Today I am going to try driving to the supermarket – a test both for myself and for the car. I’m scared. I like going to the supermarket: that’s something. It’ll be fun, if I get there. Waitrose has recently opened in Edinburgh: a palace of delights. They don’t deliver yet, so we have reverted to Sainsbury’s recently, who deliver promptly and reliably. But an hour in Waitrose, if I achieve it, will be sweet.

We’ve postponed Strathardle for a day, until Saturday, because of a problem involving a leaking lavatory and an overworked plumber. Lorna's tragic story at least includes a plumber who came within ten minutes. That’s unimaginable, in Edinburgh.

Readership and weight both down this morning!

Comments

Many, many thanks to everybody who attempted to lighten my darkness on the .pdf file front. I’ve just been to the Traditional Knitting site and downloaded a lot of Liz’s files – all the ones I think I want – by right-clicking on them. Now that I’ve got them, I can face up to Adobe in a calmer week – or, more profitably, investigate Foxit. Thanks a lot. Right-clicking is a technique I still tend to overlook.

Lene, can't you order Shetland yarns from Jamieson & Smith, having first obtained a shade card? They're very efficient.

Calcutta Cup sweater

I’m not happy.



I thought last night that maybe I was just suffering from a bad case of the winter glooms (“I’faith, I know not why I am so sad,” as someone once said) but I still don’t like it this morning.

I am grateful for your sympathy on the gauge front, and interested to hear what troubles other people have had, even using familiar yarn and techniques. I often think of a passage I’ve probably quoted before, from Evelyn Waugh’s “Men at Arms”: “Major Erskine…was strangely dishevelled in appearance. His uniform was correct and clean but it never seemed to fit him, not through any fault of the tailor’s, but rather because the major seemed to change shape from time to time during the day.”

Not that it’s Alexander’s fault, in this case. He gallantly wrote yesterday to say that too big is better than too small. I seem to be getting about 7 stitches to the inch, which would produce a circumference of slightly more than 46”. That’s really too much. I was aiming for 43” (7.5 stitches to the inch) and that is already generous, to accommodate the pattern repeats.

And I don’t like the pattern – so easy it’s difficult. And I don’t at all like the way I’ve arranged the colours vis a vis the pattern. This one, in particular:



So I think the thing to do is go back to the drawing board in the form of the Sweater Wizard, and try 7 stitches as my gauge and a different pattern (I’ve found another possible). The Calcutta Cup motif can be altered by moving the bits of it closer together. I won't rip out this work, at least for the time being, just lay it aside as a dreadful warning.