I got a couple of those spurious comments yesterday, advertising things or perhaps more sinister. It took me a while (due to own stupidity) to find and remove them. The email from Blogger incorporating a new comment gives the first few words of the post in question (like the archives in the side bar). The first spurious comment was attached to a post that began, “Rarely if ever can a non-knit topic have been…”

I got that one, after some thought. Peter Davison modelling a Fair Isle sweater pattern, in February of this year.

The other began, “I’ve done a half pattern-repeat, nine rows, on…”

What on earth? The current Mysterious Christmas project has a 15 row repeat. The Griswold stole, recently finished, is 14 or 28, depending on how you reckon – a 14-row repeat is then offset by half. The Princess edging is 20 rows, and the centre, if we’re going back that far, more than 40.

I finally grasped what should have been obvious, that I could click on a link in the email itself. The answer is Alexander’s Calcutta Cup sweater, discussed in February, ’07. What is the point of such comments? Nobody’s going to go back that far and read it and be impressed.

Anyway…

Last Sunday while we were in London, there was a picture in the Sunday Times Magazine or Style section – did anyone see it? – of a vaguely Peruvian-shaped white cotton hat, heavy yarn, with ties and pompoms, decorated with three or for largish intarsia flowers. It cost £130, or maybe £160. I passed the picture wonderingly around the crowd, and Rachel’s younger daughter Lizzie said meekly that she’d really like a hat like that.

I’m thinking Gonomy. And I’ve emailed Rachel to ask her to ask Lizzie which are the elements particularly admired. If white-with-intarsia-flowers is essential, enthusiasm flags. But Gonomy would produce the shape, roughly, and stash yarns could produce some jolly stripes, and I could bring myself to add i-cord ties. Making pompoms is against my religion, but maybe they can be purchased.

Miscellaneous

Dawn, I haven’t decided which grandson to aim for, with the Grandson sweater. One of the grownups, of course – that narrows it down to Rachel’s two sons. They’re not far off each other in size. (They are side-by-side among the Various Grandchildren in the sidebar, and Joe, in the blue sweatshirt, is not as bulky as he looks there.) Maybe they could take turns with it. The Knitting Doctor has recently (November 2) finished a plain-vanilla sweater for her sweetie, and it’s a lesson to us all on how good a sweater looks if it fits properly.

So maybe I’d better pick a grandson and concentrate hard. I think I’ll see them both over the Christmas holiday – but by then I may want to have cast on.

Non-knit: I stopped off at Waverley station on my way back from the Eye Pavillion on Wednesday, and found a woman who found me some leaflets which suggest that we may get a full refund for our northward journey on Tuesday. If the delay is more than two hours -- we generously exceeded that measure. We filled out the forms and sent them off yesterday.