Has there ever before in the history of the world been a political cartoon on the cover of the New Yorker (September 19)? A good one, too.

I just discovered, from my early morning blog-cruise, that the Knitting Curmudgeon (http://www.knittingcurmudgeon.com./) is Queer Joe's (www.queerjoe.blogspot.com) sister. Or is that a metaphor of some sort?

Knitting

Not much, yesterday. We live, on the whole, out of the world, but occasionally it intrudes, and did yesterday, in the form of a Drummond Place Civic Society committee meeting, held here. So I had to tidy up the dining room and think about drinks and nibbles all day, and then I had to chair the meeting, which eliminated any surreptitious sock-knitting. I did, however, knock off another Princess Shawl edging repeat during the day.

And, see above, I laid it out for the Big Count. It wasn't as hard as I expected. I used the dressmaking pins I use for blocking, and pinned every 10th point to the floor. I had also inserted a life-line after 50 repeats, which now usefully confirmed the count. The Peg-It board is right. And I've done a bit since -- I'm now nearly finished with #82!

I then celebrated by getting the pattern out. The pages are loose -- I've been on Page 2 for so long that it's beginning to look a bit shabby. But page 3 looks like a real breeze, and then we get on to the fun part. The prospect of picking up 865 stitches holds few terrors. I've got a nice chained edge, I've often done this sort of thing before, with Gladys Amedro's patterns -- and in fact I see that I had to pick up 960 for the Calcutta Cup shawl (http://www.jeanmile.demon.co.uk/gown.htm).

This is so exciting.

Comments and stuff

Heidi, I tried to email you yesterday about the HTML code needed to alert the world to the First Holy Communion veil pattern on my website, but the message bounced. Could you email me again (jean@jeanmile.demon.co.uk)?

Sheila alerted me to the presence of a KF kit on Ebay. I tried to bid (for the first time in my life), but failed, because it was American Ebay and I couldn't enter an American address when I tried to register. There were only a few hours left, too. However, Sheila has written again this morning to say it's still there, and cheaper, too, so I'm going to ask a friend to have a go for me.

It's his "Magyar" pattern from Rowan 8. I've got Rowan 8, and can see at a glance that Magyar is not for me. Amoeba-like shapes in intarsia constitute the Knitting Project Too Far, as far as I am concerned. However, there's no reason I couldn't use the yarns for a more geometric pattern -- there's one, in fact, in the same issue of the Rowan book. I have a big bag of Rowan oddballs from all the kits I've knit, so any deficiences could easily be plugged.

I'll let you know what happens.