Bloomsday, 2006

Shrug

I finished the back of the shrug, as hoped. It didn’t come out quite right – I had only10 stitches for the final cast-off on the second shoulder, instead of the required 13. I didn’t go back.

The essentials are all right – the division into three for right sleeve, neck, left sleeve is correct; there are the same number of rows on each side. I must just have miscounted somewhere while doing the sloping shoulder. I’m trying hard not to worry about it.

I got the first front started. That’s going more smoothly than I had feared, reading the instructions. I am increasing every other row on one side, every eighth row on the other. But the cable is crossed every eighth row, too, and I worked it so that (as soon as I had enough stitches to cross) the crosses correspond with the increases. So far so good.

And I’m optimistic about yarn-quantity-remaining, too. When that ball is finished, maybe today, I’ll have used half of what I have. I need enough at the end for a deep ribbed edging all around. I couldn’t buy an extra skein to-be-on-the-safe-side, this time, because they only had just enough in the shop (for the smallest size, at that).

Princess Shawl

I saw on The Princess Diaries the other day that Ted has reached exactly the point where I am, in his Princess Shawl – for much the same reasons. He wanted to get past the first page of the chart, just as I did. He’s now going off on holiday for a bit, so I suppose I have a faint hope of finishing the shrug and resuming my own Princess before he gets back. Whether or no, he’ll soon streak ahead – he once did ten rows in a weekend. One-a-day is full-steam-ahead for me.

Life

I discovered at some point yesterday afternoon that my debit card was missing. I rang up Waitrose (new to Edinburgh) where I had been the day before. They’ve got it, all right, so that was a relief. I’ll go get it this morning.

I also discovered yesterday that the car tax runs out at the end of the month, so I booked the car in for an MOT and general health check on Monday. All very well – but in the course of doing that, I discovered that the old MOT ran out, for some unimaginable reason, at the end of last month. So presumably on my trip to Waitrose, and to the garage on Monday, and to Strathardle last weekend, I was driving illegally and probably therefore uninsured. Oh dear.

Pictures

Thank you, commenters, for help and advice. I understand the general concept of downsizing pixel size, although I didn’t know it could be done in Paint. But I wonder if that is the trouble? The pics go up promptly enough when I use “Hello” to post them separately from the prose. Blogger has to be accepting them, that way; although not hosting them, of course. Having pics at all, within Blogger itself, is a relatively new development, and I still think the trouble is there.

But I’ll have a look at Paint, and I will also, since the trouble is continuing this morning, try again later in the day. That’s an interesting idea.

Other

Still no movement on that VKB on eBay.