Finished.

I'm rather pleased with the result, and it looks distinctly Fergus-sized. The pattern was spat out by the Sweater Wizard computer program, with Wallaby pouch and decorated yoke added by me. The yarn is Rowan 4-ply soft, in perhaps a slightly unfortunate colour (from Rowan's point of view) which I bought on sale at Liberty in the summer of '04. The colour is perfect for Fergus.

It is pretty similar in gauge and twist and feel to Koigu and to Louet Gems Merino. Who knows? they may all come from the same mill (Koigu, of course, being dyed by those geniuses in Canada). In any case, I have been doing enough with those yarns recently that I was able to type in my gauge with confidence. Traditional knitters, I have long thought, have the considerable advantage of working again and again with the same materials, so that all the sizing issues are utterly familiar to them, and they can concentrate on varying the traditional themes.

I'm not a great fan of swatching.

What Next?

I'm pretty sure I'm going to cast on a crinkled scarf this evening, using a pattern Judith pointed me towards. Poor Princess! But I comfort myself with the thought that I'm using up stash, and acquiring a Christmas present for someone if it works. And it shouldn't take long.

Non-knit

Here we are in November, and the climate is so comfortable that we haven't yet seriously considered turning on the heat. Bizarre. I went out shopping yesterday in shirt sleeves and ribwarmer. We are lucky enough to have an antique Aga, and the kitchen is in the centre of the flat; that helps. But it's a warm house, in general -- the warmest we've ever lived in, handy in old age. We turn off everything, always, when we go away, and homecoming never feels distressingly gelid. There are people living above and below, of course -- but that was true of our first flat, In Glasgow in the '50's. And that house was cold.

As part of the Great Switch of Bank Accounts, I must now use the Royal Bank's on-line banking service. Their security is much better than the Bank of Scotland security which I am used to, with the result that sometimes I do something wrong and can't get in myself and I am terrified of the process.

Comments

Pamela, thank you for the link. I don't want fuzzy, though, and can't really tell if the underlying pattern is what I'm looking for.

Grace, thank you for the long note. I still want to see your website. Before I heard from you, I tried Googling on "Princess Shawl Grace" and found myself back on my own Blog. Perhaps if I tried "Historical costume Grace" I'd do better.