We are back, after a very successful trip. We moved more slowly than before, kept a sharp lookout for lifts (=elevators), and were greatly assisted by Rachel and Thomas-the-Elder who drove us to convenient departure-points for central London, obviating various exhausting changes of transport. My forebodings were, in the event, not unnecessary but misdirected.

My husband’s sister Christina lives in south Edinburgh, in Morningside. When we left, she was suffering from a chest infection which was stubbornly declining to respond to antibiotics. I spoke to her at some length by telephone on Monday the 5th, clearly unwell but up and about, not at all happy – with considerable cause – about the doctoring she was receiving.

Her daughter Clare, who lives hard by, phoned us in London on the evening of the 7th, the day we went down, to say that Christina had collapsed and was in the Royal Infirmary on oxygen and various antibiotic drips.

There she remains, nearly a week later. Nothing much seems to have happened. Her oxygen saturations are a bit better. From Clare’s account, doctors sound puzzled. The cough is largely unproductive. A CAT scan has eliminated the possibility of a blot clot. Next will come a broncoscopy, which sounds uncomfortable. They have even considered allergy – “Do you have a parrot?” (She has never smoked.)

She is much younger than my husband, scarcely older than I am. We oldies count out the years as children do.

We will visit this afternoon.

As for knitting, I kept at it, and am steaming down the foot of Thomas-the-Elder’s second sock. In lieu of the Yarn Yard toning solid – which, you may remember, simply and utterly vanished just as I reached the first heel – I finished the toe with KF’s “Fire” left over from Ketki’s socks. Thomas likes the effect. Pic tomorrow, maybe.

I also improved the shining hour by darning some of Rachel’s old socks – knit by me, of course, over the years. I think maybe I will make it a practice to take darning equipment along when I visit a house in which socks of my manufacture are to be found. Helen is delighted with her new pair, which have reached Thessaloniki safely. I told her to bring her old ones along for darning when she comes here in August.

And my courgettes are fine! Twenty minutes before we left to catch our train last Wednesday, as I was watering them out on the step and giving them a little pep talk, an art historian neighbour walked by with her dog. I told her of my anxiety. She promised to have her husband and daughter water them. She herself was off the next day to, of all places, Thessaloniki.

Politics

That’s better.

On the 5th of January, while we were waging our epic battle with the Strathardle snow to get the car up the driveway and away, I kept the Iowa primary result at the back of my mind, to bring it out and savour once we were on the road.

So today, once we’re on that train (we’ve got one of those tickets where you have to be on a particular train or all is lost, and my husband, even as a young man which he is now not, takes a lot of getting to a train) – once we’re on that train, I can take out my knitting and start thinking about North Carolina and Indiana.

My sister said when I spoke to her on the phone from London recently, that there are rumours that Mrs Clinton is a vampire – she seems to get ever plumper and more red of lip while poor Mr Obama grows thinner and paler. Maybe it’s now time for the stake through the heart.

The polls seem to have been way out, in both states. But I was watching a poll-of-polls total on Real Clear Politics – maybe one or two particular polls were nearer to being right.

I think maybe the Rev Mr Wright did his worst at absolutely the right moment. There’s little left for the Republicans to use from that source now.

Mary Lou, your anecdote yesterday – “Omar is the future!” – sustained me through a long day. I’m glad to see you share my love for knitting KF socks, too.

So we set off at least more cheerful. It’s always nice to see Rachel and her family – Joe is just coming up to his A-Level exams, one of them in Politics. He shares my views so we can do high-fives this evening.

Courgettes

They seem very happy out there on the step, although it’s distinctly cooler, especially at night, than they were used to in the kitchen. They were beginning to get a bit etiolated, in fact. The true leaves are now unfolding rapidly. I hardened my heart yesterday and removed the weaker brother from each of the four pots. It was encouraging to see what healthy little root systems they had. But five-and-a-half days without water or a mother’s love….

Knitting? What’s that?

The committee meeting last night was admirably brisk, but I got the heel turned. The sad thing was that when the heel-flap moment came, I couldn’t find the little ball of the solid-colour yarn. I had finished winding it only that morning. It has dematerialised. Too late now.

Back next Tuesday, insh’Allah.

Politics

I approach today's shoot-out with heavy heart. Optimism has been so often misplaced; maybe it’ll work better this way.

Let’s pass briskly on…

Comments

I was grateful to Jennifer (day before yesterday) and Ron for their agreement with my fault-finding over IK. Jennifer points out – I’d missed it – that EZ’s Old Man is named “Arthur” in a picture caption. Franklin has it right in the text, of course. That’s appalling. She also says that the color-theory article doesn’t make much sense: I shall seize on the excuse to skip it.

I am grateful, too, for further endorsements of Lisa Lloyd’s “A Fine Fleece”. I’d have overlooked it, thinking it just for spinners (of whom I wish I was one, but that’s another story).

