Fuzzarelly, I think it’s wonderful that you’ve got a Dawn Redwood a.k.a. metasequoia glyptostroboides, just like us. I’ve been reading about it in Wikipedia; interesting, as that source often is. The name “metasequoia”, I believe, refers to the fact that the leaflets are opposite each other on the stem, as an illustration in the Wikipedia entry shows. On other sequoias, they alternate. If I’m right. I have a half-memory that the man who initially described the fossils said he would have called it something snappier had he suspected that such trees still grew.

Another restless day, knitting-wise. I decided during the course of it that maybe the thing to do was to start on my Adult Surprise with my lovely new Lorna’s Laces sock yarn. Overturning the laboriously-acquired-over-decades one-WIP-at-a-time discipline of recent years, as I have no intention of abandoning either the jabot or the Thistle Stole.

So when knitting time came, I wound a skein of Amy’s Vintage Office and got started on a swatch. Splendid yarn. I’m going to enjoy this.

Two anxieties, though. I plan to start with an inch or so of solid charcoal before I let rip with colour. That’s going to make the vital centering of the decreases even harder. I’ll just have to be careful. The other is, that I notice a couple of split stitches in the still-very-small swatch. I think EZ says somewhere that that’s the one mistake in knitting which can’t be disguised as a Feature. And laddering down to fix one is next to impossible (for me) to do neatly in garter stitch.

Try a blunter needle? I’m using one of those fancy-schmancy made-from-musical-instruments ebony ones, and it’s heaven to hold and wield. But I can’t wear a jacket full of split stitches.

It’ll take a while to work out exactly what size I’m going to aim at, and the whole point of swatching is to get this right. I don’t want it slipping about off the shoulders, nor yet straining at the bosom.

As promised, I also worked on at the Thistle stole, and discontent seized me there, too. I am having trouble seeing exactly what is happening, what with the fine, dark yarn and working in garter stitch. The stitch count keeps being a bit wrong. I’m afraid the current batch of thistle stems aren’t straight.

Should I save this beautiful yarn for something I can actually do with it, and go back and knit the Thistle Stole in the yarn Cynthia and Sue intended for it when they made me the gift? It’s called Buckingham, from the Bristol Yarn Gallery. It’s Peruvian, baby alpaca and silk. It’s slightly heavier, so I would knit the stole as the pattern is written – fewer stitches than I’ve got at the moment, and st st which makes patterns easier to see. It feels wonderful, inviting one to imagine cuddling oneself in it.

It’s a nice gentle alpaca brown, representing thistles hit by glysophate, perhaps. I think I’ll do that.