We’re moving forward, website-wise. I’ve pared down the opening page into a basic who’s-who of the immediate family, where each of them lives, and what their children are called. I’ve signed up with UK-Cheapest and had an email from them which may or may not explain how to get access to my webspace. They say to wait for a bit to let the new domain name bed down. I thought and thought yesterday and finally came up with milestones, which I liked a lot, but it turned out that all the variants (milestone, milestones, mile-stone, mile-stones) with all possible suffixes had been bought up by the same person.

So I went for millepassuum which is Miles in Latin. As I suspected, nobody else wants that one. I think I’ll leave the whole topic now until we get back from London.

So, knitting

While we were in Strathardle last week, I got back to grips with Ketki’s gansey. I finished the back, and am progressing nicely up the front. The joys of provisional cast-ons and shoulder straps are not far away.

A little while ago my friend Helen showed me a navy blue gansey which had belonged to her father, knit on Eriskay I think she said. It was stunning in every detail, not least a split collar with silver-type buttons. And it didn’t hesitate to include stretches of plain st st.

With that in mind, I abandoned plans for double moss st and did a couple of inches plain at the top of the back, carrying the seven-stitch strips of broken rib up to the shoulder. The same strips will appear on the shoulder straps and run down the otherwise-plain sleeves.






This is a front view:

I stopped the main pattern before the top because I didn’t want to cut one of those trees. I put in a few rows of garter stitch as a division-line. The only difference between front and back – since I have opted for an Unshaped Neck – is that the front has a centred tree and the back has a broken rib strip in the middle.

Here in Edinburgh, I’ve finished the first Calcutta Cup sleeve and started the second. Two-circular knitting has been resumed, and feels very clumsy, but at least I’ve started and it won’t last long.

We’re going to London tomorrow. I’ll try to log in from there at some point. Deidra, Oyster cards are a London thing, well worth getting if you’re going to be there a few days. You pay for bus and tube and rail journeys by swiping the card, and you go to the newsagent and get more money squirted into it when necessary. It’s great fun, and journeys paid for by Oyster Card are actually somewhat cheaper.