It was aw’fy hot in Glasgow. The picture is backed with new board from which nothing was to be learned. It’s a nice picture, though. It was good to see it, and my husband was able to interrogate it in various ways that can only be done when he is standing in front of the actual object. We went to a second-hand bookstore and a couple of commercial art galleries and the Glasgow Modern Art Gallery – oh dear! – and came home.

We’re going back to Strathardle today, as soon as my husband has voted, to stay about a week. Maybe I can even plant some seeds this evening. I have been studying the Square Foot Gardening website and will report on my success or lack of it, in adapting its principles.

So we’ll be away when the May yarn arrives from The Yarn Yard sock club. We’ve got a nice big letter box – the package will get through all right. I’m guaranteed some knitting excitement to come home to.

Here’s a last progress shot of the Princess border. I have embarked on row 212. “Last” because I won’t take another picture until I’ve finished the border.

Things are going fairly briskly, except that the last motifs involve a good many double decreases, and they’re slow. When I knit Amedro’s “Fine Lace Stole” I had a lot of trouble with the Ring Stitch section, which is full of double decreases. She gives them as k 3 tog and I kept finding – too late – that the middle stitch had escaped and was wandering off by itself. I switched to some other system.

This time, in order to centre the decreases, as seems appropriate, I am inserting the right-hand needle in the next two stitches as if to knit them together, slipping them both, knitting the following stitch, and passing the slipped stitches over. Having learned from Margaret Stove that the stitch the needle enters first in any decrease, is the one that winds up on top. The most valuable piece of knitting lore I know.

But I also pause each time to tug and make sure all three are secure.

Comments

Thanks for the upbeat reports on Handknitting.com. I did some Googling yesterday and found others. I hadn’t realised they were Canadian – I hope that doesn’t involve my sister in paying duty when the yarn arrives.

And for the references to zolendronic acid, which I gather is the lead story in the Times today. I’ll keep an eye on that one.