A good day’s knitting. If the favouring wind continues, I might get around the third corner today.
I’m suffering a certain amount of puzzlement about Knitter’s magazine. My subscription still has a year to run – no doubt about that. I can’t find either the Spring or the Summer '07 issues. That’s odd. There’s a certain amount of disorder around here, but it doesn’t extend to knitting magazines.
Knitter’s is slow to arrive. Have I had the spring issue and mislaid it? And not received Summer yet? But the cover pattern for Spring is (to my eye) so bad that I think I’d remember it. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen Summer.
Wait and see.
Non-knit miscellany
There was a paragraph in the paper yesterday asserting that a 40-year study has shewn that St Swithin is never right. What it didn’t say, is whether he tends to be right: whether the prevailing weather in mid-July tends to go on until the end of August. Cool, with sunshine-and-showers, in the case of 2007. Perhaps the question is unanswerable if you put it like that.
And you’re right, Kate, it’s early days yet, to give up on summer altogether.
Thanks for the comments about primary elections, too. I’m sure you’re right, Anonymous, that the rise in importance of the primaries has a lot to do with the really dreadful amounts of money spent on presidential elections these days. Here in GB, we have no political advertising on television. That still leaves lots of things for the parties to spend money on, but it cuts it down a bit. That wouldn’t work in America.
I’m suffering a certain amount of puzzlement about Knitter’s magazine. My subscription still has a year to run – no doubt about that. I can’t find either the Spring or the Summer '07 issues. That’s odd. There’s a certain amount of disorder around here, but it doesn’t extend to knitting magazines.
Knitter’s is slow to arrive. Have I had the spring issue and mislaid it? And not received Summer yet? But the cover pattern for Spring is (to my eye) so bad that I think I’d remember it. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen Summer.
Wait and see.
Non-knit miscellany
There was a paragraph in the paper yesterday asserting that a 40-year study has shewn that St Swithin is never right. What it didn’t say, is whether he tends to be right: whether the prevailing weather in mid-July tends to go on until the end of August. Cool, with sunshine-and-showers, in the case of 2007. Perhaps the question is unanswerable if you put it like that.
And you’re right, Kate, it’s early days yet, to give up on summer altogether.
Thanks for the comments about primary elections, too. I’m sure you’re right, Anonymous, that the rise in importance of the primaries has a lot to do with the really dreadful amounts of money spent on presidential elections these days. Here in GB, we have no political advertising on television. That still leaves lots of things for the parties to spend money on, but it cuts it down a bit. That wouldn’t work in America.
Jean, the stole is beautiful. I am for the most part a silent reader of knitting blogs, but when I see something as lovely as your melon stole I just had to let you know.
ReplyDeleteJean, I live in the Greater Toronto Area and my Summer Knitter's arrived last Friday .. July 13. The Spring issue came in the first week of June.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your blog ... you are truly missed when you go to the Centre of the Universe.
Melon stole -- lovely. Peace, Elizabeth
Hi Jean,
ReplyDeleteThe biggest reason why the primaries matter now is that delegates won during primaries are required by their state's law to vote for the candidate to which they are pledged, when that wasn't always the case. That's only on the first ballot, though, if no candidate got a majority on the first ballot, then they'd be free to vote for whomever they wished, so it is technically possible still to wind up with a nominating convention that matters. But the conventional wisdom over here is that such prolonged uncertainty about the nominee of one party would give the other party's candidate a chance to define him or herself and go into the fall with a clear advantage.
Pamela's point about California is also particularly relevant this time around - not just CA, but more than 20 states have moved their primaries to Feb 5, in effect creating a de facto national primary following Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. No one really knows what effect that's going to have. Some people say it will magnify the value of early wins, since people like to vote for a winner, while others say if no one sweeps all the early states, then it'll all get split up between 2 or 3 candidates and we'll have some interesting brokering going on.
Certainly it'll be interesting to watch.
I wish candidates in the US were not allowed to use TV ads. I always try to vote for the ones who don't indulge in mud-slinging, but often there is no choice as the ads tend to turn into put-down contests on both sides. I have solved that problem by simply refusing to watch television during an election year.
ReplyDeleteYour melon is going to be so gorgeous. Can't wait to see it blocked.
Hello Jean,
ReplyDeleteI have been following the progress of the melon stole with great interest and have to say, I'm completely taken aback by how pretty it looks without any blocking it all. There's not a bit of the usual "crumpled pile of string" about it.
Does the pattern even call for blocking, or will you be able to just bind off, throw it over your shoulders and head for the disco?
xo
Franklin
Years ago I read the Mrs. 'arris series by Paul Gallico, and was amazed by the spending restrictions on politicians. How I wish it would work in the US! Dick Francis also wrote about a politician in one of his later books, and told of similar restrictions. It seems delightful - restricting the money also restricts the time you have to listen and/or read.
ReplyDeleteWhat I love about the union movement involvement in politics in Australia is that they'll compare all the major parties' platform stance on education, health etc. Once you've sifted out the union's own interest bias, you get a better summary than is ever offered by the newspapers. Do unions do this in the UK and USA?
ReplyDelete