beverly,about elbows sagging in reverse st st. It’s not a stitch I have any experienceof. I do remember how surprised I was, long ago, reading Mary Thomas’ KnittingBook, to see how she separated st st and reverse st st into two separateentities. It would indeed be good to hear from someone with experience of thismatter.

And thanksfor the comments about Malabrigo worsted. It sounds, on the whole, like one tostay away from. I could re-cast the pattern for madelinetosh, I feel sure. Orsomething else may have presented itself by the time I get to that pattern. Theimportant thing is not to buy any yarn until the Driven jacket is next to becast on.

My mugturned up yesterday, and I’m drinking coffee from it right now.

2011-11-28T09:11:00.001Z

We continueto mend, and even hope to go to Strathardle tomorrow. Thank you for your notesof concern and sympathy.

When wefinally got into bed on Friday night – by then, in fact, Saturday was welladvanced – we turned on the radio and, before unconsciousness overcame us,heard the World Service trailing a program – sometime this week – called“Knitting in Tripoli”.It’s not the one you and I would like to hear. It’s about what non-combatantsdo in such a situation to keep life moving forward and themselves sane. That’swhat I had been doing in the preceding hours in a&e – knitting in Tripoli.

What I TellYou Two Times is True

I havebought and printed the pattern for the Driven jacket to which I linked onFriday. The blogger who wrote about it said that the Malabrigo Worsted forwhich it is written is incredibly soft. That same morning, the Knitting Dailyeditor said that she had knit a hat from the Weekend Hats book in that sameyarn, and had come to the same conclusion. Do I know this yarn?

That sameday, both the Telegraph and the Economist predicted the demise of the Euro andmajor misery for us all to follow.

Knitting

I thoughtthe little Brownstone would go faster once the sleeves were attached, and sureenough. I’ll start the raglan shaping today. As we all know, it goes like thewind after that.

I am welladvanced with my second bauble. I had better return to it today, somehow.Here’s the first one:

Christmas

Stash Haus,I keep thinking about your question about UK Christmasses, and coming to differentconclusions. It’s much darker here. Maybe that’s the whole problem – maybe Iremember that Christmas of 1960 as less stressful just because it was lighter.

We don’thave anything like Black Friday here. Nor did we, in the US, when I wasyoung. There was a general consensus that when Thanksgiving was over, it wastime to think about Christmas, but that was all. The push is getting earlierand earlier here. I used to tell myself, keep going steadily towards Christmasafter my husband’s birthday (November 19) although I often didn’t do it. Now,Christmas has taken over the shops well before then.

Obviously,if you have to have Thanksgiving dinner on Christmas day, as well as doing presents and cards, it’s going to be tough.

What follows willsound trivial and silly, but it’s part of my problem: my husband’s familyinsist on sending each other cards, as well as presents. I have always – andstill do – regarded cards as one step down, for people one is concerned to keepin touch with and wants to hear from, but doesn’t love quite enough to buy or knit anything for. I will observe this convention, this year as always, and send cards (as well as presents) to his nieces which I wouldn’t dream of sending to our ownchildren or to my sister. But I don’t like it, and the knowledge that I must do it adds to thepressure.

2011-11-27T08:31:00.001Z

Whathappened was this:

On Fridayevening my husband injected insulin at 8:30 – he was working at his computer,as usual. I called him to his food at 9. (I don’t like eating so late, but itis the schedule he prefers.) When he hadn’t turned up at 9:40 I went to fetchhim – it is dangerous to delay food after injecting insulin.

Fifty-fouryears of marriage should have taught me that the moment when I set forth tocall him again, is the moment when he finally comes. But I forgot, and collidedwith him in the dark just outside his study door. We both fell.

I was allright, but he didn’t seem entirely conscious. I called our nearest neighbourfor help. He decided at once that what my husband needed was not to be leveredto his feet, but an ambulance. It came promptly. Our neighbour helped me pullmyself and the necessary things together – my husband’s medicaments and arepeat prescription form to provide a list for the drs; a telephone; and someknitting. That, at least, was ready to go – the current travel sockis always in its Royal Botanic Gardens hessian bag in the stash cupboard, readyto grab.

I told theambulance people the story. They tested blood sugar, which was indeeddangerously low, and started dripping glucose into my husband while the ambulancebumped along. At the hospital they examined and x-rayed him and attached him to a machinewhich monitored various things but low blood sugar remained the onlyidentifiable problem.

And after awhile he got to be more conscious again.

Thehospital expected to keep him but he wanted to go home. By 2 a.m. he seemed close tonormal to me, and proved able to take the few steps necessary. I promised tobring him back if I got worried. We got to bed at 3:30. I wonder if we had everbeen so late, even in our raucous youth. We spent most of yesterday in bed andcontinued to improve.

After allwe had read about the Scottish Drink Problem, we were surprised at the calm andpeaceful aspect of A&E in Edinburgh’smain hospital on a Friday night. At least 5/8ths of the clientele seemed to beSilly Old Fools like ourselves. No blood, only one brief episode of obsceneshouting. We remarked on this, towards the end, to the kind and intelligentnurse in charge of us. “Shhhh,” she said, “we don’t use the q-word.”

I madegreat progress with the current sock during all this. This is the one beingknit of Kaffe’s “hand-dye effect” from Regia, the surprisingly soft and fluffyyarn which is very gently twisted rather than manifesting the firm, crisp plyof other sock yarns. The colour is wonderful, and the resulting fabricdeliciously soft. But will it be strong enough? It’s got 25% “polyamide” and 5%acrylic in it, which ought to be plenty, and Regia ought to know theirbusiness, but I think I will reinforce heel and toe. I haven’t done that, orneeded to, for years.

There is agood deal more to say both about knitting and about the state of the world, butI’ll leave it until tomorrow.

2011-11-25T09:00:00.001Z

I’vefinished the first bauble, except for closing the top and crocheting a chainfor it to hang by. The next one will require me to wind one of the tworemaining skeins of madelinetosh scarlet. I’d better get that done. Stuffedwith kapok, or whatever that stuff is called, it looks slightly lumpy perhapsbut acceptable. I want to do two more, at least. Pic tomorrow, I hope.

Arne andCarlos are in the new VK, although I don’t think we learn anything of interestabout them there. They’ve got a new book out about dolls. It seems reasonable to hopethat they’ll do a sweater book. I’ll be right there in the queue for that one.

Meanwhilethe little Brownstone obstinately refuses to measure 12 ½" no matter howindustriously I knit. Surely today.

Zite cameup with this seriously tempting jacketthis morning. One for the HALFPINT list. It is my practice, you may remember,to make a list at the end of the year of things-I-want-to-knit. Notresolutions, just an attempt to pin down and record whatever is bubbling on themental back burners (to mix a metaphor) as the year dies. A year ago I satthere in gloom, scarcely able to think of anything. This year there’s going tobe a lot.

I usuallyget most of it done – or, at least, abandoned for a good reason.

Miscellaneous

I made theChristmas puddings yesterday and will steam one of them today. That’s somethingdone, but chores spring up hydra-headed this time of year.

I havespent only one Thanksgiving in the US since I married – in 1960. Theidea of a Great Big Meal so soon before the annual Great Big Meal isdisconcerting, but I think it had the contrarian effect of rendering Christmasslightly less horrible. Perhaps it was just that Christmas is intrinsicallyslightly less horrible in the

I have made a tentative resolution to do more Christmas knitting next year. I avoid it on the whole so as not to add stress to stress. But the sight of all that stuff piled up in the shops, to be bought by people who can't afford it and given to people who don't want it, depresses me more than ordinarily this year. They may not want another hat or scarf, either, but at least it says "I love you" cheaply and efficiently.

I wasworrying here recently about how to get books off the Kindle app on my iPad.One of you told me – I am ashamed to say that I have let the comment go, andcan’t even thank you by name – that when I archive a book it goes to the BookDepository in the sky, whence I can retrieve it if I change my mind. So that’sfine; I know how to do that. I thought “archive” meant that it was somewhereelse on the iPad.

Greek Helenasked when she was last here, whether one was aware of the financial crisis indaily life here, as they are in

Greece

.I thought not – but now it has come home: Grandson Joe can’t find work. Hegraduated in the summer and doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life.Right now, he just wants to earn a bit of money. He had a temporary job for afew weeks gathering statistics about school exam results. That has ended, andnow he can’t get anything – the Post Office doesn’t want him as Christmasrelief, or Sainsbury’s to stack shelves. The other day his application to be anelf was rejected. He is a sober and personable young man. This is serious.

2011-11-24T09:18:00.001Z

Y’all havea good Thanksgiving.

I didn’tmean to fish for compliments yesterday, but they were all very muchappreciated anyway. Google Analytics – Theo steered me there, long ago; I don’t oftenvisit these days – says that there are about 275 of us, 300 on a really goodday. So I knew that the “Follower” count didn’t really count. Still...number 100, most appropriately, is http://www.von-stroh-zu-gold.de/.Willkommen!

Thanks for the help with bauble-knitting, Shandy. I agree, they are addictive. Iam nearly finished with my first one, but can see that already. I looked up theraineysisters, and am interested inthe idea of knitting a polystyrene ball into the bauble as one proceeds. In theold days it would have been at least a day’s hard work, finding one. Now we’vegot Google. And I’ll consider knitting flat and seaming. I loathe purling twocolours, but one can do anything for 64 stitches.

So what with that, I didn’t reach the armpits of the littleBrownstone yesterday after all, but am now only half a dozen rounds short, if that.

And yesterday brought both the “early winter” VK and “KnitsMen Want”. The big news is that VK has a whole half-page about Kate Davies andTextisles. If that’s not glory, I can’t imagine what might be.

I was sorry to hear of Judy Sumner’s death. She was atowering figure in my KnitList days, and a cyber friend.

“Knits Men Want” is a good concept, full of lively text.Jared contributed the photography, a plus. I will certainly find a templatethere for the gardening sweater I hope to knit for Ed. I am taken aback,however, in the section on sock-knitting, to read, “Sock yarn…just isn’tpractical for men’s socks since it’s too light and thin….Men like hand-knittedsocks that are thick, warm and comfortable.” My experience doesn’t bear thatout. The men I knit socks for in sock yarn, wear them. Nor do the socks seem “lightand thin” until they are wearing out, many years later. Poof.

But talking about “thick, warm and comfortable” – Zite, thismorning, has both Solitude Wool’s Dorset BootSock kits and the Yarn Harlot’s blog post about knitting herself a pairalmost instantaneously. I’m sort of tempted.

2011-11-23T09:09:00.001Z

Two more followers! 99! What exquisite excitement!

Arne andCarlos’ Christmas-bauble-knitting book turned up yesterday – three days laterthan Amazon predicted, when they told me it had been dispatched. Have Xmasdelays started already? It is totally unnecessary, but maintains the charmpromised by the cover.

Wednesdayis my osteoporosis-pill day, when I have to spend the first half-hour notdrinking coffee or eating anything, and not going back to bed. I regard it asmy half-hour, for gross self-indulgence, and today I spent it attempting aChristmas tree bauble.

All thisstash reduction of late has left me sadly short, but I found a couple ofoddballs left over from the Grandson sweater. I have no suitable red except themadelinetosh scarlet itself – surely there will be a few yards at the end forbauble-knitting? But for today, I started a black-and-white one, which Arne andCarlos also allow.

I say that the book isunnecessary because the basic bauble-pattern is simple, and surely to be foundon the internet. Cast on 3 stitches for each of 4 needles, increase every otherround to 16, knit 12 rounds straight, decrease at the same rate. There, I’vetold you. The colour patterns themselves are to be found in many a Scandinavian book, and locating them on a bauble doesn't require much ingenuity.There is a rather nice pig: I’ll aim at that for the Loch Fyne bobble.

The work isfiddly, dealing with all those needles when you have few stitches on each, andthen doing colour-work on short dp’s. I’m not good at fiddly, and don’t enjoyit. On the other hand, the just-one-more-row syndrome never operates sopowerfully as on a two-colour pattern on a small project. I overran myhalf-hour, and will probably sneak in more bauble-knitting later today. I stillhave a bag of stuffing left over from Sam the Ram in ’07, so that’s all right.

I wound andjoined in a new skein for the little Brownstone yesterday – that’s progress, Iguess, even if the project itself is obstinately unchanged. And in fact itisn’t – I’m only two inches short of the armpits, and could reach them today.“Armpits” means attaching the sleeves, and I absurdly feel that things will gofaster once I’ve done that.

Your pointabout children’s head sizes is well taken, Tamar. It was a long and painfullesson for me to learn. I remember bitter struggles to pull too-small neckopenings over too-large heads, when the children and I were young. In thiscase, I’m just anxious to avoid gaping. Jared starts the neck opening below thearmpits. I mean to begin it when I’ve done maybe four rounds with sleevesattached.

