Princess

I’m half-way through the third repeat of the top edging. I’m perfectly satisfied with my corner (I’m easily pleased) and with the way the edging attaches. And I can feel memory stirring – soon I will have regained the state of being able to memorise a row before I start it. For now, I peer anxiously at the chart every four stitches at best.

The zigzag faggoting and row of holes on the outside are easy enough, as are the patterns that run up the straight side. It’s those slashes in the middle that confound. I have no sense of order there. Working on the border, it was easy to memorise each row before starting it, although no two rows are the same and the repeat is 78 stitches or so. And the centre, of course, was easier still.

I admire your scheme, Maureen, although I wouldn’t want to attempt it, neither an 850-stitch provisional cast-on nor the knowledge, as I knit the border, that preliminary edging was still to do. That border is definitely the more-fun-than-anything part of Princess-knitting.

Thank you for the research on my history with it, Tamar. You’re right, of course: it was my husband’s sudden departure for that brief hospital stay which interrupted Princess-knitting in late ’07, followed by Christmas, and then whatever, including Ketki’s sweater.

The summer IK turned up yesterday. I feel mildly more enthusiastic. I like the Akomeogi Tunic a lot. (What is that word supposed to mean?) I like Annie’s skirt – might even suggest it to a granddaughter.

Non-knit

Lisa, I’ll ask James when the BBC is going to broadcast its Tiananmen anniversary programmes.

I went to East yesterday and came away empty-handed, gloomy but not despairing. I didn’t have enough time. My preliminary ideas didn’t work with each other. I’m too fat. Perhaps the thing is to buy the restraining underwear which we agreed was the way forward (as well as my lo-cider, no sugar, careful-with-fat regime), think again, and then go back. Greek Helen says she has been shopping there for years. The clothes fit all right. It’s not that I’m popping buttons. It’s just that there’s an awful lot of me inside them.

Here are pictures from the Greek Easter which Helen sent yesterday. Mungo, in the purple shirt, is helping prepare kokoretsi, which Helen defines as “offal wrapped in innards and cooked on a spit”. You can see why Greek food tastes so good. The taller man is my son-in-law David. I don’t recognize the other people.

They have sold their beautiful house on Pelion (sob) in order to escape somewhat from the financial anxieties that oppress us all these days – but hope to buy this ruin nearby, camp in it, and do it up bit by bit. Helen is a tiger, and brilliant at houses. It should work.