Greek greets Greek this morning, I understand, by saying “Christ is risen” (in Greek, of course). To which the reply is “He is risen indeed”. This seems to me to make a lot more sense than “Happy Easter”. I greeted Mr Murtaza in the corner shop this morning by saying “Eid mubarak”, which is more usually said at the Festival at the end of Ramadan. He thanked me, and explained that he was a bit late opening up, because he had been hunting Easter eggs in the garden with his children.

Whether you’re celebrating anything or not, have a good day.

The Princess

Here she is, with the nodding seeds clearly to be discerned on either side of what I devoutly hope is the central “feather”. Never mind row-counts and percentages: the border patterns are clearly reaching a crescendo.

And it’s a good moment to pause, not least because I am becoming obsessive. I’m somewhere in row 192.

Janet, yes, there are 220 rows in the border. Then six plain. Then the 19-row insertion, which reduces the stitch-count from the current 865 to 647. Then the centre. Sharon doesn’t say how many rows that will involve. You start off with five stitches in the middle, and knit back and forth picking up one from the border each row. 647 minus 5 leaves 642 stitches to be picked up row-by-row. And then the top must be finished off with that fiendish edging.

This is ridiculous.

One cheerful thing, though. The current ball of yarn is beginning to look and feel a bit subdued. Here it is, compared to a fresh one.

Kathy took her border off the needles and stretched it out for photographing – the link is in my sidebar. At the moment, mine is just an enormous rectangle. She’s well advanced with the centre.

I have been thinking of the finished object as a big triangle. But getting my lace-knitting webpages straightened out last week took me back to Gladys Amedro’s “Cobweb Lace Wrap”, a favourite pattern. It, too, feels like a triangle while being knit, but the finished object, judging from my photographs, is rather similar in shape to the Princess herself, judging from the Museum of Scotland picture in that huge URL I quoted some entries back.

You can’t call it an oval, because the top edge is straight. You can’t call it a semi-circle, because the top edge is longer than the distance from top to bottom. Does anyone know the geometrical name of the shape? It’s a “)”, rotated. It seems to be a good shape for wearing, in Amedro’s version.