Kristie, I didn’t take muchpersuading – I ordered both Van Gogh and Hundertwasser yarns yesterday. Only100 grams of Van Gogh, which is going to mean a fair amount ofsomething-from-the-oddball bag to finish the toes; a whole 200 forHundertwasser. The latter yarn is merely inspired by the artist’s work (andwhat fun he sounds, Barbara) whereas, for the former, each colourway is basedon a particular picture.

I don’t getas many socks done as I used to, now that we stay so close to home. And, asI’ve remarked, by husband’s stock is low. I’m sort of thinking maybe asock-blitz for January and February, before I start my Effortless. So much toknit, so little time.

Thinkingeven further ahead, I’m imaging a gardening sweater for Rachel’s husband Ed. Itook careful measurements from a sweater he was wearing last weekend, andperhaps soon will start contemplating the madelintosh page at Jimmy Bean’sagain. Or do I want something slightly tougher? Ever a sucker for a book, I've ordered Knits Men Want.

2011-11-22T09:07:00.001Z

I did enjoymy normal day, and am looking forward to this one.

Thank youfor all the help with my Christmas shopping. At the moment, I think I’ll gowith “Grandpa’s weeder” – I like the look of that foot-operated lever thing andcustomers seem enthusiastic. And will probably also get a normal-sized daisygrubber for myself, who can still kneel.

And thankyou for the suggestion that I put my place card from Saturday on a mug. I don’tthink I would have thought of it. The TShirtStudio makes it (seem) easy. Using the image I showed you yesterday, themug will have “To Rhinoshambaorsp*” on one side and “*Latin forGrandmother!!!!” on the other. In fact, I ordered two – the other will be aChristmas present for our niece, who has two small grandsons on whom she dotes.

I ordered acouple of other things yesterday, too. I’m coming along nicely with my list. Ihave done most of Christmas on-line for some years now, and have never been letdown or disappointed with the result. Other years, I’ve done a lot by goingthrough all those catalogues that arrive with every tide. This time, I find Ican hardly bear to look at them, but I am doing well withthinking about people and then searching on-line for something that resemblesmy thots.

I refrainedfrom ordering Hundertwasser and Van Gogh yarn for myself, but may well succumb today. My husband has heard of Hundertwasser but doesn’t seem to have avery clear idea of what sort of thing he painted.

And Iworked on the small Brownstone. I have reached a point, familiar to us all,when I knit and knit and knit, round and round and round, and make nodiscernable progress at all. I have discovered that a Small Boy and a Big Oneare not as different as you might think, when it comes to knitting sweaters forthem.

I’ve stillgot plenty of time, but I felt a frisson of knitter’s-seasonal-anxietyyesterday and will probably take the little Brownstone along – contrary tonormal practice – when we go to Strathardle soon.

I spentsome time yesterday thinking about the shaping of the top. I hope the hard workis done, on that front. I plan to make the neck opening slightly less deep,proportionately speaking, than it is on the adult original.

2011-11-21T08:54:00.001Z

A normalday! To be followed by another, and another! The sky will probably fall inbefore Tuesday lunchtime, but for the moment, this happy grey morning, I revelin it. And in my two new followers.

Thebirthday was a great success.

Greek Helenproduced the best card:

The LittleBoys made place-cards for each of us. I got the best of those:

Daisy-grubbers

I onlydiscovered the existence of this tool from Bob Flowerdew’s column (that’sreally his name) in last month’s Kitchen Garden magazine. Googling them, I amastonished at the range. Raveller,could you tell me how long your long one is? And what brand it is? – I could,after all, order it from the USif necessary. I’ll now get to work on googling “grabber”. It sounds to me as ifthe combination might achieve just what I’m aiming at – tools to allow myhusband to extirpate dandelions without kneeling. It would (as they say sooften of children’s toys) keep him happily occupied for hours.

I love yourIkea stash cupboards.

ArtHistorical Sock Yarns

Barbara,thank you for the pointer to Opal’s “Hundertwasser” yarns. I had never heard ofhim. I wonder if my husband has? Modern German is not his favourite territory,art history-wise, but he keeps looking, and indeed makes a practice of going toexhibitions by artists he thinks he doesn’t like. I do agree with yourobservation that yarn purchased in a museum shop doesn’t count as stash. Iwonder if the National Galleries of Scotland know about Opal? – theyhave an enterprising shop in the Gallery of Modern Art; Van Gogh might do wellthere.

November ismaximum-temptation-month, yarn-buying-wise, and my husband’s sock drawer is notas full as it should be. Should I order a Hundertwasser and a Van Gogh?

Knitting

The bigBrownstone is now in London,and the little one is coming along nicely.

2011-11-18T09:02:00.001Z

95th Follower, welcome! Encouragement is never more welcome than in the dark of November.

We had a very nice time with my sister and her husband, now back in CT. Alexander droveover from Loch Fyne on Wednesday and we went out to lunch. So that leavestomorrow’s birthday, excitement-wise. My husband particularly didn’t want to go out for that,and it’s his birthday, so today must be spent planning with care (7 adults, 2children); shopping; planning the remaining three weekend meals – that’s a bigone; and, I think, setting the table. Plus we’ve got to eat something today. I’ve got the prosecco.

I amreading an interesting book on my iPad. I can’t name it for you until afterChristmas. At the beginning of one chapter, it quotes a 19^th centuryaccount of a mastectomy in Edinburgh:

“It isover. She is dressed, steps gently and decently down from the table, looks forJames; then, turning to the surgeon and the students, she curtsies – and in alow, clear voice, begs their pardon if she has behaved ill. The students – allof us – wept like children; the surgeon happed her up.”

I lovethose last five words. I am glad the author included them – I wonder if he knewwhat the surgeon did at that point. My husband didn’t.

Alexandergave us the OED for Christmas, years ago, the whole 12-volume thing on a CD.“Hap” as a verb, now only “Sc. and dial.”, means “to cover for warmth, to wrap”and examples go back as far as the English language itself. Hap as a noun is “acovering of any kind”, with examples from the 18^th century onwards.So a “hap shawl” – which the OED doesn’t seem to mention, but what can youexpect of an authority which doesn’t include “Kitchener stitch”? – must have taken its namefrom the action of “happing”, rather than the other way around.

(Tamar,thank you for your Kitchenercomment. We mustn’t forget that until very recently, when the internet broughtthe whole world together, the phrase was unknown in Britain. EZ was puzzled by it whenshe got to America.)

Actualknitting of the small Brownstone progresses, if slowly. I’ve finished the bodyribbing, worked the increases, and am now steaming forwards towards thearmpits. Alexander liked the redness of what will be his son’s sweater.

I amworried about the bigness of the big Brownstone. I tried it on my lumpy self –it didn’t seem totally outrageous. I must get it tidied up today, so that BigThomas’s parents, who will be here tonight, can take it south on Sunday. Andwe’ll just have to see how it looks, and what, if anything, needs to be done,when we see it in action on the shores of Loch Fyne at Christmas.

My sisterbrought me the Dried Rose madelinetosh for my Effortless. The colour is fairly dark and subdued, but even so the heap of skeins glows slightly. Ican’t wait.

But ofcourse I must, and will. I did a bit of on-line Christmas shopping this morning, on theone-for-them, one-for-me principle. (Does anyone know anything about daisygrubbers? There seems to be quite a variety of designs.) I bought the “55Christmas Balls to Knit” book for myself, and mean to take a hand-knit baubleto Loch Fyne. If I can get it done, they’ll be taking it out and hanging it on a treelong after I’m dead and their sweaters and hats have mouldered away.

2011-11-15T08:32:00.001Z

We had agood day with the Man from the Tate, and there is perhaps some hope that hewill be able to prod the Y*le U.P. into a state nearer urgency (or at leastaction). My sister will be here this afternoon. She can help me, if help provesneeded, getting Dropbox into operation and giving the Man from the Tate accessto it.

Both myhusband and I were near-prostrate with exhaustion last night.

Knittingprogressed. I have wound the new skein, joined it in without visible change,and nearly finished the body ribbing of the small Brownstone..

This & That

I havetaken out a three-month digital subscription to The Knitter. I continue toenjoy it. The only drawback is that I was told, after the event, that thesubscription will be continued automatically. I think there is a way to turnthat feature off and I had better apply myself to discovering it.

The Knitteris terrific on pointing out new and interesting yarns. I didn’t know, forinstance, about Opal’s line of “Vincentvan Gogh” sock yarns, each one based on a different, specific picture. Myhusband doesn’t rate V. van G. very highly, but I feel that as an art historianhe has an actual responsibility to wear a pair of van Gogh socks.

“NativeShetland yarn” has just been granted PDO status (Protected Designation ofOrigin) by the EU, meaning that you can’t call it that if it isn’t, likechampagne and Stilton. It sounds to me as if the terms have been so strictlydefined that they can only apply to about four sheep – the breed must be theright one, of course, and the animal must lead a blameless organic life onShetland, and the wool was be entirely processed there. So Jamieson & Smithwon’t be included – their yarn is spun in

Scotland

, I think.

Knitlass, Ididn’t thank you for your astute observation that a big plus of iPad or Kindleis that nobody can see what you’re reading, Henry James or a knitting magazineor a trashy thriller – I think I’ll indulge in “The Fear Index” soon. I stillneed to figure out how to get rid of things I’ve finished with or abandoned. Icould, I think, uninstall the whole Kindle app.

When Ifirst started reading this way, I felt a sense of disappointment thateverything looked the same. No difference in size or weight or typeface orpaper. But I’ve got past that.

Theo's wife Jenni had to go to Hawaii recently (poor woman) for an APEC summit -- whatever that is -- with Secretary Geithner. Theo couldn't go, but sent a doppelganger.

I have tried everything I can think of to make this picture stand up (such as rotating it and saving the result, repeatedly). You'll just have to upend your computer.

I should beback here on Friday, insh’Allah.

2011-11-14T08:31:00.001Z

Here weare, the Week of November 13. Nor is the week's menu plan complete. Blogging may be patchy, but I should be heretomorrow at least. Today is the Man from the Tate (an old acquaintance). My husband is edgy.

Knittingcontinues to soothe and progress. I have cast on the body of the littleBrownstone. Today’s television-time will have to be devoted mostly to windingthe next skein. I will surely have enough (two more skeins) of this peculiarun-plyed madelinetosh “merino DK” to finish the body.

Thanks forthe comments on Norbury. (Liz Lovick herself left one, next to my comment onher blog post. It’s nice the way a blog-author can do that in Wordpress.) Ishare the general doubt about historic authenticity. Maybe it was just onegrandmother, talking about the practice in her own family. Norbury may havetransported her, so to speak, to Fair Isleitself.

But mypoint was not authenticity, but to offer Norbury as the source of subsequentreferences to the “well-known practice”. My pursuit of the origin of “Kitchener stitch” offersan example of a similar repetition, except that in that case the source ismaddeningly unknown. “Everybody knows” that Kitchener – who was indeed incharge of equipping and outfitting the British army in 1914 – wanted knittersto finish the toes of socks with grafting instead of just threading the yarnthrough the last few stitches and pulling, which creates a sort of knot,uncomfortable in boots.

But whendid he say it? Where?

Some yearsago an intelligent author offered the plausible hypothesis that Ruskin’smarital difficulties – look it up – stemmed from the fact that he didn’t knowuntil his wedding night that women had pubic hair. This idea – it may be true,but again that’s not the point – instantly became an “everybody knows”, repeated byjournalists.

As for thepatterns themselves, they could indeed be easily recovered from the pramblankets, as you say, Tamar. You young 'un’s simply cannot imagine how fewcharts for colour knitting were available in the 60’s. There are some inOdham’s Encyclopedia, mentioned yesterday, and Mary Thomas’ Knitting Book hasthe Crown of Glory and the Tree of Life, and that was about it.

I wasinterested to note that the crown pattern on the pram blanket Liz illustrates is not quite thesame as the one Odham’s and Mary Thomas provide. There are five thingummiessticking up from the base of the crown – I am sure there is a proper technicalname for them, but I don’t know it. In Odham’s and Mary Thomas, the middle oneis higher than the others. On the pram blanket, they’re all the same.

Mary Lou –forgive the lack of link; I’m now in a hurry – I can remember taking Odham’sEncyclopaedia out of the library again and again when we were in Leicester inthe late 60’s; can’t remember when I acquired it. But I’ve just tried Abebooks,and there it is, pretty cheap. Go for it, I’d say. Norbury and Agutter, that’sthe one you want.

2011-11-13T08:26:00.001Z

We had agood time with Greek Helen, all too brief. She is now in London, about to celebrate a fauxThanksgiving this afternoon with my sister and her husband and Rachel’s family.

Knitting

All wellwith the little Brownstone. I should finish the second sleeve and cast on thebody today.

P.D. James

GranddaughterHellie (on the left of the back row of the Grandchildren in the sidebar: today is her birthday) works for the London literary agency which represents P.D.James, or “Phyllis” as we call her in the office. Hellie told us when we werein Londonrecently about the new book, a sequel to “Pride and Prejudice”. Shesaid that James submitted it diffidently, as an old woman’s jeu d’esprit – she’s90, or nearly – and suggested perhaps half her usual advance.