Knitting

Should reach Thomas-the-Elder’s first heel today, especially as there is a Drummond Place committee meeting this evening. Not to boast or anything, but I can turn a heel at a committee meeting if circumstances demand.

And since that’s all there is to say about that, I shall try to raise my sagging spirits by talking about vegetable growing.

Courgettes

Last year, we had beautiful weather in April and for the first four or five days of May, and that was it – end of summer. But on the 4th or 5th of May, not knowing what was to come, I bought a little courgette plant from a garden shop in Milnathort. Usually, I plant seeds in the open ground mid-May.

The places for the courgettes had already been prepared (as they have this year) – holes dug, half-filled with manure, filled in, marked with sticks. I planted the little courgette and covered it with a sawn-off plastic water bottle of which we have many, left over from our year without water.

It suffered terribly for the rest of May – maybe it hadn’t been hardened off properly. But it came through and – here’s the point – all summer long remained ahead of the directly-sown ones.

So this year I started a few from seed on a windowsill in about mid-April. They have all come up nicely, and I worry about how they will manage when I go to London tomorrow. I’ve put them out – the weather has suddenly turned summer, after a dismal April – and screwed them down into the herb trough, as you see, so that they can draw up some help from below if the weather is parching. There could still be a frost, but the warmth of the building should protect them. So far, they seem very happy out there. True leaves are beginning to develop. They’re an Italian sort, called “Fruili” I think.

I am full of foreboding about London.

The scarf is five feet long, so supernatural retardation can no longer be suspected. That’s all the pattern asks for, but I’ll go on for another foot or so because it’s so narrow. I'll try to add a picture later -- Blogger is having the vapours at the moment.

I think I have discovered the mildest of errors in the pattern as printed, but I’m not quite sure. The idea is, you do two triangles from one side, constituting one “wedge”, and then switch over and do two from the other. There are five rows of garter stitch between same-edge triangles. When you’re switching sides, I think it says to do six rows of garter stitch for the switch in one direction, and eight in the other.

It’s all concealed in instructions to repeat certain rows, and even now I’m not quite sure. I have settled down, anyway, with six rows of garter stitch for the switch in either direction – and the early instances where I did eight are completely undetectable.

Comments

Shandy, I agree about that lace tunic in IK. I like that too, and hesitated. But I can’t imagine it looking good on any of my loved ones, not even Cathy, who is small and fashionable. Whereas I can at least think about knitting the Mari Lynn Patrick “Blue Lagoon Redux” from VK for her – could she wear it over a shirt? Surely.

I like your silk-lined scarf, and it reminded me that there is some silk fabric in my stash cupboard which it is tine I did something with.

Donna, you must mean “Knitting with Handspun Yarns” when you refer to Lisa Lloyd’s book. Amazon says it hasn’t been released here yet. (So how come they’re offering used copies?) I’ll keep an eye on it.

I love the Koigu socks you knit. How are they wearing (Koigu being pure wool)? Did you reinforce heel or toe?

I have enough Araucania yarn left over from the rather-too-short sweater I knit for Alexander’s son James-the-Younger, to knit a pair of socks for Alexander himself. It might amuse both father and son. The yarn isn’t billed as a sock yarn, but it’s 25% poly-what’s-it, like sock yarns, and has a firm twist, so why not?

Barbara, I can’t get through to my website either, this morning. I hope it’ll come back. The story there is that when I switched to broadband, I assumed I would still have some “free” webspace such as was supplied with my dial-up subscription. But no. For a year I kept the dial-up subscription running as well, for the sake of the webspace, and then decided that was ridiculous and found somewhere else to put my stuff – but I’ve never finished getting it back up.

Thanks for the help on the Latin names of the various sorrel species. I was slightly afraid when I wrote what I did yesterday – wondering why it’s “rumex acetosa” on the one hand but “rumex scutatus” on the other – that M*rgaret Velard would pop up and say that “scutatus” was a 4th declension genitive as eny fule no.

(A reference to a spat she and I once had on Knitflame about the plural of “virus” during which she actually asked me where I learned my Latin.)

Anyway, here’s the present state of the sock. I continue very pleased. You can't see much of the subtle, manly colours or even of the ribbing, but you get the general idea.

And today is scarf-Sunday again. If it still measures about four feet this time tomorrow, I’ll know for sure that it’s cursed.

The summer IK turned up here yesterday! What a week for magazines!

I turned at once to Franklin’s article about the Zimmermans and read it with much pleasure. I was slightly sorry perhaps that he tactfully omitted reference to Elizabeth’s illness (Alzheimer’s) and death – Meg was never coy about it.

And while I’m picking nits, I very much don’t like the cover headline “Meg Swansen Forges Knitting Onward”. Two separate words have been confused – “forge” to make something, whether or not actually on a forge; and “forge” to move forward, as in “forge ahead”, originally a nautical term. (I hadn’t known that until I started looking this up.) The first is transitive, the second intransitive, to put it another way.

