Mr DHL arrived well within the promised time, and the veil is on its way eastwards. I hope one day we’ll get a picture of it in use – the Big Day is in April. Many thanks to the commenters who spoke kindly of it yesterday.


Meanwhile I continue most happily with the Princess. I am doing row 24 of the border – there are 220 in all. And that will by no means be the end of the matter. I loved Helen’s comment yesterday: “It is just the closest you can get to pure process knitting short of unravelling your work every night.”

One small potential landmark is in sight, however – I’m nearly finished with the current ball of yarn. I think I’ll go on knitting my Princess at least until I tie in the next one.

Journalism

There’s one of those little pieces about How Popular Knitting Is These Days in the current Economist, of all magazines – page 47 of the British edition. (They move the pages around according to where the magazine is sold, but you’ll find it in the middle of the United States section. It even mentions the Stitch-and-Bitch trademark row.)

And three blogs are mentioned -- Yarn Harlot and You Knit What??, which we all know about, and knit and tonic which is new to me. I’ve added it doubtfully to my favourites list, but I can see at a glance that it’s not a patch on Franklin, whose current post, as it happens, is a send-up of precisely the sort of little Article About Knitting which we find in the current Economist.

Non-knit

I’ve heard from Helen in Thessaloniki about the applique animal:

"I would be v. surprised indeed if it were Persian. It was made in the tent makers quarter in Cairo where you walk down a crumbling covered alley in the heart of the old Islamic city where they butcher chickens at one end and make applique work of exquisite beauty and intricacy at the other. The word allah is indeed clearly recognisable and I assume the legs say 'wa' = and, and the bottom seems to say 'from him'. It is a lion and it is a common enough motif in Islamic calligraphy. Its not meant to be readable, it is probably a list of the attributes of god, and the point, as in all Arabic calligraphy is the beauty of it. Since the Koran was dictated directly by God, words have huge significance being not merely human tools. "

I sent her Mama Lu’s comment from Thursday, with the links to the pages on calligraphy.

Lorna: the rest of my seeds arrived yesterday, and it is as I feared: I hadn’t ordered any Indian mustard this year. I was going to grow only Salad Leaves Niche Mixed, and a couple of different lettuces, and Pak Choi and Choi Sum (which I wouldn’t dream of exposing to the rabbits). So I went back to Thompson and Morgan’s (excellent) website last night and ordered some mustard and also parsnips, which I adore but have never grown successfully. Watch this space in October or so, for a comparison between the habits of the rabbits of Glasgow and Strathardle. Habits of the rabbits…I like it.