Thepublisher read it and paid her twice her usual advance.

I’m not agreat fan of pastiche, but I enjoyed it hugely. It was getting a bit hard tobelieve in Adam Dalgleish’s adventures as police procedural anyway. Mr. Darcymakes an admirable substitute, and James’s calm, intelligent style is perfectlysuited to the attempt.

“The Robeof Glory”

LizLovick has an interesting blog post about the idea of the “Robe of Glory”.Apparently there was a pattern for a pram blanket in Good Housekeeping in the 80’s, claiming that it represented an old Shetland tradition. Liz has yet tomeet a native Shetlander who has heard of it, and wonders about the origin ofthe story. I think I can help.

It’s inJames Norbury’s introduction to the Odham’s Encyclopedia of Knitting, undatedbut probably about 1950 or a year or two earlier. I discovered the book in the late60’s and used it extensively for my early adventures in Fair Isle and Shetland knitting.

In thatintroduction, Norbury recounts a visit he claims to have made to a knitter on Fair Isle in the mid-thirties. “I simply asked her whatshe was knitting. To my surprise, her answer was, ‘A Robe of Glory.’….She spreadout her knitting across my knee and told me its story.

“The commonpractice on Fair Isle was for the grandmother of the family to knit the first Fair Isle sweater for her grandson to wear when hereached adolescence. Looking down at the patterns and pointing to them with herfinger, the Fair Isle knitter said to me:

“’I startwith the ‘Water of Life’ and then I knit the ‘Seed of Life’ which is nurturedby the water into the ‘Flower of Life’ which forms my next pattern. I shallgive him an ‘Anchor of Hope’ and a ‘Star’ to guide him on his way.’ And then,pointing to the shoulder, she continued, ‘I knit a ‘Crown of Glory’ which willbe his reward if he has lived a good life.’”

You youngpeople cannot imagine how few knitting books there were Before Kaffe. I am surethe Good Housekeeping designer was inspired by that passage. As was I: I knitwedding sweaters for my daughters and daughters-in-law something along thoselines. Each is different, but they all have the Crown of Glory on the shoulder.Here is Helen’s. The crown is purple. All the colours in this sweater were either natural-sheep, or dyed by me from Strathardle lichens. I saved the best for the last. The next pattern down seems to be theAnchor of Hope.

I couldshow you a pattern idea that P*tricia R*berts took from Odham’s Encyclopedia ifI bestirred myself.

2011-11-11T09:10:00.001Z

Yesterday’shair was a great success. Sanity apparently restored, for the moment I resemble a superannuated politician, thinkHillary Clinton or Theresa May. Not Mrs Merkel – no bangs. I shall sail confidently forwardinto next week’s excitements. I think I would feel even more confident if I satdown today or tomorrow and planned all the week’s food.

That’s goodnews about your sleeves, Mary Lou.

That is aninteresting question you raised, Roobeedoo– do we actually knit patterns from magazines? I had a quick look back throughsketchy notes.

-- I knit a VKscarf last year;

--a dinosaursweater in ’09 from an old VK – I had knit it for Big Thomas back when he wasLittle Thomas. I hit it lucky with yarn on that one, and it was handed downthrough Rachel’s children. In ’09 it was my Games entry – “sweater with motif”,I think, was the challenge. It was unplaced.

--There wassomething in Knitter’s in ’04 called the“Mexicali Babe Ole”. I meant to knit it for Little Thomas when he was reallylittle – but did I?

-- 2004 was apparently the Year of the Magazines. I knit a wonderful striped scarf from IK. It wasknit lengthwise, the stripes formed from separate balls of Louet Gems Merino,intarsia-fashion. At either end, the stripes detached themselves from eachother and formed a kind of fringe. My sister brought the yarn over for me andasked, mildly, why she had had to import something spun in Britain. Sureenough, it is, or was, when you read the small print. I wrote to them to ask ifthere was any way to buy the yarn in this country. They answered: no. I gave that one to our niece, on my husband's suggestion. I think he was afraid I was going to wear it myself.

-- And also in’04, the Round-the-Bend jacket from Knitter’s in Kureyon, for James’s wifeCathy.

It’s notmuch, over seven years.

I thinkmaybe buying directly from designers is the way it’s going, just now. Certainlyfor me – the Brownstone finished, the Effortless to come. I had another browsethrough theTwist Collective just now. Some seriously nice things, you don’t need me totell you (although I have yet to buy anything from them). Good articles onseaming in the current issue, too.

And I knita certain amount from books, one way and another. It stands to reason thatpatterns are likely to be better there than in magazines, just as cookerywriters, on the whole, put their best stuff in their books.

I think Imay venture on a trial iPad subscription to The Knitter. The lack of clutter isindeed wonderful. The same thing applies to books – the paperback thrillers Iused to buy, an embarrassment once read, are now tidily out of sight in theiPad. I’m greatly enjoying P.D. James’ “Death Comes to Pemberley”.

2011-11-10T08:18:00.000Z

I am aboutto have my hair done, so as to look sane and collected during all next week’sexcitements. The man from the Tate on Monday is only the beginning. So I shallhave to be brisk and un-collected here. No time for links.

I had anemail last night from someone who had found me by Googling “shawl knitterEdinburgh”. Golly! Me! She wants a shawl for a forthcoming grandchild and Irealised (since I have no intention of producing one for her myself) that thebest bet was to send her on to that place on Castle Street which we Mileses call theIndignant Gentlewomen.

How to findthe address? But I underestimated Google. It’s the Royal Edinburgh Repositoryand Self-Aid Society. For those furth of Edinburgh:it is a simple and brilliant Victorian charity still in operation in pleasantlyold-fashioned premises in the city centre. The idea is that the charitabletrust pays all the overheads, and the craftspeople who display and sell theirgoods there take home the whole purchase price.

I’ve seenquite reasonable shawls in their window, and there might still be time for oneto be commissioned. Although not from me.

Brownstone

Anna, Iread your comment as an email, and didn’t recognise the few initial words ofthe blog you attached it to. No time to search. If you were asking about mycurrent knitting, it’s Jared Flood’s “Brownstone” pattern available from hiswebsite which is something like brooklyntweed.net. An excellent, detailed andaccurate pattern.

Thanks forthe comments on it. Big Thomas’s mother Rachel said once – being brave aboutsomething I had produced, I think – that there’s no such thing as a too-bigsweater. Well, maybe. In this case, it’s not a Christmas present. Rachel and Edwill be here next week (see “excitements”, above) for my husband’s 86^thbirthday, and they can take it south to Big Thomas.

So that bythe time we see it on him on the shores of Loch Fyne, he and it will have had acouple of weeks to adjust to each other.

Mary Lou,furthering Tamar’s comment, have at look at Eunny’s video about lengthening andshortening. It must be somewhere on the Interweave website. Even if your sleeveis patterned, you could calculate the spot where you want the cuff to begin,apply Eunny’s technique, cut off the rest, and knit the cuff downwards. The sleevemight wind up somewhat more bloused than it is at present, but that is a smallprice to pay for not having to re-knit the whole thing. That’s essentially whatI plan to do with the Brownstone sleeves if they really are too long.

All wellhere, knitting-wise. Which is more than can be said for the state of the world.When they told Churchill that Coventryhad been obliterated, he said “Well, let’s have lunch. Everything looks betterafter lunch”. That’s how I feel about the winter solstice. The Second GreatDepression may not seem so bad when the snowdrops are out.

Nine Eleven

2011-11-09T09:22:00.003Z

I've just looked back -- today is, as I thought, the anniversary of my sister-in-law's operation for colon cancer.

I made agood start yesterday on the conversion of my husband’s files. He wants me toconcentrate on the ones he has recently revised, so I’m doing that. Holly, I don’t think theold Word Perfect can help – although at least I understand what you’resuggesting. It’s more than 20 years old, pre-Windows, and as I remember from myown days of using it, will save files only in its own format and as DOS text.

What I needis a macro in Word Perfect 12 which would invite me to type in the name of thenext file I want loaded, and would then convert it to Word and invite me to put it away in its new place. It could save a lot of clicking.

Thank you,too, for the suggestion of Dropbox for cloud computing. As it happens, my sister wrote tome yesterday suggesting the same thing. I’ve signed up and made a start with it– and I'm sure it's going to work fine.

Yarn

Stashtemptation comes crowding in. Thanks for yesterday’s suggestions, most of whichI’d never even heard of. I’ve recently bought an on-line copy of The Knitter,and also downloaded a free one they had on offer. It is distinctly good, anddistinctly pricy. Should I cancel “Knitting” and go for it? Reading it inbed last night with the subject on my mind, I found it absolutely full of pointers towonderful-sounding yarns I don't know about.

Knitting

I seized anavailable half-hour yesterday and blocked the Brownstone – without even pausingto deal with loose ends, as you see. I can't give it its final percentage point in the sidebar until I've done that.

It looksenormous. Taking a tape measure to it, I find that the width is about right. Somehow bothbody and sleeves are a couple of inches longer than the measurements I wasaiming at.

BUT – isn’tit wonderful how life sometimes fits together? – this morning’s edition ofKnitting Daily, to which I subscribe, is devoted to the subject of shorteningor lengthening a sweater! With a video demonstration from Eunny! I will see BigThomas in the sweater on the shores of Loch Fyne at Christmas, insh'Allah, and will judgethen what, if anything, needs to be done.

And here’sthe little one, superimposed on the Strachur Primary School sweatshirtwhich is its template. So far so good.

Both Ziteand an email from I Knit London tempt me with “55 Christmas Balls to Knit”. Ifthat sounds like a title you could skip, have a look at Arneand Carlos on the cover. I could knit a bauble (our family word for them)to take along to Loch Fyne.

2011-11-08T08:52:00.002Z

The manfrom the Tate is coming on Monday. So my job this week – I’ve done it severaltimes before, in the last few years – is to translate the absolutely latestversion of my husband’s work into a 21^st century form, so that theman can take it away with him if he wants to.

My husbandworks on a DOS-based machine in an old version of Word Perfect. There arehundreds of separate files, one for each picture ??????? painted, and someextras. I feel, like Winnie-the-Pooh coming downstairs with Christopher Robin,that there must be an easier way to do this, but what I do is load each file separately one-by-one into a modern Word Perfect on my machine – thank goodness that is stillpossible -- and then save it as a Microsoft Word file.

On myhusband’s old machine, I can write little macros (in DOS, or Word Perfectitself) to help with repetitive jobs. But I think modern macro-writing isbeyond me.

And thenwhat? My desktop machine is pretty antique, and for some years has refused towrite CD-ROM’s, although it can still read them. Will there be room for thewhole thing on a memory stick? Cloud storage, which James has been pressing onme, is another possible solution.

And theother thing is that I had better get Big Thomas’s Brownstone blocked today, ifpossible. It goes on the dining room floor, you will remember. It’s got to bedry and up and away by Monday (at the latest) so that they can work in therewithout stepping on it.

I finishedthe first sleeve of the little Brownstone last night, and am well forward withthe ribbing on the second. I think we’ll achieve Christmas without stress. I’mgoing to leave out the two short-row passages with which Jared lifts the back. Theshaping from the point where sleeves are joined to body may involve anuncomfortable amount of thinking – the very point at which, on the big sweater,I could stop thinking and leave everything to Jared.

Maybe itwon’t be as bad as I anticipate.

Miscellaneous,knit- and non-

LittleThomas is seven today.

Queer Joe has posted a mostinteresting video about that hexi-puff quilt which appears to be thepattern-du-jour. I always knew he was handsome, and am now struck with how nicehe is.

Roobeedoo, thanks – your blog – forthe pointer to Skein Queenand the push towards Weekend Hats. There’s something about it in Zite this verymorning. I don’t really need another hat book (just another few hours in theday) – but I’m tempted.

I wasinterested in your remark (comment, Saturday) about not buying yarn from the US because one lives in Scotland. Theawfulness of having to pay for it a second time on the doorstep is disincentiveenough, but my feeling is that too many (from a knitter’s point of view)Scottish sheep are there to provide (delicious) lamb chops, and stand about with coarse wool ontheir backs which is scarcely worth sheering. Merino sheep, I believe, won’t even“do” in England;it’s too much for their delicate chests. I’m going to go on gathering yarn fromeverywhere. If I can tempt you to buy some of Jared's "Loft" I won't have written in vain.

2011-11-07T09:06:00.002Z

Kate, I’m a long-time fan, and feel honouredthat you should stop by here. I’ve now got the Warriston pattern and the firstissue of Textisles. Nor was it difficult, once I applied myself.

And you’reright about Warriston-the-place – it’s a delightful walk. We don’t get down there anymore because my husband isn’t spry enough. We used to enjoy it, and if therewere solitary gents lurking in the bushes (as there occasionally were) theywere doing no harm and weren’t interested in us anyway. I shop on Broughton Streetevery day, the Rainbow Centre of Edinburgh.

But thedouble association with death remains, crematorium and cemetery.

