Getting on towards the end of row 96, of the Princess border.

Two addenda to yesterday’s post:

(a) They have a little section on Radio 4 these days, between 5:30 and 6 a.m., where they tell you what today is the anniversary of. And today, they maintain, is the anniversary of the beginning of the Blitz (not late August, as I said yesterday). They played a little clip of Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from the steps of St Martin’s in the Fields. I had heard of him, of course, but had never heard him before. He was good, all right.

(b) There is in ad in VKB no. 17 for a sock pattern with detachable soles. It’s Ladyship Wools pattern no. 121. There is no way of knowing – unless it turns up on eBay one day – whether they do it the same way as EZ in her famous pattern, mentioned by Meg in her article in the 2006 VK just published. EZ, remember, never claimed originality – she assumed that anything that occurred to her had probably occurred at some time or other to other knitters somewhere or other. (But I bet nobody else ever invented the Baby Surprise.)

(c) Thank you, Jean, for a most interesting comment. I really must pull myself together and find out how severely yarn was rationed, and for how long. The post-war VKB in yesterday’s illustration speaks as if coupons were still necessary in 1947, and as if they went further if you bought yarn than if you used them for actual clothes. [Of course clothes rationing went on after the war, come to think of it – people sent coupons to Princess Elizabeth when she married Philip Mountbatten. Was that ’47? Quite likely.]

Rowan

I was back in Lewis’s yarn department yesterday while Boots across the way straightened out a muddle involving a prescription. Rowan has a good book out called Scottish Island Knitting or words very similar. There are some interesting things there, among them two Kaffe’s I liked a lot. But fifteen pounds! Ouch.

The magazine I bought on Tuesday was £10.50, which is bad enough. In the early days I bought the Rowan mags faithfully; I’ve slackened off. I got this one largely for the sake of Parker, p. 78. The yarn is called Tapestry, and it’s gorgeous – largely wool, with an admixture of soy. I was told that it felts well. I’m not entirely sure that’s an advantage, for me.

The rest of the magazine doesn’t seem quite as interesting on close inspection, as I thought it was, in the shop.

I sort of had a feeling, revisiting the scene yesterday, that Rowan makes an awful lot of different yarns these days with an inevitable reduction in the colour range of each.