Sunday, January 13, 2008

The only knitting to report is more-gansey. I keep thinking I am about to start the gusset, and it somehow seems to keep receding. Maybe today.

Meanwhile, I’m getting kind of behind with comments.

Stash Haus, thanks for the reminder about the gift shop at the Churchill War Rooms. I’ll add it to the exhibition list in my Palm, and see what can be done.

Everybody, thanks for the sympathy about the demise of HK Handknit. (That link is right, and I’ll fix yesterday’s.) Especially Maureen from Fargo, with whom I spent a very happy morning there last April. (I know it was April, because the sun was shining. That didn’t happen again for a while.) That was the day she suggested I knit Sam the Ram for the Games last summer – and the rest is history, as they say.

Gardening

Karen, I think your idea may be little short of brilliant, of growing raspberries without support. If something is worth doing, I always say, it’s worth doing badly. After all, they grow as weeds all over the place, without support, and are threatening to overwhelm the path from our house to the den. I will remember your suggestion of Autumn Bliss, too.

And, Judith, I will get the catalogues out and consider Tayberries again. The Ardle (as in Strathardle) is a tributary of the Tay (although it loses its identity before it gets there), so conditions ought to be perfect. “A sort of arch structure”, you say. I wonder if that is something I could cobble together myself, or would the Tayberry just bring it down? There’s lots of old wood of various shapes in the byre. And potash – that’s wood ash, right? We’ve got lots of that.

It’s time I got on with ordering seeds and potatoes, too.

Politics

I was grateful to everybody for the comfort about Karl Rove’s article. Subscribing to the LeComptes blog in igoogle, as I do, seems to bring in a lot of interesting political articles as well, and igoogle itself suggests others. Theo has miraculously embedded Obama’s NH speech in defeat in the blog. It’s a good speech, and interesting, too, for the sad faces behind the candidate.
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5 comments:

  1. Spinningfishwife9:12 AM

    There is a better late season raspberry than Autumn Bliss, called Joan J. Huge juicy berries and bears into November. It doesn't need support as it only grows about five feet tall and gets totally cut back to about 9" after cropping. It comes from one of the popular catalogues, but can't recall which.

    I have some...highly recommended.

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  2. Anonymous7:55 PM

    Garden arches and obelisks from here last well,support all sorts of plants including my thornless tayberries and blackberries and are relatively easy to assemble
    but are pricier than left over wood!
    http://www.agriframes.co.uk/
    I bought mine on a clearance offer some years ago.Judith

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  3. Kate3:23 AM

    I'm reading " A London Child of the 1870s" by Molly V. Hughes at the moment and one of her reminiscences is, "...London winters were long and dark and cold... [I hated the cold] and I think that mother felt the same, for she used to proclaim as soon as October dawned: 'Now children, remember, the month after next the days will begin to lengthen.'" I hope this helps that in the middle of the post-holidays SAD aftermath, your days really are getting longer : )

    Just recently heard of thorn-less blackberry bushes. How odd. Doesn't seem quite the same without the challenge of seeing who amongst the siblings has the least scratches versus the most berries.

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  4. stash haus3:34 AM

    Also, don't forget who now owns the New York Times - Rupert Murdoch. I don't subscribe, so I'm not sure whether the ownership has affected the editors - others more educated on the matter could speak to that better than I - but I think it reflects also on Rove's editorial.

    Interesting that Senators John Kerry and Tim Johnson, and Congressman George Miller are publicly supporting Obama. If you don't know Tim Johnson's story - he nearly died after the 06 elections - while the republicans gleefully sat around, predicting how the democrats would lose their majority in the senate because the republican govenor of South Dakota would name a republican to replace him.

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  5. Lee3:39 PM

    Just as a small correction: Murdoch now owns the Wall Street Journal. The majority of New York Times stock is still (as far as I know) in the hands of the Ochs-Sulzberger family and the rest is traded publicly.

    ReplyDelete

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