Knitting

LittleThomas’s sleeve progresses well. The place where the new skein of yarn begins canbe detected, but you have to know what you’re looking for. The colour-match isextraordinarily good. I’m not going to worry. Little Thomas is the youngestgrandchild, and almost certain to remain so, so there’s no one for him to handthe sweater on to. I’m not knitting for posterity.

The onlypossible conclusion is that “Tosh DK (formerly known as tosh worsted)” and“Tosh Merino DK” are two different yarns, although both consist entirely ofsuperwash merino wool. Confusing. I wonder which I’ll be getting next week formy Effortless, when my sister delivers the Jimmy Bean order I had sent to her.I hope (and expect) that I’m getting the plyed version, Tosh DK.

Life

I’m sorryto hear about your flu, Angel. That’s thoroughly bad news. We have an appointmentfor our shots next week, on Wednesday the 16^th. I was in Boots theother day, picking up a prescription as so often, and looked to see whether Icould just have the shot there and then for a modest payment, as you did, Jean.But the leaflets made it clear that it has to be done through one’s doctoraround here.

I at lastgot a look at Rowan’s lace book that day. Hesitated, but didn’t buy it. Theaccompanying yarn, “Fine Lace”, is awfully nice – alpaca and merino wool in asmall range of gentle colours. I may go back.

We have theprospect of a nice calm week ahead, the only external event being the briefestof visits from Greek Helen on Friday. She’ll hardly be here long enough to fillus in on news from Athens.Then all sorts of excitements next week. A new one has been added in the lastfew days, in the form of a man from the Tate who is going to sit down with myhusband’s magnum opus and consider how it can be reduced to a scale that theY*le University Press can cope with. We’ve been waiting for him for nearly twoyears.

2011-11-06T08:58:00.001Z

Mary, thankyou tremendously for the offer of “Knitting on the Axis”. I misunderstood yourfirst comment, as you suspected, and was going to say, Thanks, but I’ll takeyour word for it. But – second comment – if you really don’t want the book, I’dbe very happy to have it. Write to me at the address in the sidebar and we’llwork out the postage.

Knitting

I am 11" into the sleeve of the small Brownstone, with a target of 16". I may shorten ita bit – the last thing a boy wants is sleeves dragging in his soup.

Last nightI wound the first skein of the three from Happy Knits. As I did so, I becameuneasy – not about colour, but is this yarn finer than what I have beenknitting with? That wasn’t it. I soon defined the problem – it doesn’t seem tobe plyed. I wish I were a spinner and understood these things. I have knit withyarn like this at sometime or other – what was it? when? Manos?

The labelsare singularly unhelpful. The skeins in the original order, now constitutingBig Thomas’s sweater, were labelled “Tosh DK (formerly known as tosh worsted)100% superwash merino wool”. The three from Happy Knits, one of which I wound last night, are “Tosh merino DK100% superwash merino wool”. The yardage, gauge, needle suggestions, on the twolabels are identical.

I also havetwo skeins from Jimmy Bean – “Tosh DK”. Nothing about “formerly known as…” Everything else the same –but the Jimmy Bean skeins are plyed.

Buyerbeware.

I havejoined in the unplyed skein and knit three or four rounds. The colour match isreally quite remarkably good, even by this morning’s dim contribution ofnatural light. There is a change – the unplyed yarn makes a shiner, silkierfabric.

I thinkit’s probably best to go on like this – the three Happy Knits skeins might evenbe enough to finish, or at least to finish minus the collar. I am lessconfident about the colour-match of the Jimmy Bean skeins. Life is frot withproblems.

If there isstill something left at the end, I’ll go for a watchcap. Maybe for me.

Non-knit

I mustpress on – Sundays are hard work. But I want to say:

I have eliminatedGardening and Cooking from my Zite magazine (iPad app) and switched to WorldNews. (Knitting is still there, of course.) The American slant is fascinating.It’s not that the news is different -- the emphasis is. Over here, we’re mostlyconcerned at the moment with the collapse of civilisation as we know it in theform of Greece, the Euro, and the implications for the world economy of whatseems to be about to happen. Zite is anxious about the potential zapping of Iran. So arewe, of course, but we lack that American sense of Israel as the 53^rd stateor whatever the total is by now. The Zite selections are by no means uncriticalof

Israel

,but there is still that sense that Israel-is-us which is lacking here.

I wonder if I have expressed that clearly enough.

2011-11-05T09:14:00.001Z

Thanks, Jean. I had meant to startyesterday’s post with: Now! On your newsstand! But I forgot. I’m on page 90 ofthe current, “December”, issue of Kitchen Garden, in my Free to Stitch, Free toBitch tee-shirt. The pictures must be four or five years old. C. took them.

Miscellaneousknit-related thots:

Jared’s new Loft yarn looks wonderful. Iwonder if perhaps young people now accumulate stash more slowly, knowing thatthe world is full of wonderful yarn wherever you turn, whereas I –- especiallyin the 90’s, when I first got on-line – bought it desperately, as I had all mylife only now there was more of it, on the principle that it might not be therewhen I got back.

I followedthe link on your blog, Kristieto Kate Davies’ website. I had been thererecently before, prompted by an item in Zite magazine. I cannot figure out howto subscribe to her “Textisles” digital magazine. Whatever I click, I just getthat wonderful pic of the gent in his smock. Commentators grumble that theywant to read the magazine without paying for the “Warriston” pattern. Iwouldn’t mind that, if I could figure out how to do it.

(Why“Warriston”? In this part of town the word suggests either a) the crematoriumor b) the picturesque overgrown cemetery famous for homosexuals looking forfriendship. I hope that isn’t offensive. It’s true, and I can’t think how tore-phrase it.)

Knitting

I’m aboutsix inches forward with the first sleeve of the little Brownstone. The slightdifference in stitch numbers (see yesterday) makes a big difference in speed.Perhaps that’s what they call “leverage” in the financial world.

Today Iwill probably finish the last skein which figured in the big Brownstone, whichis also the last skein of my original order of madelinetosh scarlet DK from Amsterdam. It will beinteresting indeed to see how the subsequent lots blend in. Madelinetosh issupposed not to have dye lots.

Non-knit

We had anice lunch with our friend yesterday. She was most interested in our find. It’snot a question of authenticating it – if my husband says it’s a ???????, it is.Short of summoning up ??????? himself in a séance, there is no other authority.She thinks that when we give it to the Gallery, it could be displayed in one ofthose glass case thingys in the middle of the floor, with letters from theartist to his mother, that sort of thing. That is an exciting thought. Iwouldn’t mind parting with it if I could walk up the hill and see it again.

First we’dhave to fix the hole.

When Ifirst saw the image on the auctioneer’s website, I thought I detected somequality painting around the eyes. What interests my husband – he pointed it outagain yesterday – is the foreshortening of the first joint of the subject’smiddle finger. Clumsy but ambitious, he says. Sitting here writing this, I have tried tostrike the same pose. I can’t do it. I can bend that finger at the first joint,but can’t keep it straight while bending the second joint. Maybe men arejointed differently.

2011-11-04T09:00:00.001Z

I’ve almostdispatched the Brownstone. I grafted the underarms last night – I do lovegrafting – and tidied the inevitable little holes left and right, and sewed thecollar down. That leaves the dangling ends from the cast-ons, and the ones fromthe joining-in of new skeins.

It looksgreat, and I had sort of hoped that a pass with the steam iron might suffice atthis point, but Jared writes so passionately about the need for full-scale,total-immersion blocking that I will go ahead and do it. Meg is keen, too. Andthat can’t be today, for today our friend from the NGofS is coming to havelunch and see the new picture by ???????, and the dining-room floor is wherethings get blocked.

(My husbandsays the thing to do with the new picture is give it to the Gallery, as adocument. It’ll never merit wallspace. Well, perhaps, conceivably, as acuriosity, in an exhibition devoted to ???????. He’s right, I guess, but I’dstill rather like to have it in the dining-room at Burnside. He rejoices inkeeping Strathardle a ???????-free zone.)

This wouldbe the moment to spend a couple of days on two-colour brioche-stitch,challenge-wise, but Christmas looms, so yesterday I did the arithmetic for thesleeves of Little Thomas’s Brownstone and cast on. The primary school sweatshirtI have been sent has raglan sleeves, like the Brownstone itself – a big plus. Ican be confident, thus, that the top-of-sleeve measurement is right.

I was a bittaken aback to find how high a proportion of Big Thomas’s stitch numbers LittleThomas required. Have I got enough yarn? Yes, surely. The big sweater usedsix-and-three-quarters skeins. That leaves five-and-one-quarter for the littleone.

I took a designing-for-children class from Kristin Nicholas once (Stitches East’02, I think) in which I remember her saying that children didn’t change muchin circumference, they just got longer. Little Thomas is not nearly as tall asBig Thomas – the body section when I get there will use much less yarn thistime.

I’d betterbegin the day. It’s Jamie Oliver’s salmon with beans, tomatoes, olives andanchovies again. Our friend has probably had it before; it’s my party-piece.Easy to cook, easy to eat.

2011-11-03T09:19:00.001Z

We had agrand time. The weather was perfectly usable on Monday, glorious wintersunshine on Tuesday. It comes straight in the window, this time of year, andwonderfully reveals the complex colours in one’s madelinetosh yarn. Big Thomastoiled valiantly with my husband, leaving me to doze bythe fire or knit, as preferred.

Here they are having a bonfire.

And here, toiling down among the larches.

My own gardeningwas slightly a disappointment – I haven’t spread manure and compost yet. I wasdiverted, this time, into planting some tulipa sylvestris and winter aconites.I regard flowers as a distraction from the main business of gardening, but ithad to be done. I unearthed some daffodils in the process. It is touching tofind them hard at work on 2012 when all the rest of nature is closing down.

Thegentlemen sheep have already joined the ladies, too – we’ll have lambs as wellas daffodils next year. It’s good to know, as Europetotters.

I livedextravagantly, eating bacon and eggs for breakfast and drinking cider. Thismorning’s weigh-in, back in Edinburgh,was the best for months. I shall revert to a strict regime of porridge andsugar-free bitter lemon, rather regretfully.

I haven’treached the second buttonhole on the Japanese shirt yet, but it’s not far off,and so is the end of the first (of six) skeins of yarn. I sort of wish I had aseventh.

Here is the Dan WebsterMemorial Trophy. We got it out of the cornbin for the occasion. You get it by winning races. Big Thomas won it in his day,as did his father – but he wasn’t here at the Games this year to see hisbrother Joe bring it back home. He rightly says that we must take a picture of allthree of them with the cup before we hand it back.

That's the Japanese shirt, too.

Here atbase, I cast off the Brownstone last night. Today I hope to finish it – there’snot much to do, tacking down the collar-ends and grafting the underarms.Alexander has sent a Strachur Primary School sweatshirt of little Thomas’ to use as a template for his reduced Brownstone. Iwonder if I can do it by drawing a schematic and continuing to use Jared as aguide to shaping. I’ve certainly got a big enough swatch.

AlasdairPost-Quinn’s (got to love that name) “Extreme Double-Knitting” has turned up.It goes straight onto the Challenge Pile. Would I have the strength andpatience? I’d like to try the “Compass” hat on the cover.

I’minterested, too, in the rest of the Cooperative Press' list. And then there’s the question ofwhether to get Mathew Gagny’s “Knitting Off the Axis”. Lots to think about.

2011-10-29T09:10:00.001+01:00

Today it’snot me but the computer which is slow and unresponsive. We’re about to go toStrathardle so I can’t sit around here all morning.

Big Thomaswill be present at a wedding somewhere in the north of England today.He has cleared his diary for the beginning of next week – a very grown-up-sounding phrase – andwill come to see us. He is expected at a breakfast tomorrow – we had one ofthose the morning after Theo and Jenni’s wonderful wedding two years ago, andit made a lovely coda to a brilliant occasion. Then he’ll catch a train toPitlochry whence I will fetch him.

We willscatter on Wednesday, and I should be back here Thursday. Friday of next weekis the day when our friend from the NGofS is coming to lunch, to be confrontedwith the Earliest Known painting by ???????, so things will be tight.

The Brownstone still lacks ¾” of collar, so still one more session before I cast it off. Thomas's parents will be here for my husband's birthday later in November (I told you it was going to be a busy month) and I can send it south with them.

It will begood to be out in the natural light this weekend, when the clocks go back anddarkness and gloom enfold us. November is a month particularly rich for me ingloomy memories and sad anniversaries, and now C’s suffering must be added to the total. Itwill soon be exactly a year since we suddenly learned we were about to loseher. November was full of horror and fear for us all and for her also of pain. She died in March. Herdeath was infinitely sad but November was worse.

Many thanksfor yesterday’s comments.

I have a“health” section in my Zite magazine (I am embarrassed to confess) in which Ihad already seen an article suggesting that this year’s flu jab was morepainful than usual. Ours is scheduled for an inconvenient day, November 13,when my sister and her husband will be here and Alexander is driving over fromLoch Fyne for lunch. Cf. previous reference to the eventfulness of November. It was the first appt I could get and I didn’t want toleave things any later.

