Thursday, November 22, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

I’m glad not to be there – Christmas is bad enough, without another Big Cook this close. But despite my churlishness, I hope you all have a nice day.

All well here. I finished the basic knitting of the Earth Stripes, as hoped. Today, without even pausing to cast off, I’ll have a Cashmere Gansey Day.


The Linked Ribs are about 22” long and I figure I’ve got about enough yarn for 48” in all – not really very long. I’m very grateful to everybody for their help with the problem yesterday. I figured out (not without some effort) how to post an ISO in Ravelry, and did so. Nothing yet. I also searched the Noro Silk Garden stashes – what a glorious lot! – and after much tedious clicking on what proved to be the wrong shades, and perhaps a certain amount of passing over the right one, I found it on page six or seven.

I wrote to her, she wrote back – she’s not letting go, but took the trouble to find it for me in a shop she knows: Glory-ousknits.com. I’ve ordered two balls. I would have preferred not to attempt a commercial order from abroad. I was in the post office the other day and learned from a poster on the wall that they now charge eight pounds for their trouble when something is stopped by Customs and Excise. That’s eight pounds in addition to the duty. It’s going to be an expensive scarf if they catch me.

New Topic

Elizabeth wrote to me yesterday to tell me that Mary Walker Phillips died earlier this month. I didn’t know. Here's the link. I’ve printed it out to keep in my copy of her Counterpanes book.

Non-knit

I’ll get back to politics soon, I’m sure, but today’s news is that a plague of jellyfish, ten miles across and thirty-five feet deep, has completely destroyed the only salmon farm in Northern Island. A kind of jellyfish previously unknown in these waters. Presumably if the ancient Egyptians had gone in for salmon farming, God would have visited them with jellyfish before proceeding to kill the firstborn.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:21 AM

    Thanks for that link to the obituary for Mary Walker Phillips. I have printed it out and will show it to the next person who says oh nobody knits anymore. Well, Mary Phillips won't knit anymore but we owe her a debt of gratitude for her pioneering work.

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  2. Anonymous10:25 AM

    I wouldn't worry about Customs catching your parcel - it's my understanding that they have a value limit, so that if the contents are worth less than £18 there is no charge. So for two balls of Silk Garden you should have no worries. Congratulations on the Earth Stripes - I'm stalled at about 50cm, with no prospect of being able to pick it up again until after Christmas!

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  3. oh i hope you received the mail i sent you about ebay as well yesterday. but glad you found it. the yarn. i would send an email and ask if it i possible to tag the parcel as a gift. sometimes smaller companies would do that. and with smaller companies the things are not even caught in the mail. i think they are looking for medicine and bigger companies like amazon.com. books are almost always caught which is why i use bookdepository.co.uk as my main source for books except zimmermann's that they don't carry for some reason or another.

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  4. Anonymous12:51 PM

    I can remember some holidays in Donegal being destroyed by plagues of jellyfish on the beaches when I was little - between that and the huge basking sharks, and having seen snippets of Jaws, and my parent's love of "crab's toes", it's a wonder I ever even paddle in the sea these days!

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  5. Thanks for the link to MWP obit. I missed that, and it surprises me that it wasn't broadcast over the knitters short wave.

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  6. The Earth Stripe looks fantastic. Well worth the long slog.

    You think you're having problems with scarves? I'm knitting my mum one out of 100% nasty Elle Plume...by request. She saw it in a shop and liked the colours. Its only saving grace is that it's cheap, but I'm still not liking it!

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  7. Congrats on the Earth stripe -- does look lovely and comfy. I found a few more mohair blends today, along with a STASH of Addi Turbos at 1/2 the price from the US, so I am a happy camper. Will spend the weekend recovering from eating too much and working on the Earth Stripe -- the little I've done is just comfy!

    And ikkk to the jelly fish! Do they have ANY real purpose? Maryjo

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