Helen rang up from Strathardle yesterday to say that she couldn’t close the bonnet (hood) of her hire car. I was sort of impressed with Life’s endless ingenuity at presenting us with problems large and small. She is going to Loch Fyne today, coming to us here in Edinburgh on Sunday. Mungo should arrive at Edinburgh airport from the US on Tuesday.

Let’s talk about knitting today.

I got on nicely with the little jacket again. After I had cast off the sleeve and re-attached the knitting to the abandoned body stitches, I found that the right side had become the wrong side and that I had knit the right sleeve while I thought I was doing the left one.

After more time than it should have taken, I grasped that these problems – if problems they were, in garter stitch – could be solved by turning the little sleeve inside out. But it means that when I come to do the next sleeve, I will need my wits about me lest it wind up on the inside of the jacket, or attached to the bottom edge.

Front view:

Back view:

I continue to enjoy short-rowing. I looked again at the VK swing jacket, No 19 in winter 07-08, where the swinging is achieved with short-row wedges knit side-to-side. It seems a good moment, positively providential, to have met Mary Lou’s “Coquille”, which does the same thing. (See also her web page for variations, and it sounds as if there are more on Ravelry.) It might be a good way to use up some sock yarn/ knock off a Christmas present/ practice short-row wedges -- with the thought of then adapting the VK pattern to my own stash.

Meanwhile Helen and I found a moment at Strathardle in the onward rush of life last week, to consider what she’d like in the way of lace. She opted not for the Emily Dickinson but for the good old Amedro Cobweb Lace Wrap which – furthermore, before I reach for Heirloom Knitting – she’d like with the original lace patterns. She thinks the Diamond Chain Stitch is somehow both Scottish and Greek.

I think I’ve knit that pattern almost as often as the Baby Surprise. It started with Rachel’s 40th birthday, now well in the past. Her daughter Hellie asked for one. I knit one for my mother – a slightly simplified version, by Amedro herself. And one for my sister’s 70th birthday. For both Hellie and my sister I put different lace patterns into Amedro’s useful shape.

Helen has chosen a luscious yarn, so-dark-reddy-brown-it’s-almost-black, which James and Cathy gave me for Christmas ’08. It’s labelled “cashmere” ("Lightness, Softness, Comfort, Conservation") and feels as if it might be, but Cathy suggests skepticism.

So maybe, when the work’s all done this fall (=Games Day behind us), I’ll think of alternating days of that with days of Green Granite Blocks.

Now it is time for my power walk. I read recently that if one pumps one’s arms and walks heel-to-toe, one can use twice as many calories. That means twice as much energy – I don’t think I have that to spare, apart from looking like an absolute dork. Don’t worry about me, kristieinbc. I walk round and round Drummond Place gardens on a dirt path. The traffic is near, but has no access to me.