Miscellany

No movement on that VKB on eBay – but it doesn’t finish until Monday.

I finished and cast off what will be the top of the right shoulder of the back of the shrug. Tonight, perhaps, the back will be finished entirely. If James and his family are going to be at the Games, the Children’s Sections will be hotly contested, and at least I can present the spectacle of Grandmother, Gracious in Defeat, as an example to the losers. I also hope to enter the “Three Potatoes”, “Six Pea Pods” and “Collection of Four Vegetables” classes, so there will be plenty of scope for displaying graciousness.

I belong to a Yahoo group called Blogger_Users_Support. Mostly it’s way over my head, but yesterday there was a question-and-answer about posting pictures. Let’s see if I’ve learned anything.

No -- that didn't work.

It is my wont to use a picture from last year’s Games as my computer wallpaper. The last few weeks, feeling sad about how nobody was going to be there this year, I have been using a picture of Franklin at Ruskin’s grave, a cool green way to start the day. This morning, feeling cheerful again, I have put up this one, [above, I trust] of Alexander and James with other dear people in the background.

Knitting is represented by Alexander’s ill-fitting sweater, a KF design from a Rowan kit, back in the good old days when Rowan kitted a lot of their designs and then sold the kits off cheap in the January sales. I’ve changed this one by rotating the circular motifs 90 degrees. And by his hose, which were knitted as my Games entry one year. They took a second, I think. James’s hose are store-boughten.

Comments

I am obsessive about giving myself credit for each ball and skein and cone of yarn actually used, so I am as surprised as you are, Aarlene, and rather distressed, at how that cone from which I’m knitting Ketki’s gansey, never diminishes.

Esther, thank you for your comments. I had a nice time with Starmore’s “Fisherman’s Sweaters” book when we were in the country at the weekend. There are some seriously good things there. I have never knit a Starmore, I don’t think, although I have a pretty comprehensive collection of her books. I attempted “Stillwater” last year, and failed miserably because it is a Fair Isle pattern with no rhythm to it. The experience has sort of turned me against her, which is unfair.

Politics

Our friend George W. Bush turned up in Iraq the other day for a five-hour visit. What a brave man. Cheney and Condi and Rummy knew what was afoot, but nobody told the Iraqi Prime Minister Mr Maliki until GWB was safely in the Green Zone. If Bush trusts him that little, why should we, or anyone?