I think I made some very slight headway with Clearing Up Life yesterday, but it didn’t include blocking the Long Shawl.

Games

Thank you for yesterday’s sympathy about the fate of my shrug. I enjoyed the link to Polly's blog, too, and her pictures of the truly amazing work entered in the Kew show.

I retain some sympathy for the Strathardle judges. I am sure they are looking for actual quality-of-knitting more than for dazzling-pattern. The winning shrug (see yesterday) looked as if it had been cut out of a bath mat – but very well and neatly cut. Anyway, here is granddaughter Hellie wearing the despised shrug in the kitchen when we got home, and making it look good. It's hers, now.



And Alexander says there was a fourth one, whose outraged owner must have snatched it away before I got into the Home Industries Tent. If so, I wasn’t last!

We always try to take a group picture when we get back to the house. Here is last year's:




I am in white, an unfortunate choice, wearing the Fair Isle beret which came first in "A Hat: Any Craft" which is not the same as winning a first in Knitting.

And here’s this one. I had been looking forward to the display of my new stone-and-a-half lighter form. Alas, I’m not sure it shows up, under my beloved Panopticon sweatshirt – from under which, the equally beloved New Yoga teeshirt is peeping out. My husband’s sister was with us, and it is she standing with him in the centre of the picture, looking matriarchal. I am the one on the right, looking demented.



Knitting

I reached row 74 of the Princess last night. By the time I have exhausted the delights of the Games, it will be time to take another picture of it. It’s reeely fun. The current passage is extremely easy, and yet absorbingly interesting. Every row is different and the repeats are 78 stitches, but it is very easy to learn each one as you go along, and each row grows logically from the previous one in the proper Shetland fashion. And even in the few rows I’ve knit since the latest resumption, motifs get finished off and others introduced. ‘Swonderful.