You were tactful not to pick me up on yesterday’s gaffe, when I located the legendary Boar Hunt in prehistoric Scotland. Which would have been a fine place for it, but it’s not for me to move it about. I should have written “Calydonian” not “Caledonian”.

Ovid’s lines describing Atalanta (Metamorphoses VIII, 322-3) are:

Talis erat cultu, facies, quam dicere vere
Virgineam in puero, puerilem in virgine possis.

“Her dress and face were such as you could truly call
Maidenly in a boy, boyish in a maiden.”

Meleager fell in love with her at first sight, but it didn’t end well.

Knitting

I have about nine inches to go to the neck of the Grandson Sweater – I must be at the armpits, or slightly above. All goes well, except for its tendency to flip up at the bottom, as you can see in the photograph. I am fairly confident that blocking will settle it down, but “fairly confident” is not the same as “completely happy”.



I will finish another ball of white yarn today or tomorrow. Now that I am sure I’ve got enough, I welcome these milestones.

I had an email from Rachel-the-Younger in Beijing yesterday, asking for a hat like her cousin Lizzie’s. That’s the ear-flap, made from the Ear Flap Hat Generator the Fishwife pointed me to. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, I like so much as a request from a Loved One to be knit something I have knit for another Loved One. It means they maybe don’t push everything to the back of the drawer as soon as I’m out the door after all.

So I’ll choose some yarn and get it wound and perhaps swatched and then when we finally make our bid for Strathardle – we have our eyes on the first week of February, at the moment – I’ll take it along. This time, it might be nice to introduce a bit of patterning. We are too feeble, and there's too much snow about, to attempt a venture into the countryside this week.

Miscellaneous

The British “Knitting” magazine turned up yesterday, a good issue. It includes a pamphlet entitled “Holidays Courses & Exhibitions Guide 2010” in which there is no mention of the Knit Camp in Stirling in August. Now, I know how these things work – you pay for an ad, we write about you. But in this case the venture is so bold, unique for Britain I believe, that I feel they have compromised editorial integrity by leaving it out.

I’ve just had a look at the KnitCamp’s Ravelry group, and discover that someone is organising a trip to Shetland for the following week – bus from Stirling to Aberdeen, ferry to Lerwick, an excursion to Unst included. Were I but free! It wouldn’t even involve being away on the Fourth Saturday of August, either. Rachel and Ed more or less skipped celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary for the sake of being at the Games. I could scarcely just nip off to Unst.