Friday, January 12, 2007

Rain is hitting the windows with unpleasant determination again this morning, but unlike yesterday the early emails brought no temptation to spend money on knitting.

Two things I forgot yesterday:

Anonymous (comment, day before yesterday), I did look up Bev Galeska’s Magic Loop, and it’s interesting. Thank you for reminding me. I don’t think I’m going to try to change, now that I’ve mastered two circulars. The drawback of either system is that one has to stop half-way through the round, unwind all that yarn from all those fingers, set everything up again, re-wind the fingers, and…by that time I have forgotten where I was in the pattern and the process has to be repeated at least once before I can proceed.

The Magic Loop uses only one circular, but it still involves a mid-round halt.

The other thing is that Lorna let me have an early look at the brochure for the Fibre-Crafts retreat to be held in Jedburgh May 11-14. It’s gonna be good. I’m pretty sure she’d send it in .pdf form to anyone interested: lornajay at gmail dot com. The weekend will include an outing to the Woolly Ewe in Kelso, full of covetable yarn. At first, it looked as if that wasn’t going to be possible. Lorna must have persuaded them to open specially.

Calcutta Cup sweater

I tried worrying yesterday about whether I had calculated the sleeve length correctly – there’s not much room for manoeuvre, if I haven’t. But I’m now nearly half-way up, in terms of rounds. (Not in terms of knitting, because of the increases.) And the current measurement seems very plausible. And it sort of looks like a nascent sleeve. And it’s got the right number of stitches for the number of increases I am currently supposed to have done. I’m really rather pleased with it.

I will no doubt have more to say about the real-life Calcutta Cup as Match Day ’07 draws nigh. It will be played in London this year, which reduces Scotland’s chances to somewhere near nil. Not absolutely nil, however. England has been going through rather a bad patch lately, and Scotland through rather a good one, both for the same reason: a new team coach.

But I’ll tell you this: if Scotland does achieve the miracle, I will knit the Cup with the dates '06 and '07 into the Princess Shawl after all. No monkeying around with elephants: the Calcutta Cup.

5 comments:

  1. All I can see is that with you rooting for them, I wonder how Scotland ever loses the Calcutta Cup. The ferocity of your devotion is palpable.

    xoxo
    Franklin

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  2. Anonymous1:58 PM

    I've never been tempted to knit a multi-colored project until you began the Calcutta Cup sweater. I may be forced to revise my thinking! I really enjoy seeing the pictures as you post them.

    Donna

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  3. Anonymous2:35 PM

    A Canadian lady from Kingston Ontario has a sweater in "Sweaters from Camp" that starts in middle (think button band) with a provisional cast on and is knit toward the sleeve in the round. You have to cut the steek at the bottom band. I didn't do a fair isle but did a striped sweater using my left over Jamieson and Smith and it turned out nicely. Great fit and with vertical stripes on this chubby body. I also want to try a fair isle from the top down in a raglan. Have you ever heard of anyone doing this?
    Ron from Mexico

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  4. Anonymous8:16 PM

    When I use Magic Loop, I don't have it divided into two section most of the time. So, it is like a normal circular. When I reach the end (my marker), I slide the cable around so the left side of the work is on the needle and the right needle is free with the cable trailing it. The only time I need it divided into two sections, with cable trailing out from the middle is if it gets difficult to knit because the circumference is getting small. I know I'm not explaining it very well, if you like I can take pictures and e-mail them.

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  5. Anonymous7:43 PM

    You will never cease to amaze me with your knitting!!! ^_^

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