My husbandwas anxious about whether he would feel well enough to go out to lunch. Ibrushed anxieties aside, it’s never given us any trouble before. We shall see.

Yourexperience with having flu, Angel,reminds us what this is about. You’re young and strong. An experience like thatreally does kill old folks.

I amgrateful for the help with searching Ravelry –- I shouldn’t be so feeble. Itsounds as if everybody who needs to, knows about Zite, but a lively discussionabout why-we-can’t/how-we-can get Interweave workshops on our iPads might be inorder.

Stella,thanks for the short-rowing videos. Interesting, indeed. And rosesmama, youtempt me with what you say about Cat Bordhi’s sock book. I normally don’t buysock books because I am pretty sure I will be happy for life knittingmindlessly with wonderful sock yarn, but maybe I should make an exception.

2011-10-28T09:03:00.002+01:00

Everythingkeeps coming back to the Zimmermanns, doesn’t it?

I movedslowly and inefficiently through my morning’s domesticity yesterday, as usual,still thinking about shawl collars, and eventually remembered that vest inMeg’s book “Handknitting”. I don’t care for the pattern much, but that’sirrelevant – it has a shawl collar.

I had alook, and there it is – it might have been Jared’s inspiration. There aresignificant differences, of which the most interesting is that Meg doesn’twrap-and-turn, she just turns. I had wondered a bit about that – does it make adifference that in this case each row is a bit longer than its predecessor?Whereas in the more usual short-row situation each successive short-row isshorter and then in the end you knit across, incorporating all the wraps? Youdon’t have to wrap when you’re turning a heel but in that case you are alsodecreasing so maybe that makes a difference.

Anyway,I’ll certainly try not-wrapping when I’m doing Little Thomas’s sweater, and see whathappens.

Did youwrap when you were doing Rebekah’s collar, Kristie?Presumably so, since the pattern was Jared’s. I’m not very good at wrapping.Meg’s article in the current VK was useful.

My sistersays the madelinetosh Dried Rose for my Effortless has arrived in CT. She willbe here in mid-November, insh’Allah. That's any day now, but I should have made a good start on LittleThomas’s sweater by then, so Effortless will be next in the queue. I might evencast off Big Thomas’s Brownstone today – there’s excitement for you.

iPad

I’ve joinedthe “I love my iPad” group on Ravelry, although it could just as well have beenthe smaller “iWant/iHave an iPad”. I thought I might tell them about Zite andstart a discussion going about importing Interweave workshops: but how to findout, in all that stuff, whether the topics have not already been coveredexhaustively?

Zite currentlyhas an article about the Brownstone from theraineysisters,increasing the sense of uncanniness. They do get it wrong sometimes, but thereis a way to tell them so which theoretically means that the selection will getbetter and better as we go on. They can also be told when something is spot-on.

Non-knit

I’m feelingbetter, and was at least inspired yesterday to ring up and make an appt for ourflu injections. We were drifting along expecting to be summoned for them, butit turns out the practice has had several clinics already and didn’t bothertelling us. There are those who say the whole exercise is useless, just as manyold folks die of pneumonia when you don’t inoculate them, but my husband and Ifirmly believe in flu injections.

2011-10-27T08:47:00.001+01:00

I am not quiteat my sparkly best this morning. Is it toothache? A stiff neck? Headache? Amild flu? Discomforts flicker and reappear hither and yon.

I had agood time (again) with Brownstone yesterday, and should finish Phase One, theshort-rowing, today. An article on making a shawl collar turned up on Zite, myiPad app that surfs the web for me and puts together a knitting magazine. The collar was done separately and sewn on.

That sentme to my reference books for a rapid and unscientific trawl – and I didn’t findanyone who did it like Jared. I’ve forgotten, now, what was in what book.Someone started by picking up the stitches across the back neck and knittingback and forth, casting on a few at the end of every row. The loose tails wereeventually sewn down. Someone picked up all the stitches and knit them back andforth, unshaped. The majority seemed to favour doing the collar entirely separately.

So far,Jared’s version looks wonderful. I have high hopes for it, although I amslightly concerned for what comes next. Jared has a couple of toggles. I’m notwildly enthusiastic about them – but the neck is cut very deep. Will it gapeunless secured by toggles?

I’ve justbrowsed Ravelry, and have come home with try-it-and-you-may-I-say, as usual.Most people put the toggles on, but not everyone has fastened them for thephotographs.

The shawl collar looks slightly skimpy in many photographs, deepand luxurious on Jared’s model. Theinstruction at this point – seeyesterday – is to knit until the back-neck is 4 inches deep, or untilwrap-and-turn reaches the markers indicating where v-neck shaping began,whichever happens first. At the moment my collar all-but measures four inches,and I am about an inch and a half short of the markers. Maybe I’ll do a fewrows more.

Non-knit

All thesubjects into which I was so eager to plunge yesterday, notably death andastronomy, seem unattractive this morning.

I wasgrateful for your comments yesterday, Kate and Maureen, confirming myimpression that Interweave is not entirely facing up to the iPad. My Pieceworksubscription is working fine, in the Zinio app. And they put out that emagabout colour, all very interactive, which runs under an app of its own. I’vegot that and I don’t know that I’m tremendously impressed with interactivity,but it’s on the iPad and it runs.

Bycomparison, the brioche stitch workshop seems a modest production for a machinewhich will play movies (although I haven’t got that far yet with mine). Wheredid you go in Ravelry, Maureen, to have that discussion with Interweave?

Bad Day at Northern Rock

2011-10-26T09:01:00.001+01:00

So here weare at the OK Corral, to mix references.

I keepthinking about the time-lag between the stock market crash of ’29 and the bankfailures – ’31? was it? – which triggered the Great Depression. We’ve had awhole four years since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or whatever the hell they’recalled, but…

One sort offeels that nowadays with computers and a Greater Understanding of Economics,everything is going to be all right. Whereas in the early thirties all we hadwas Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda. But I also wonder whether there might nothave been Men in Suits even in those days, who understood a certain amount andhad meetings and inspired a measure of confidence and still it kept coming.

We shallsee.

Knitting

I finishedthe body of the Brownstone, as hoped; wound and attached the 7^th skein; pickedup the collar stitches; and am now knitting short rows back and forth acrossthe back-neck. Jared is very non-prescriptive here: “Repeat rows 3&4 until you reach themarkers at base of v-neck shaping OR until collar measures 4".”

One takesin two more stitches with each pass. I don’t think I’ll make it to the markers.

Picking upstitches used to a nightmare for me. The result inevitably looked a mess, and Icould never find as many stitches as the pattern said to pick up. Jared’sinstruction, on the long fronts, was to pick up two stitches for every threerows – i.e., far fewer stitches than would have been easy even for me. Theresult looks really rather tidy and has come out remarkably even, left sidecompared to right.

Comments

There’slots I want to say – about astronomy [I want to look at the Kahn Academy,Sarah] and about mourning [prompted by Kristie’svery moving blog post and my visit to C’s house as part of our walk onMonday] and about getting the Interweave brioche stitch workshop into an iPad[there’s something I don’t understand about Adobe Flash – Big Thomas will haveto explain when he’s here at the weekend].

But there’snot much time left this morning. I was struck by your remark on Sunday,Kristie, about having five men potentially to knit for, and only onesweater-wearer among them (and he dauntingly large). I found long ago thatknitting for grandchildren doesn’t necessarily work – the modern child wearsfleece, even in quite chilly circumstances. I was so very pleased when BigThomas actually asked for a sweater. But I noticed that the one he sent me to measure, was cotton.

I emailedAlexander and Ketki yesterday with my idea of knitting a reduced Brownstone forLittle Thomas with the left-over yarn. Ketki said he’d love it, so I’ll goahead with that. Even if neither of them ever wears his sweater again, BigThomas and Little Thomas can go about as an electric red team when we meet onthe shores of Loch Fyne at Christmas time.

St Crispin's Day

2011-10-25T08:57:00.001+01:00

You guysare amazing.

I forwardedthe translation of the Chinese care instructions to our niece last night,Beverly, very grateful. I doubt if she’ll venture on machine washing. She wassurprised and touched by the gift of the shawl. I’m glad I did it.I told her she could stuff it in the back of a drawer for now if she liked, butwould have to get it out for my funeral. I want as many people as possible toturn out that day in something I knitted for them.

(Mysister’s son Theo thinks this idea is hilarious, and looks forward to theoccasion with unseemly glee. I find it less and less funny as the dayapproaches, but am still sorry I won’t be there.)

We had agrand time on our walk, in sensational autumn weather. We went to Bonaly andwalked around the reservoirs for a couple of glorious hours. At one point wepassed two slightly-built middle-aged men whom we greeted, as walkers do. Andthen after we had passed them, did a mental double-take: not two men, but thesame man twice. They were identical twins.

No pics,alas.

Andmeanwhile, back at the ranch, I am within a few rows of the end of the body ofthe Brownstone. The present skein will finish the job – or if it doesn’t, andthe next one doesn’t match, the line will be hidden under the fold-over of theshawl collar. So it looks as if the original purchase of seven skeins from Amsterdam is going tosuffice.

I thought Ihad caught Jared out in a miscalculation last night – not enough decreaserows to achieve his final stitch count.But looking again in the cold light of dawn, I see that he’s absolutely right –“Repeat the last 4 rows 3 more times.” I had overlooked “more”.

Comments

Thanks forthe additional help on astronomy. I think I am beginning to get it, and mayhave a go with a torch and an orange myself. Tamar, I don’t suppose youremember that artist’s name? I’d awfully like to have a look at the paths thesun etched onto his pieces of wood.

Thanks forthe pointer to the Interweave Brioche workshop, Ann. Interweave seems to have somethingnew every week.. I don’t think this one will go on a iPad, at least, Idon’t see the word mentioned. I’ll sort of hover around and keep watching – itwould be an ideal use for the iPad.

Lisa,the camera is telling me to change the batteries, although I did it yesterday and haven't taken a picture since. The calligraphy will have to wait another day..

2011-10-24T09:07:00.000+01:00

Anotherrelative quickie – I am going walking today with our niece, to whom I will atlast present the Mourning Shawl. I’ll try to get a pic.

And she’ll needthe yarn-care instructions that came in the box…

So beforemid-morning I must make some sandwiches to leave for my husband’s lunch, andinvent a supper for my happily weary self to make this evening. Left-overmutton with onion sauce?

It doesn’tsound like much, but that sort of thinking and trotting about takes me longer and longer these days.

I’m roaringon with the Brownstone. A couple more days to finish the body?

Non-knit

Theastronomy is getting well beyond me. Jean, I thought the sun wasalways overhead at the equator, where they have more or less 12-hours-light,12-hours-dark all year round. But what about the rest of us and the equinoxes?For us here in the northern hemisphere, the sun will be at its nearest todirectly-overhead at the summer solstice, won’t it? And at the winter solstice,it struggles to get above the southern horizon. Where is it at the equinox? And how does that compare with where it is for everybody else in the world? Three-dimensional geometry was where mathematics and I parted company.

Lisa, the calligraphy is an appliquédthrow – I guess you’d call it – Helen gave us, from Cairo where she and her husband met. It isthe Arabic world they are really interested in – Greece was something of anaccident. My camera is telling me it needs new batteries. I’ll take a properpicture tomorrow. Helen herself will be breezing through here for another nightsoon, and I’ll try to remember to ask her about it.

Everybodywe’ve ever met is coming to see us in November, starting with Big Thomas thisweekend.

2011-10-23T08:36:00.000+01:00

Very miscellaneous non-knit

Wren, Ididn’t see you and your boyfriend at the Farmers' Market, alas – but I saw your fractal cauliflower!And admired it, as I was queuing for some dirty, misshapen vegetables. Unlessthey had another one in the van.

I had avery successful time. We had pork chops for lunch yesterday, very tasty, andwill have mutton today. The woman who sold me the rolled shoulder of, said thatit could be roasted, slowly, but I think I’ll go for braising on a bed of theaforementioned vegetables.

NicolaFletcher, half of the husband-and-wife team who run Scotland’s– maybe Britain’s– premier deer farm was there herself on the Fletcher stall. I told her thather father, Henry Chalk, used to teach me Greek (at Glasgow University). It was disconcerting to find her a grey-haired woman in late middle age.Knee-high, when I knew her.

Mybrother-in-law just sent me awonderful link. But what’s this about its being banned?

Do read catdownunder on thesubject of antipodean water and its descent through plugholes.

One thingis certainly true of the antipodes, though. I once had the pleasure of meeting Margaret Stoveand her husband. He is a countryman, and it was his first trip north of theequator. He remarked on how very odd it was to find the sun in the southernsky.

There is astory in Herodotus somewhere (I think) of some intrepid Greek sailors who reached the Cape of Good Hope, and came home with the news that they had seen the sun totheir left as they sailed eastwards. The stay-at-home Greeks responded withpull-the-other-one, but it is the very detail, of course, which proves to us thatthey had really done it.

