We’re living again…

--With all those sporting events at last played out, Our Soap has been restored to the television screens.

--Yesterday I finished re-entering all my husband’s document files into Documents To Go, which is now responsible for keeping them up to date on the Palm Pilot while I return to the task of importing up-to-date versions of the ones he’s been revising. Why did Documents To Go forget my earlier work?

--And Helen should arrive in London today, from Thessaloniki, with all her little boys. She will travel north at the weekend, and so will Rachel with two of her children, and I will be reunited with my vegetables.

Knitting

I finished the 32-row “Small Paisley Pattern” on my Paisley Long Shawl, and tonight will begin the 32-row “Large Paisley Pattern”. It’s much more fun now that I have, for the time being, finished the tedious centre.

It occurs to me that all is not lost, on length. When this half is finished, I have to undo the waste yarn and set off in the opposite direction to do the other half. The join will be inconspicuous, but discernable. But I could perfectly well lengthen or shorten the shawl by adding or subtracting repeats in the second half. The join wouldn’t be dead centre any more, but so what?

I think the thing to do is take it off the needles when the first half is finished, do a proper blocking, and consider options. The pattern says to use blocking wires, pointing out that pins will create little points along the edge. I think the designer is right, and I must set about acquiring some. I love crawling around on the dining room floor with a box of dressmaker’s pins, and the lace I knit usually has scallops, so the issue hasn’t arisen before. I wonder if blocking wires are available in the UK.

I asked my sister-in-law once if I could knit her a shawl, and she said no, she didn’t want one, but added that she wouldn’t mind something she could wear when reading in bed. For that purpose, great length is probably undesirable. We shall see.

Yarn

Here is my Jade Sapphire, colourway “Anya’s Garden”. And here is my new Koigu. See the entry for Saturday the 8th. (For "here" read "there". Yesterday's miraculous picture-upload didn't repeat itself this morning.)

The Koigu represents some de-stashing on the Socklady’s part. I asked her to bring the cashmere. It was meant to be a simple order, delivered to her, but wound up being immensely complicated, for reasons I have now forgotten because she dealt with them all.

My plan of – at that point, the doorbell rang, and guess what? My Oriental Garden Tool from Pinetree is here! That’s almost impossible. It looks utterly wonderful. I will have to get myself a big straw hat.