Odds and Ends

eBay is offering another early VKB – No. 13, autumn 1938, 380044662666. It comes from the same seller as the recent No. 9 (which fetched only a miserable £11.27) – so I entertain a faint hope that she may have some more in the drawer. She’s operating in the territory where lurk the five I still want.

I bought (I hope) the current issue of Piecework through eBay yesterday, for the sake of Franklin’s article and lace edging. A report will follow.

I got an email from Interweave this morning about their hurt book sale. They say they do it every year, but I don’t remember another one. There are some very good things on the list, selling at half-price, although I don’t think there’s anything I want that I haven’t already paid the full price for.

I had a really nice message from Ron yesterday (faithful reader in Mexico) asking what knitting software I use. It’s Carole Wulster’s Sweater Wizard, and I like it a lot. You can download a demo. I used it most recently for the Araucania sweater I’m knitting in Kirkmichael. There are a couple of basic-pattern books on the Interweave list just mentioned. I hesitated over them for a moment, but I’ve got (and regularly use) Vicki Square’s “Knit Great Basics” and I’ve got the Sweater Wizard, and I don't see why I should want anything else.

Knitting

I’m nearly finished with the legs for the third and final tier of dinosaurs on the back of the sweater. This week should see me embarked on the front. The end is, rather distantly, in sight. Picture soon.

Comments & more Kirikmichael

I’m sorry to hear about the rabbits in Essex, Shandy. We have been remarkably free of disaster so far this year, except for the caterpillars that stripped the gooseberry bushes. No rabbits or sheep or deer or mice, and nematodes really do seem to have helped with the slugs. There aren’t even any cabbage white caterpillars on the kale – why not? – and the birds seem to be sparing the red currents. Some tsunami of gardening misfortune must be gathering somewhere.

James and Cathy drove up to Kirkmichael a couple of hours ahead of us. They stopped at Tesco in Blairgowrie on the way and bought, amongst other things, the two chairs you see James and Alexander sitting on in the picture yesterday. My husband and I do not go in for sitting about, but everybody else made good use of the chairs all week.

Here are James and Cathy, supervising a bonfire.

And Rachel, on the west lawn.