Cat’spreceding blog entry is about the usefulness of the ancient languages in laterlife. I was with Greek Helen when her first son, Oliver, was born. (He died atsix-and-a-half weeks. His birthday was three days ago.) Her husband wastravelling from Cairo to Edinburgh at the time, but didn’t make it forthe birth. Helen and I and a wonderful obstetrician and a nurse were the fourpeople in the room. The nurse said, calmly, “we have some bradycardia” as if itwere something the doctor might like to know was available. I remembered enoughGreek (cf Henry Chalk, above) to know that she meant, “The heart is slowingdown”.

Helen, inthose days, didn’t know Greek. She’s way beyond me now.

Knitting

TheBrownstone is speeding forward. When one catches sight of it lying about, itlooks a plausible size and shape for a young man, and I am really ratherhopeful for it.

We’re notconcerned with colour here, although in fact it’s come out better than onemight have expected.

2011-10-22T08:48:00.002+01:00

It startedwith 316 stitches – I’m down to 260, just at that delicious cusp when the longrows begin to feel shorter. If all continues well, I should reach the v-neckshaping today and things will go even faster.

I was right– the 6^th skein is dark, like the 5^th, so there is nosecond line across the work. That means it is essential either that thiscurrent skein be enough to finish the body, or that I find another dark one.

And there’sgood news on the Effortless front, although not-so-good for my poor sister. Shebroke her left wrist a month ago. It had to be surgically repaired. It is notmaking the progress she had hoped for (she’s younger than I am, but still, inher 70’s) and she has decided against her original carry-on-luggage-only plan forher trip to Britainnext month.

That meansshe’ll have room for some yarn.

So I spenta very happy hour yesterday with the Jimmy Bean website. They didn’t haveByzantine or Tart or Smoky Orchid or Thoreau, but I decided to look on thatmerely as a slight simplification of the choice. I wound up with Dried Rose.Golden Hickoryand Rosewood were strong contenders, Duchess a temptation.

But afterall this needn’t be the last madelinetosh DK I ever knit. Who would like asweater?

Non-knit

Thank youfor the bean report, catdownunder. I have trouble with “clockwise” and“anticlockwise” but I think the answer is that Australian beans behave justlike British ones. Something of a disappointment.

Thismorning’s ambition is to go to the Edinburgh Farmer’s Market, which happens every Saturday inthe shadow of the Castle. Often intended, rarely achieved, for me. I want somemutton, a favourite of my husband’s, and some rare-breed pork chops which won’ttaste like cardboard. It’s not (entirely) the butcher’s fault – the Modern Pigis bred for leanness.

So I’ll leave it there.

2011-10-21T08:50:00.001+01:00

Current affairs

When Mr al-Megrahi was allowed to go back to Libya to die, my husband's sister, known here as C., remarked that he didn't look to her like someone in the final weeks of life. She was right -- but none of us expected then that he would survive not only Colonel Gadaffi but C. herself. Life is funny that way: we already knew that.

Knitting

Little toreport, really. I reached the critical point of the Brownstone and have donethe first raglan-decrease row. No more measuring, no more calculating – it’s astraight run from here to the end, and then we get to see whether I got itright. I finished the 5^th and attached the 6^th skein ofthe original order – I think it’s going to prove darkish, like the last one, sothere won’t be another line here.

I see Icast this baby on in mid-September. So there ought to be plenty of time to knitsomething for Little Thomas before Christmas.

I know I ammeant to be spending odd moments working on two-colour brioche in the round asa challenge to myself, but there aren’t all that many odd moments around hereand I can’t keep my hands off the Brownstone.

Non-knit

We haveinvited a friend to lunch who is in charge of Scottish pictures at the NGofS,partly because it will be nice to see her, and partly in order to show her thenewly-discovered juvenile portrait of James ??????? by his artist brother.She’s coming on November 4 and I will report what she says.

Thank youfor the pointer to the tetrapods, Judith. I have bookmarked the page, and aminclined to think I’ll go ahead and take the plunge. We’ve got a birthdaylooming. I think you’re right that a tetrapod is what’s wanted – my husbandmanages fine, if slowly, with an ordinary walking stick when it’s just aquestion of walking about. It’s stability for garden use we’re looking for.

I wasencouraged by your comment (Tuesday), metropolitanrebecca, about yourneighbour’s fall and its lack of unpleasant after-effects.

How didBlogger know that your comment wasn’t spam, Judith? They are very clever. Ihave things set up so that all comments on posts more than a fortnight old comethrough to me for moderation – and they’re all junk. Blogger does itautomatically for more recent ones, and only very rarely makes a mistake ineither direction.

I amparticularly puzzled -- all bloggers will understand -- by the brief comments,usually in bad English, usually saying how useful the blog has been butoccasionally slamming it, containing no links. What’s the point? Cui bono?Blogger unerringly weeds them out.

Catdownunder,you must be having spring. Don’t forget that your assignment (or your father’s)is to look at runner beans as they start to climb, before they get all tangledup, and see which way around the pole they are going. I can’t remember how on earthwe got onto that subject, but I do remember that that’s what you were supposed todo.

2011-10-20T08:59:00.003+01:00

The firstcomment yesterday is from the professional pattern-writer who out of sheerkindness – we have never met – translated the Japanese shirt pattern for mefrom the Japanese schematic into an English pattern. Her approval ofprogress-to-date is especially sweet.

All wentwell here yesterday, or so I hope. I have measured and calculated and launchedmyself into the top part of the “Brownstone” – some straight knitting first, onlots of stitches. I would hope to reach the raglan shaping today.

And myexperience of life suggests that raglan shaping goes fast, once it starts. Imight even hope to be finished except for the shawl collar when Big Thomascomes to see us next weekend.

I used todo circular raglans many decades ago, in my Fair Islephase, before even I knew about EZ. I always tended to leave too few stitchesbehind at the underarms, and wind up with everything very tight for the firstcouple of inches of all-together knitting. Jared has left a generous allowanceof stitches there, and all is going smoothly.

Madelinetoshdoesn’t do dye lots. All has been well so far, but the current skein, the fifth of the original order from Amsterdam,is somewhat darker than its predecessors. There is a line. Kristiefrogged half a sweater recently when she found, too late, that that hadhappened. I am pressing on. The situation is somewhat less urgent here becausethe dye, throughout, is somewhat (deliciously) uneven. But it’s visible – youcan see it in yesterday’s photograph.

I estimateat the moment that I will have about four skeins left over, gathered frae a’the airts. I toyed briefly with the idea of scaling the Brownstone down andknitting a whole duplicate sweater for Little Thomas, but have retreated, atleast for the moment, to the simpler idea of a sleeveless vest with a hood for him.

I have beenthinking a bit recently about droopy cardigans, as I approach my Effortless.They are everywhere, in real life. But where are the knitting patterns? I havebeen searching Ravelry and elsewhere on “asymmetrical cardigan” and gettingnowhere. That just produces half a dozen that fasten on the left shoulderinstead of in the middle.

Thismorning I had one of those revelations, and searched for “drape cardigan”.That’s it. Lookat this one, at Marks & Spencer. It’s almost a knitting pattern initself. And Ravelry’s got some nice ones, too. I like Kim Hargreaves’ “Embrace” althoughshe is not usually a favourite of mine.

I boughtanother book: “The Knitter’s Life List”, by Gwen Steege. I read about it inKnitty, I think, and it seemed to fit in with my current ambition to challengemyself. I’m enjoying it. No patterns – each chapter (sweaters, socks, hats,bags, whatever) begins with lists of things to Discover, to Do, to Learn andgoes on to cover the subject informatively and in sprightly fashion. It would be very good for someone relatively new to knitting, full of a beginner's enthusiasm.

I haven’tfound any new challenges yet, in fact it leaves me feeling rather smug,been-there-done-that. Except for “finger knitting”, a whole new concept for me.It’s like “French knitting” except with no tools. I might even practice a bitand try it on the Little Boys at Loch Fyne when I see them at Christmastime.

Non-knit

Annie, I like the idea of atetrapod to support my husband in the garden. I had never heard of it. I willexplore further.

2011-10-19T08:52:00.000+01:00

Miscellaneous

The currentNewYorker cover is brilliant.

Knitlass, thank you for thepointer (comment, yesterday) to the two-colour brioche knitting. That item hasalso turned up in my Zite magazine – I tell you, they are uncanny.

Tamar, that’sa distressing story about your husband’s fall. I wasn’t strong enough to liftmy husband on my own. We tried several variations of posture – I can’t evenremember which one was successful in the end. It would have been easy with oneother person, not very strong, necessarily, lifting from the other side. Wewere within sight of the path along the burn, but it is not much frequented andthere were no dog-walkers that Saturday afternoon.

Thescariness was mostly focussed on, how much longer can we go on indulging incountry life, silly old fools as we are? But the danger of an after-shock was scary, too. We seem to beout of the woods (!) on that one.

Knitting

I’ve nowattached the sleeves to the electric red Brownstone, and am putting in someshort rows, on Jared’s instructions, before starting the raglan shaping. Verysoon now, like today, I am going to have to stop and plan the end-game with care: how manystitches do I want at the end? How many rows do I want for the finished length?How, exactly, to arrange the raglan decreases and the v-neck shaping?

While inStrathardle, I didn’t get as much done as I might have hoped on putting thevegetables to bed for the winter. I am embarrassed to show you such weed-filled pictures.

In high summer, I thought all I had to dowould be to chop up the broad beans and spread them around to achieve apleasant mulch. Alas, the deer (who have been back) have stripped them ofleaves as well as beans. All I could do was chop up the stems. Still, I didsome forking-over and some creeping-buttercup-extirpation. Better than nothing.

And thedeer still haven’t got the Brussels sprouts. My husband thinks they willeventually jump into the vegetable cage, which is not entirely netted on top. Idon’t think they will, although they might figure out how to move thenetting aside. We shall see.

I workedindustriously on the Japanese shirt. It has deepish vents at the sides, so thefirst thing to do was to knit three rectangles. They have now been joined intoone, with an elegant four-stitch overlap; the first buttonhole is in place, andI think things are going to go faster, not slower, now that I’ve got a millionstitches on the needle.

Colour not good, there. It's madelinetosh "Cosmos", a rich, dark brown shot with green.

Anotherwonderfulness about the iPad is that I can temporarily increase type-size tomake it easier to read while I knit – and I can switch from Henry James to avideo of the one-row buttonhole technique without getting out of my chair.

I thoughtat one point that I might bring the Japanese shirt back here to be thePrincipal Edinburgh WIP. That could still happen, although not before the NewYear.

2011-10-18T08:25:00.002+01:00

Safelyback. We were lucky in our weather – three warm, get-something-done-outdoorsdays. Yesterday we drove back through serious rain.

On Saturdaymy husband went off to a stand of larches he planted many years ago, nowtowering trees of which a couple came down in last year’s storms. He wastidying the whiskers off one such, to make it ready for the sawing-up of thetrunk.

I went tofetch him home for tea. When he (eventually) agreed to come, he tripped overthe very tree he was working on, and fell. No harm was done, on the soft forestfloor – except that he couldn’t get up again. His lower legs don’t function atall well these days.

Westruggled for half an hour or more, trying various ploys. Eventually the lightbegan to fail, and I said I thought I should go for help. The notion made himangry enough to supply the needed adrenalin, and he got to his feet.

No harmdone. He went back to his larches on Sunday morning. But it was scary.

iPad

There is agood deal to report on the knitterly and vegetable-grower-ly fronts but I shallstick to the iPad for today.

I gotknit.wear into it at the very last moment on Thursday. I’m not really veryimpressed, except that I like Annie Modesitt’s kimono.Again, I’m glad not tohave it adding to the piles of knitting magazines in the bedroom.

Myresources for the iPad are “iPad for Dummies” and “The 2012 iPad Handbook”. And you guys,probably best of all.

TheHandbook is one of those things that you find on a newsstand, looking like amagazine, and – like Interweave’s Holiday Knits – you only realise when you get tothe checkout that it’s priced like a book, and not a cheap one. It has itsuses, though, and it’s British.

While I wasfloundering, I noticed something in it about Zite. Zite is a free app, from theApp Store, which will make a magazine for you. You get three pages of all thethings there are magazines for – cars and cookery and celebrity gossip andgardening, on and on. At the end is a box into which you can type “knitting”. (You canhave as many sections as you like in your magazine, and change them any time.)

And thenyou have a knitting magazine. It’s simply brilliant. We have come to takeGoogle for granted as if it were a force of nature – it is salutary tore-discover how clever an algorithm can be. Unless there really is a roomful ofold ladies in Florida or California, scanning the internet all daylong and saying to each other, “Do you think Jean would like this?”

Articlesare drawn from blogs, journalism, and commercial pages. I learned about “Jane Austin Knits” from Zite before I had the email from Interweave.

