Onward!

Or, perhaps, a better title: Everything Works for the Best, in the Best of All Possible Worlds.

I got started on the color knitting for the Stillwater yesterday. It's not a symmetrical pattern, so the experience is not the utter Zen bliss of a traditional Fair Isle pattern, which usually is symmetrical, but it's still pretty good. I had yarn trouble -- I had some old Twentieth Century Yarn (they've now re-named themselves 21st Century), pretty nice but in use it felt slightly thicker than ordinary Shetland, so I revamped the colours a bit to eliminate those skeins. Then I discovered that some Shetland lace skeins had found their way into the Shetland jumper-weight box by mistake, so I eliminated THOSE skeins. And fished some additional skeins out of the boxes to make up the deficit. All is well now, I think.

Soon I should be able to show you my progress. Meanwhile, here's a pic from Alice Starmore's book. You can see the verticality of the pattern, and the coolness of the colours.

Stillwater


Then yesterday afternoon I got an email from my son Alexander to say that his son James -- our youngest grandchild, although not for long; James is soon to be a brother -- could do with a hat. One of the 20th Century Yarn skeins will be perfect. All I want is a gentle rib, fisherman's I think. k2 p2 might be too tight, and brioche too loose. I think James would prefer not to go about dressed as a pumpkin or a berry. So I must now guess how many stitches to cast on. The patterns I have found so far are all worsted weight.

Watch this space