Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Oh dear. A week is a long time in politics, but rarely quite as long as that one, Wednesday to Wednesday. Theo, you don’t have to worry too much about being wrong, when everyone else in the Western world was too.

On a brighter note, I took the gansey off the needles last night and threaded it onto waste yarn. Laid out unrestrained on the floor, it measures 24” across. I was aiming for 25”, so that’s perfect. I’ve got it back on the needles and am knitting happily on. It’s sort of boring to knit, but I am delighted with the way the pattern looks. I finished a skein last night -- that always feels like progress.

Perhaps I will soon allow myself to wind my Manos Silk Blend into a ball and put in a couple of days a week on a New Scarf..

I didn’t get the Yarn Yard yarn photographed yesterday – it was one of those days which never quite seemed to get started. Today is brighter, although stormy.

I am grateful for everybody’s help, in comments yesterday, with the question of knitting a sweater for my husband. I love Jared's Big Blue, Dawn, but I don’t think my husband would. He doesn’t wear cardigans (that’s easily altered) and doesn’t care much for any deviation from bog-standard long-sleeved v-neck. He’s much more amenable to interesting colour.

Thank you for the link to the mill at New Lanark, Natalie – I didn’t know about them, and they do indeed have some remarkable wools at remarkable prices. Next time I feel strong enough to climb the hill up to Princes Street, I want to have a serious look at the Peruvian yarn that John Lewis is selling (think Araucania, but this particular stuff is exclusive to JL). There might be something there, at considerable expense.

There’s something about EZ’s shirt-yoke, as in Jared’s sweater, which makes me tingle. I’ve knit it several times. Jared’s exemplar is a brilliant one – it isn’t entirely easy to get it to lie flat. I’m also pretty keen on a standard saddle-shoulder: I might be allowed to get away with that.

6 comments:

  1. oh yes the big blue is indeed a lovely variation on the seamless saddle shirt yoke. very elizabethan indeed. i love the manly look of it and knit 3 sweaters based on that recipe. i thought maybe janette's yarn on ebay may have some good offers. unfortunately all the lovely yorkshire tweed dk from rowan is gone. that was so pretty. i still vote for beaverslide. but a nice wool from peru sounds good too.
    yesterday we saw obama's grandmother in kenya on danish television. it would indeed be a fairy tale if he became president. and i think it is about time that it happened. it is incredible how fast some things progresses and how slow other things as altering views upon women and coloured people. and that is dangerous.

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  2. Anonymous10:20 AM

    Jean,

    I am rather enjoying the dose of American politics along with the knitting.

    The Lanark Mill is certainly a find!

    Your husband's taste in jumpers is much the same as my husband's. There doesn't seem to be much point in knitting a plain lightweight V-neck, when he can buy one relatively easily.

    I had severe 'blogstartitis' pangs over the New Year period, but it did't quite happen. It would make sense to wait unitl we have moved house - plenty of work to be done without giving myself posting deadlines.

    All the best,
    Dawn

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  3. That Mirasol yarn isn't exclusive to John Lewis any more; that was just for the first six months or for 2007, or something.
    Phew about the gansey.

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  4. The New Lanark yarn is lovely stuff - my daughter Vivienne used it for 'Rogue', and found it excellent.
    As for the EZ yoked sweater - having recently finished one, I found the saddle shoulder parts were ok, but I needed to work off alternately one and two stitches as I knitted across the back - behind the neck, as it were. This was after having to rip back an unsightly bulge.

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  5. I wonder how much of Hillary's upset win in NH was last minute sympathy generated by her shoddy treatment by the press. I think I've said before that I don't particularly trust her, but the way the media have gleefully sharpened knives over her has been nothing short of appalling and unprofessional. The 'iron my shirt' incident was equally disgusting and likely didn't hurt her, either.

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  6. So glad the gansey is OK on size. Wish my husband was OK with color! He wants plain, plain, plain. Ugg - 48 inch chest of plain stockinette - this is why he doesn't have a sweater yet.

    It's been very interesting to watch the mainstream media in all this. The one thing NH showed was that the race is not over. Over the weekend they were talking about whether Hillary would stop campaigning in certain states and save her $ for the big states. Now, they're talking about the big win - please - she was only a few percentage points over Obama. That's not a big win. But she did better than her husband did. Bill Clinton lost in the NH primary during his run.

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