There’s aseparate free app that lets you cut things out and keep them. I’ve done thatwith (among other things) an article about “Craft Activism” which has aclothes-line full of Mary Lou Egan’smittens on the cover. Hey! I know her!

2011-10-13T08:55:00.002+01:00

Plumberhere this morning, and we’re hoping to go to Strathardle, so it’s all ratherfrot.

My husbandseems unworried by the age of the sitter in our picture. If it’s really a???????, as he believes, it must be very early and James must be pretty young. Myhusband is interested in the hair, though. It doesn’t look like powder. Hewants to learn more about premature greyness. Catdownunder's comment (today) is helpful in that respect.

Knitting

I’vedivided for the neck of the Brownstone sweater, and am adding some short rowsto raise the back, on Jared’s instructions. The sleeves will be incorporatedvery soon. I’ve surprised myself by finishing the fourth of the original sevenskeins. If my calculation of percentages in the sidebar is anywhere near right, I'm still on target for finishing the body before I need more yarn. The sidebar is allowing 16% for the shawl collar, and a few more points for the end game.

It would be time for a pic, if life were more straightforward this morning.

The packageI have recently ransomed from Customs & Excise failed to appear in yesterday’spost, whether yarn or no. What did arrive was “Knitting Around the World” whichpromises, on a very hasty first look, to be excellent. It’s the usual trip fromhither to yon but the author, Lela Nargi (unknown to me), has taken the troubleto dig out some less than usual photographs. And most of the traditions areenlivened by an account of a modern designer – the section on Shetland lace,for example, includes a substantial passage about Sharon Miller’s work.

Istruggled, and in the end failed, to get knit.wear into my iPad. First I wastold that my copy of iTunes wouldn’t do. I had to uninstall it and then installit again. I did that – neither process is quick or simple. iTunes will now load,but it doesn’t work like iTunes in the books. There is no section called“Devices” in the sidebar on the left, in which I could introduce the iPad.

Thomas-the-Elderwill be here for a weekend visit soon. He’s got an iPad and will have toconduct a tutorial.

I made alittle more progress with two-colour brioche. Marchant’s article in the currentVK is an excellent introduction. Her book, I feel, is a bit strung-out. All thematerial is there, and well-presented, but it takes her so long to get throughit that it’s hard to grasp the essence of the problem. Whereas in the magazineshe’s got to get it all into four pages, plus one more for the hat pattern, andthere it all is, with diagrams included.

I tried a cross, but failed at that.

If I wereto attempt the VK hat, I would need to worry about gauge. “Aslan TrendsInvernal” is a new yarn to me. Worsted weight, I discover, 4-5 stitches to theinch on 4-5mm needles. (How on earth did we manage, before the Internet?) Marchantuses a 3.5mm needle for her hat, and a whopping 96 stitches. On the other hand,my trial cylinder on 44 stitches is proving too small for much more than a babyhat. We’ll see.

Back here Tuesday, if all goes well. The weather promises not-too-bad, and I hope to make great progress with the Stout system, tidying up for the winter and spreading mulch everywhere.

2011-10-12T09:15:00.003+01:00

Tricia, thank you, thank you, thankyou for telling me where my iPad-to-USB cable was. I hope I won’t forget again.I didn’t get around to trying to port knit.wear to the iPad yesterday, however,because it was a day frot with excitement.

n Ournew picture arrived. We were fully prepared for a second week of anxiouswaiting-in and increasingly irate phone calls, but Alban Shipping – whocollected it from the auctioneer, packed it, and handed it over to UPS – andUPS themselves proved to be an entirely different kettle of fish from lastweek’s Yodel.

My husbandis happy to have it, and has admitted it to the canon. There is a problem,which I think he hasn’t fully faced up to. Maybe today.

It remainsvery bad, and therefore presumably very early. ??????? went to art school whenhe was 15, and is known to have painted small portraits at that time, includingone of his brother James. An inscription on the back of this picture says thatthat’s who we have here. So far so good.

By the timehe was 20, however, ??????? was painting national-gallery pictures. So anydating for this one that makes him older than 16 is pretty well impossible to swallow. Hisbrother James was only a year older than he was. Could this possibly be a pictureof a man of 17?

The more I look at it, the more I think it could be.

n “KnitSwirl” is here, and has gone straight into the Challenge pile. I think I amgoing to be able to use Koigu without much difficulty. In fact, I think themain problem is going to be casting on 500 plus stitches, as you say, Sarah. I’vedealt with more, knitting the Princess, but I didn’t have to cast them on. (Knit edging first, pick up stitches from.)

n Acard from the post office arrived saying that I owe them £15.49. That ispresumably for three more skeins of madelinetosh scarlet from Happy Knits. Thatworks out at £2.50 per skein, plus the £8 payment to the POfor their trouble. And that means that if I get yarn from the

for my hoped-for Effortless,it’s going to cost £28 plus postage before I even think of paying for theexpensive yarn. I could buy several books for that.

I don’tneed these three skeins for the current project, either. I’ll have to do something with them forThomas-the-Younger.

n Ihad a spare half-hour in the afternoon, while my husband struggled with James???????, which I spent attempting brioche-in-the-round, from Meg’s hat inWoolgathering #80. I was wholly charmed by her advice on size: “Just startknitting with thickish wool and the finished cap is bound to fit someone.”

Itdidn’t go well – but then, it wouldn’t be a challenge if it were easy. Ireturned to the problem this morning, during my osteoporosis-pill-half-hour,relying more on Marchant, and I think I’ve got it. In fact I think – even Homernods – that Meg is wrong. The sequence she gives as “wool fwd, slip 1 p’wise,p2tog” should in fact be “slip 1 p’wise, wool around needle, p2tog”.

I’ll keepthis little cylinder and go on practising from time to time. The transitionfrom dark-round to light-round is the next thing to master. Then I can go on tocrossing the lines, Marchant-fashion.

2011-10-11T08:30:00.000+01:00

Curioserand curioser.

Idiscovered yesterday that I have not one but two copies of Knit.wear here on the desktop computer. Idon’t see how that happened. I thought I conducted the whole transaction fromthe iPad.

But here itis, in PDFformat as you say, DaniK, and it remains for me but to do what yousuggest: move it into iTunes and sync with the iPad. Neither operation will be straightforward. I have never moved anything into iTunes in my life, and amastonished to see that there is such a destination, here on the desktop. And Idon’t know what I’ve done with the iPad-to-USB cable. I must have onesomewhere, because I sync’d a few timesat the beginning, which wasn’t very long ago. I’ve been tidying up around herelately, and the room is fairly navigable at the moment, but tidyness affectedonly paper. The accumulation of wire still resembles nothing so much as a WWIIfield telephone station.

Knitting

About aninch and a half short of the divide-for-neck point. I might even get theretoday.

As soon asI had formulated yesterday’s Big Thot, I saw the way forward, and it is as several of yousuggest: set challenges, but let’s not be pernickety about it. The main thingis not to toss something interesting aside because it looks too difficult, or Ithink I don’t understand. Try it and you may, I say.

Having gotthat far, I made a little pile. It pretty well made itself:

n DebbieNew’s amazing “Unexpected Knitting” and the Knitter’s Magazine “Socks SocksSocks” book with her swirl socks on the cover. I think maybe I even tried tostart them once. I find I’ve printed out and kept something from the Knit List– that takes you back – with pointers from someone who had succeeded inknitting them. If she can do it, I can.

n Hoxbro’s“Shadow Knitting”

n Marchant’s“Knitting Brioche”

n “KnitOne Knit All” for the mitred cardigan

n Andtwo Woolgatherings: No. 80 with threeinteresting hats, travelling stitch, brioche, and Cully’s lattice hat; and No82 with Cully’s brick sweater.

Briocheought to be accessible. I love it, and I love its cousin-german, fisherman’srib. I’ve knit EZ’s brioche watchcap from “Knitting Without Tears” a couple oftimes. She calls the stitch “fruity” – the perfect word. She thinks it doesn’twork in the round, but we have moved on since that book was written.

I think Iam put off by Marchant’s vocabulary – she has created new terms: BRK for“brioche knit” and “BRP” for “brioche purl” which then appear in various moreor less alarming combinations.: BRKBRPBRK. BRSSP. Start with Meg’s hat, perhaps – that will getme going on two-colour brioche in the round; go on to Marchant’s hat in thecurrent VK.

Amazon says they have shipped "Knit, Swirl". Will it arrive today?

2011-10-10T09:08:00.000+01:00

I write my blog entries in Word and archive them for posterity, each one named for the day on which it was written, and then copy and paste them here. By skipping yesterday I have missed the day in 2011 when the numbers were consecutive. Yesterday was 9-10-11, British style. But today, at least, shares with the first of this month the pleasant attribute of forming a binary number: 101011.

We had anice time with Helen, who then spent the rest of Sunday in Edinburgh airport (I learn this morning),waiting for Athenian air traffic control to pull itself together.

Not muchknitting.

I thought Ihad succeeded after something of a struggle in buying the Interweave knit.wearmagazine for my iPad. It came in as one long web page – not, that is, in theZinio app where Piecework lives, nor the iBook one where Knitting Traditionsand Knit & Spin are. But this morning it is gone – “Access denied requesthas expired”. And I have deleted the messages from Interweave related to it.Clearly I did something wrong. Live and learn.

It was notwithout interest, while it lasted.

I read theother day – this time in a food magazine – that Mark Zuckerberg, he of Facebookfame and enormous wealth, has taken to setting himself a challenge each year.It 2009, it was to wear a tie every day. In 2010, to learn Chinese. This year,to eat only meat he has killed himself.

I have beentrying to think of a knitting challenge for myself. Not easy – and with sorelatively few years left to me, I don’t want to be too restrictive. Knit onlyZimmermann (including Meg and Cully)? That’s a possibility. Explore the areas Iregard as closed through difficulty or distaste – afghans; bobbles includingnupps; fancy brioche – I like that hat in the current VK and feel sure it isbeyond me; shadow knitting. I am sure double knitting will go straight intothat category when I get the new book. There may be the ghost of an idea here.

But onedoesn’t want to make life too consistently unpleasant for oneself.

2011-10-08T09:14:00.001+01:00

And another follower! Welcome!

It soundsas if our new picture is safe and well. The shipping company claims to havepicked it up from the auctioneer – an important first step. It is currently“downstairs being packed” and will soon be dispatched to us. When that happens,we’ll have a tracking number.

This soundsa bit languid, on reflection. We had hoped to go to Strathardle next week. I’llphone again on Monday and ask for an ETA, if I don’t hear from them.

Thinkingabout Yodel: why does so serious a firm as Marks & Spencer use them, ashorror stories multiply? The supermarkets are all dead keen to deliver, thesedays – I don’t understand the logic; surely it’s better business for them tohave us turn up and choose the stuff and take it home ourselves? But keen they are, andthey can hit a dime, so to speak, when it comes to delivery times, shewing that it can be done.

Knitting

I’m about 3½ inches short of dividing for the deep neckline of the scarlet Brownstone. Another 3 ½ after that willbring us to the great joining-of-the-sleeves.

Thank youfor the offer of help on the Madelinetosh front, Mary Lou. I may take you up on it. Ashaky-looking package marked “gift” has a better chance of getting past theCustoms. I looked up the Yarnery and wassurprised, I don’t know why, to find you in Minnesota. I thought you were west coast.They list madelinetosh but don’t seem to have added her to the on-line section(yet) so I couldn’t wallow in the available shades. You are proudly listedamong their designers.

I am ratherproud of myself for not have ordered any yet. At least, in my new incarnation,I’m not adding to stash. And Amazon now say that “Knit, Swirl” should ship nextweek – the hope remains that it will furnish something that I can adapt for Koigu.I doubt if I will be able to refrain from knitting theEffortless next, but it’s just as well to hold back on the yarn-buying aslong as possible.

Has anybodyseen Interweave’s new Knit.wearmagazine? It turned up amongst my emails this morning, and looks notun-promising. I can justify the expense to myself with the claim that I had thesense not to buy their holiday-knits this year. Interweave seem to be producinga magazine a week these days.

I spent ahappy half hour with the TwistCollective yesterday. The link is to a cardigan I rather fancy – but it’snot asymmetrical, and the gauge is given over rib which can make fordifficulties.

Non-knit

I didn’tknow until I read the obituaries yesterday that Steve Jobs was adopted. Abortionswere not so easy to come by, in the 50’s. How different the world might havebeen!

Helen is expected this afternoon. My husband and I will use our new don't-have-to-wait-in freedom this morning to go see Anish Kapoor at the College of Art. I think Helen has to leave at dawn tomorrow, in which case I will be here as usual. If I'm not, it will be because she's still around.

2011-10-07T08:48:00.000+01:00

Welcome, new follower!

I’ve gotthe package! It came at 3:45, after nearly another whole day of waiting-in, butI’ve got it! I’m free! I can go across the square to get the papers whenever Ifeel like it – doesn’t have to be done at 7:15 before the Yodel working daybegins. I can go to the supermarket! Helen is safely in London, full of joy at the news. We'll see her tomorrow.

