All is well with my travel plans, more or less. The KLM booking has been cancelled, Lizzie and I will fly from Edinburgh to Newark with Greek Helen on Thursday the 23rd of July. I hope there’ll be a nice view of NYC as we land – Lizzie has never been to America. “More or less” refers to the fact that I have paid all over again – I won’t get my refund from KLM for ten or twelve weeks. And that’s assuming that both KLM and Trailfinders are still trading in July. I think I will spare my husband that knowledge, which could only distress him.

I’ve got my three books piled up beside my passport – the new Kate Atkinson, a popular science quantum physics book about Schrodinger’s Cat, and Eudora Welty’s “Delta Wedding”, a re-read which seems appropriate to the occasion. I remain anxious about running out, but I’ll have my knitting and I’m not traveling alone. Much of the time will be filled with animated conversation.

When my mother was alive (until quite recently) I used to go to the US twice a year, most years, to visit. I often ordered yarn to be delivered in advance to my sister or whoever I was staying with, to avoid custom’s duties and VAT. Sometimes they charge, sometimes they don’t. It can come in quite expensive when they do. So I’m giving some pleasant thought to doing that again -- Franklin’s Panopticon colourway in Lorna’s Laces sport or worsted, for instance? And I like “Amy’s Vintage Office” and “Roadside Gerry” from other favourite bloggers. An Adult Surprise with an intervening solid to tone them down and hold them together? Pleasant to speculate.

VKB

Vogue Knitting Book No. 18 is now on offer on eBay – spring, ’41 I think. 270367636870 if you’re interested. It’s got three days to go and is already up to £17. I am surprised anew that I got No. 8 so cheaply the other day. Maybe the attraction is the war?

The Last One of All is also on offer – 180344564272 – No. 8 in the little British series that followed the death of the Anglo-American Vogue Knitting Book proper. The seller has included lots of photographs, and I think you can see in the photography an elegiac sense that the end has come. I love that issue. Some good designs, too.

Princess

I’ve embarked on row 10 of the final repeat. It’s wonderful to be doing each row for the last time. In recent weeks, the experience has been uncomfortably like that jolly movie “Groundhog Day”. One toils on and on, and finally gets to the end of a repeat – and there it all is to be done again, and again. But now it’s just like this week of Lent – there’s the last Tuesday done, and today is the last Wednesday.


I’ve used lacy lettering to sign and date knitting before now. This one was knit for the baby who proved to be Fergus Drake, now of Athens. As you can see, the lettering is really too big for the bush. It’s going to work better on the Princess because the shawl is so enormously big, and the yarn so fine.

In general, I was rather proud of Fergus’ design. The yarn is Lorna’s Laces “Helen’s Lace”, I think. The border alternates roses and thistles with reference to the English and Scottish origins of Fergus’ parents, and the center is meant to be interlocking Greek crosses for the land of Fergus’ birth.