So Meg could be said to “forge onward”, or – slightly strangely – to “forge knitting”; but not both together.

The meaning is clear enough, I suppose, and English is a gloriously fluid language, but I don’t like it.

I mean to try to get to grips with the article about color theory. Kaffe’s advice, to take a postcard of a favourite painting and try to match the colours, remains simple and brilliant, and so far represents the farthest I’ve ever been able to get with the subject.

None of the patterns attract me, as several did in VK. It is nice to have that honest picture of the knitted skirt on p. 37, to remind us why it would not be a good idea to knit it. The jury is still out on the new regime at IK, insofar as the jury consists of me. Summer issues are not the ones to judge any editor by.

I lost – London it is. We’re going down next Wednesday, returning on Monday the 12th. London is tough, and it’ll take a couple of days at least to recover, but I should be reunited with my vegetable patch by the following weekend. It means missing the first day of the annual Christian Aid book sale, too (Saturday the 10th) but Lindsay will be looking out for VKBs for me.

London at least is good for knitting – I am delighted with the way the broad ribs are looking on Thomas-the-Elder’s socks, and will push hard to get the pair finished or nearly, while we’re there. Picture tomorrow.

Maryjo0 (comment day before yesterday), I’m always happy to talk about books. Currently, I have my sights on “Vatid, Troid, Vamsad” which Schoolhouse is selling. (I buy a lot of knitting books from them.) It occurred to me, after my embarrassment over “Cables, Diamonds, Herringbone” the other day, that this is just the sort of book I might have already bought, shelved and forgotten.

And it also occurred to me that I now have the definitive solution to that anxiety: LibraryThing. I went and looked it up and I don’t have it. It’s expensive; I’ll hesitate for a bit; but I think I’ll order it.

I’m awfully glad I took the trouble a few months ago to catalogue all my knitting books in LibraryThing. There is a certain amount of disorder around here, but those books are all together in two places (except for a few on the floor here around the computer, and occasionally others under the bed) and I am sure LibraryThing has them all. The very first and most fun thing I do when I buy a new book is rush to LibraryThing and put it in.

So if they say I don’t have “Vatid, Troid, Vamsad” I can be sure I really don’t.

Non-knit

I think we’ve now got sorrel nailed. Mel was right, as usual: sorrel the weed is closely related to but not identical with the culinary plant. Helen the indefatigable traveller about the Internet found this site. Rumex acetosa is the delicious plant I have just put in two of; r. acetosella is a creeping weed; r. scutatus is French sorrel.

Despite what the Penguin Companion says, Else, I think acetosa is probably the commoner for eating purposes. I bought one scutatus and put it in: it’s very tasty, but the leaves are very small and as the nice woman said who sold it to me (at the weekly Strathmore and the Glens market in the Wellmeadow in Blairgowrie last Saturday) it takes a lot of picking, and is best used as an accent in a salad.

(Why “scutatus”? Why not “scutata”? Else’s right – that’s the Latin for French sorrel. But why?)

Callie, thanks for the reference to Joy of Cooking. Sure enough, my copy says the same, about using stainless steel or enamel when cooking sorrel. I don’t use that book much any more, but it remains a mine of information. I had it out recently to remind myself how to make milk toast (not a British thing) for my husband in the extremity of his recent tooth-suffering, when carbohydrate intake had to be maintained. And I remember once looking up – but not using -- her recipes for cooking squirrels. Mrs Rombauer is no slouch.

I’ve finished the infinitely tedious 50-rounds-of-k2-p2 rib for Thomas’s first sock, and embarked on the leg which is to be a k6, p2 rib. The yarn is knitting up beautifully – there may be enough for a pic by the time I reach scarf-Sunday.

I warned you this would be boring.

Comments

I am glad to hear that sorrel is so widely known, if not used in the kitchen. I suspect that Mel, as so often, may have hit the nail on the head when he says that the weed of the same name is similar but not identical to the culinary sorrel. All of the books we own which might help with the question are shelved in Strathardle. I’ll investigate when next we’re there.

I had a look at Donna Druchunas’ charity knitting blog – the link provided by Mel, again. Had a nice time wandering around the rest of her blog, too. But I’ll hold off on the books for the time being.

Thanks, too, for the links about Adina’s departure from VK. It’s sad – she was good. It seems to me that VK remains confidently at the top of the non-fugly fashion-knit league, and has excellent articles to boot. Lily Chin’s series on shape and fit would be invaluable, I suspect, if I had the mental energy to face up to it. I’m glad at least that Adina's word “heartbreaking”, of her departure, didn’t mean that she was leaving to, e.g., nurse a dying child.

Non-knit

Today is the day, I hope, when we decide about going to London for a round of art. Or not, my preferred option. My husband seems to consider himself peppy enough to attempt it. All I want is to get back north to my vegetables. It’s May, for heaven’s sake.