It’s agreat big heavy thing. I’m glad I’m not responsible for carrying it to Greece.

Anna Livia,I shall make sure that both Helen and her husband read your comment in full.

Knitlass, we’ve got a pragmaticpostie, too, who often signs for things for us. I’m not scared of the PostOffice. If I do get one of those dread cards, I can go to their website andarrange for re-delivery or whatever – sometimes sending it to a relatively-nearsub-post-office for collection works best, as with the madelinetosh scarletyarn recently – in the reasonable confidence that whatever is arrangedelectronically, will be done. Not so with Yodel.

But lifehas a way of going on. Today’s job is to find out what has happened to ourparcel – the picture we bought in Salisburylast week. I arranged with a recommended shipping company to pick it up, packit, and dispatch it to us. We agreed a price and I paid it. I have heard nomore. Where is the picture? When can we expect it?

Knitting

I reachedthe point yesterday – it happens in every full-sized project without countablepattern repeats – when I knit and knit and knit without making any progress atall. The Red Queen was standing behind my chair – “It takes all the running youcan do, to stay in the same place”.

The sweatermay not have advanced, but yarn got used. I have wound and attached the fourthof the seven skeins in the original purchase. So I’ve used somewhat less thanhalf, so far. I am feeling rather hopeful. I have knit slightly over a third ofthe eventual length of the body. And, of course, I’ve done the sleeves. Evenbearing in mind that once the sleeves are attached to the body, I’ll use a lotmore yarn per vertical inch, I am inclined to think I’ll have enough to finishthe body.

The skeinsfrom Jimmy Bean – which look fine, to the naked eye – can then be employed onthe shawl collar. Still nothing has arrived from Happy Knits. There’s anotherpackage to chase. If those skeins ever turn up, I’ll have to knit Thomas amatching hat and scarf. Or perhaps a sleeveless pullover forThomas-the-Younger?

2011-10-06T08:40:00.001+01:00

I was sorryto hear of Steve Jobs’ death. It emboldens me to express out loud my suspicionthat Mr. Megrahi, although undoubtedly very ill, may be hamming it up a bit. Wesaw him a month ago, apparently beyond speech and days from death. This week hegave an interview.

Still nopackage. The carrier is called “Yodel”, unknown to me and perhaps rather new onthe scene. I missed the delivery on Monday. I re-booked it for Tuesday and hadan email from them confirming the arrangement. No package. I phoned yesterdaymorning and was told the package was on the van and would definitely arrivethat day. No package. I’m about to phone again.

Waves ofanxiety from Athensmake the waiting worse. Helen set out for Londonthis morning, so from here on out it’s up to me.

Miscellaneousknitting-related

Little toreport on the knitting front. I press happily forward with the Brownstone, thestitches now recovered and untwisted and unsplit and, where necessary, chainedback up. It took a while. I’ll know what to do the next time I find a knot. Theglorious yarn and glorious red are particularly welcome as a relief frompackage-waiting.

I also,finally, unpinned the Mourning Shawl from the dining room floor and mended theholes clumsily – there were actually some free stitches to be secured, to myhorror. It remains but to hand it over to our niece. I think it might be easierto give her a photograph of it being blocked, rather than try to point out thelettering in the actual object.

I used tokeep notes of interesting patterns in the magazines that I might want to lookat again. There was a jacket called “Round Trip” in Noro Kureyon in the Fall,’03, issue of Knitter’s which I knit for Cathy. I wonder how closely itresembles the ideas in the elusive “Knit, Swirl”. Conceivably, the samedesigner. It tends to slip back from the shoulders unless secured.

I need moreshelf-space for knitting books. I wonder if I dare reserve the Knitter’s’s withthe interesting patterns I have noted, including all four issues for 2000 whenMeg walked through the EPS, and throw away the rest.

2011-10-05T09:25:00.001+01:00

Yesterday wasspent waiting in for a delivery that didn’t come. The vigil resumes today.Greek Helen is about to make a lightening visit to the UK. Thepackage is from Marks & Spencer and contains school uniform for her boys.She must have it NOW. Waiting in for a delivery hardly counts as stress in aworld as stressful as this one, but it’s no fun. And my husband gets noexercise, since he won’t go out alone, and that’s not good for him.

Wednesdayis my osteoporosis-pill day, and as usual I spent most of the half-hour (nofood, no coffee, musn’t lie down) knitting. I’m nearly half-way between thecast-on and the beginning of the deep collar-hole. I love the slightnon-uniformity of the colour.

However,just at the moment I’m a bit cross. I came to a tiny knot and decided to leaveit and when I got back to it on the next circuit, it had come undone. There wasnothing for it but to rip out the round. That’s where I am at the moment. It isgoing to be easy to pick the stitches back up, and also easy to see which onebegins the round. But it’s a bore.

At least itcame undone right away and not a month hence, when the hole might have beenblamed on an entirely innocent moth.

I’ve beenlooking at “Effortless”cardigans on Ravelry. Lots of people have done them. The tone is very enthusiastic and the results lookgood on the wearers. Lots of people have done it in madelinetosh dk, too. I wasinterested to see how well, to my eye, the more variegated shades look. It isknit on larger needles than I am using at the moment, and – not surprisingly –at a looser gauge. Some people have used madelinetosh “Vintage” which is taggedas a worsted yarn and which is available in London,from Loop.

But I don’tthink I want anything heavier than the yarn I’m using and I am very happydropping in on Jimmy Bean’s madelinetoshdk page every so often and dreaming of the future.

Photography

Thank youfor your continued help. I looked up “white balance” on the internet and Ithink I see what I need to do. I haven’t tried “light box” yet. I havediscovered that the “night” setting on my camera starts with a wide apertureand then sets the shutter speed automatically. I don’t have a “food photo”setting, alas, Woolly Bits. Thevery idea makes me want to rush out and spend several hundred pounds, if needbe, on a new camera.

Books

“KnittingAround the World” and “Knit, Swirl” are both currently promised formid-October, which is virtually upon us, and “Extreme Double-Knitting” from theoddly-spelled Alistair will be with us soon, too. It’s available for downloadnow. An exciting month.

2011-10-04T09:07:00.001+01:00

If I’mstill functioning when the Calcutta Cup next returns to Edinburgh, I’ve decidedon generous-fitting Scotland-blue sleeveless v-necks for the Little Boys – whomay be grown men by then – with the cup and date in white somewhere. Easywearing for the non-wool-wearer. And I am determined, with the same proviso, to contrive to see the cup when it next resides north of the border.

Thecommentators made much, the other day, of how rare it is for Scotland and England to play each other onneutral ground. I find myself wondering if it has ever happened before exceptin Calcutta.The whole thing started in the 19^th century as an annual matchbetween British civil servants there. When the Rugby Club broke up, they usedthe money remaining in their bank account to have the cup made. It’s gotserpents for handles and an elephant on top and wonderful surface patterning –well worth seeing.

Yesterday Ihad an email from Interweave about their e-magazine ColorKnit. This time, it isavailable for an iPad, and I got it.

It is awhole new experience, not at all like reading Piecework or the New Yorker onone’s iPad. It’s a genuine interactive magazine full of hyperlinks and audioclips and perhaps even some video ones, although if so I haven’t come acrossthem yet. I find it not entirely congenial – broken-up and bitty and hard to navigate. And I’ll have to figure outhow to get rid of it eventually: it’s very demanding of memory.

Actualknitting

I am nowembarked on the blissful uninterrupted st st part of the body of the Brownstonesweater. It will all end too soon, with stitches cast off centre front for theeventual shawl collar. From then on I must work back and forth and excitementswill accumulate – some short-row’ing in the back, the incorporation of thesleeves, the raglan shaping.

I am about to attempt a picture of it on the front step, incorporating some of youradvice. I got the old, superior camera out and am, at the moment, boosting itsbattery a bit. I will have to remind myself how to turn the flash off and howto get the results into the computer. I’ll take the pictures on the front step(as is my wont, in the months when it is light at this time in the morning, andnot raining) with a pillowcase or something similar from the ironing pile forbackground. The sun, if available at all, doesn’t reach the step until later.

I had alook at Picnik yesterday, and liked what I saw, although I think it was ratheran effort for my not-at-all-new computer. But I couldn’t make any progress withthose orange photographs – increasing the saturation made things redder, butobliterated all detail (such as stitches) in the process. I’ll be back.

Vast improvement. The upper picture was taken, without flash, on the "auto" setting. Too pink, but that's better than orange. The bottom one is getting pretty close to the truth -- for that, I twiddled the controls around to a setting which seemed to suggest night-time. I'll now have to go back to the instruction book and see what I did.

2011-10-03T09:13:00.003+01:00

Knitlass, just for you, here’s apicture of Alexander’s Calcutta Cup ’06 sweater. It’s a bit snug on him thesedays.

I’ve beensort of thinking about what to knit if we should win in ’12. (The even-numberedyears are the only ones in which there’s a whisper of hope – because the matchis played in Edinburgh.Scotland haven’t won in London since late in thePleistocene era.) I think it would have to be matching, or in some other waycomparable, sweaters for Alexander and Ketki’s sons. Ketki already has aCalcutta Cup sweater, from ’08.

Childrendon’t go in for wearing wool much, these days. Could I bear to knit cotton?Don’t think so.

I wonder ifthere’s a Calcutta Cup group on Ravelry.

Meanwhile,not much. I’m on the last round or so of body ribbing of the scarlet Brownstone. The pattern from here looks straightforward, at least until the sleeves getjoined on.

Thank youvery much for the advice on photographing red. My camera is pretty basic – Idon’t even think I can turn off the flash. I used to use a fancier one,although usually set on Auto. Latterly, it had taken to over-exposing. I usedto know a bit about shutter speeds and apertures but before I started fiddlingabout, Rachel and Helen gave me the simple one for my birthday. It’s clever –you can point it towards a window and it will photograph the room. But it can’thandle red.

Maybe I’dbetter resurrect the fancy one. How much could be done with one of thoseprograms that lets you edit and adjust pictures?

The newWool Gathering turned up the other day. The pattern is a neat little mitredvest or jacket, out of the same stable as Round the Bend and none the worse forthat.

2011-10-02T08:44:00.001+01:00

Scotland

lost. We might as well get that outof the way. We were leading by six points at half-time. Alexander doesn’t havetelevision on Loch Fyne, but I knew I could count on him to be in the pub withhis family. I texted him – not one of my usual means of communication, but Ifelt the occasion called for it, and the telephone was still charged up afterits usefulness in Londonthe weekend before – “Oh dear this is rather stressful.” He replied: “Don’tworry. We’ve been here before. We’ll lose comfortably in the second half.”

(James andCathy gave me the telephone for Christmas some years ago. He constantlyreiterates that I should keep it charged at all times, for emergencies. He’sright, of course: I’ll do it today.)

(Knitlass and Jenny and anyoneelse interested: wouldn’t it be boring – and bad for the character – to be an England fan?Think how sweet are those rare victories! Especially, for me, 2000 – we hadn’tbeaten them for a decade, and we weren’t supposed to have a chance that time. Iknit the Calcutta Cup into the Christening shawl of the granddaughter born thatyear, and have knit commemorative sweaters for the two victories since. And ahat, for the draw.)

But I gotthe tough parts of the sweater done – it’s plain sailing from here on in. 228stitches cast on, the ribbing established, the circle joined without a twist.I’m now about halfway through the ribbing, looking forward to the even plainersailing of st st.

You willremember that I was worried about whether I had enough yarn. The original orderwas for seven skeins, and when they got here I decided that they might notsuffice. There were no more to be had from the original supplier. I ordered twomore from Jimmy Bean (all they had) and three from Happy Knits. The Jimmy Beanskeins arrived while we were in London– tax-free, it does occasionally happen. No news from the others.

The sleevesused less than a skein each. I’ve been coasting on the residue for the ribbing,and will wind the third skein today. I’ll know a good deal more when it’sfinished. I am entertaining the hope that the original order may, after all,finish the body. A slight change of shade for the shawl collar wouldn’t matterat all.

Change ofsubject

I haddecided not to go for “My Grandmother’s Knitting” but was persuaded to chargemy mind by Jared’s blog the other day. It arrived from Amazon yesterday and Istand by my original opinion. I don’t like any of the patterns, not evenJared’s, and the interviews don’t add much.

I didlearn, however, a number of things about EZ’s husband’s family. She herself issurprisingly reticent on the subject. A great-type-grandfather – the text isn’tclear -- was Reinhard Sebastian Zimmermann, an artist not without distinction,a generation younger (if I am allowed the phrase) than my husband’s artist, andworking along somewhat the same lines. (I’ve been doing some googling.)

All thismystery about names, by the way, is to prevent anyone googling on the artist’sname, or my husband’s, and winding up here. I told Kristie and Kath who it was,and sent them off, I hope, to the National Gallery of Scotland where they willhave seen some gems by him. I’ll post a snap of our new picture – it’s bad, remember –when it turns up. I hesitate to post the auctioneer’s image in case it’scopyright’d.