Monday, October 18, 2010

Not much done yesterday. My leg is better. My husband suggests, intelligently, that I might walk around Drummond Place Garden in the other direction occasionally. I always go widdershins, but I’ll try it clockwise this morning. Perhaps without the jogging.

(The link is to a Wikipedia article. There is an interesting, and odd, quotation from Dorothy Sayers attached: “He turned to his right, knowing that it is unlucky to walk around a church widdershins.” But if you turn to your right – as I do, when I go through the gate into Drummond Place Garden -- you are going widdershins, with the object you are circling on your left. It’s not like Sayers to get such a thing wrong.)

Here is a picture of the Amedro shawl, with a column of roundels consumed.


I have been meaning to mention: it is knit in st st, except for the initial scalloped edging (which continues to curl ominously). Amedro does this for her square shawls, because her method is to knit the entire edging first, then pick up stitches and work inwards to the very centre, decreasing at the four corners.

But this shawl could perfectly well be in the more traditional garter stitch, because it’s knit back and forth. Maybe, indeed, if I ever knit a fifth exemplar, I’ll do it that way. The wrong-side rows would be pleasanter. The interesting thing here is that it is very difficult to tell which side is which, perhaps partly because of the darkness of the wool. The only sure way to tell is to look at the YO’s and see if they just lie across the needle, or have been knit into.

I spent a few moments on Ravelry this morning looking at ear-flap hats. I can’t remember, just now, where to find the free self-generating earflap hat pattern the Fishwife pointed me towards last year. I’ve got the print-out, but I’d need to run it again with a new gauge.

Not that I’m chickening out from the excitement of knitting in Japanese. Just that it might be wise to have a fallback. Ravelry has pages and pages of such hats, and I was reminded that I’ve got Charlene Schurch’s hat book. I’ll have a look.

Since I started composing this, some grandchildren-pictures have arrived from Beijing.


Kirsty (on the right) and her friend Prudence after a cross-country run, looking very healthy.




And Alistair, doing as he is told….




3 comments:

  1. Here you go. (It's a Ravelry link.)

    http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/earflap-hat-pattern-generator

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  2. Anonymous12:48 PM

    If he was coming OUT of the church and turned right, the church would remain on his right. (right?) I think it is different because you are ENTERING the park...
    Beverly near Yosemite

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  3. I have just finished an Alexander McCall Smith novel in which one of the characters regularly walks his dog in Drummond Place Garden. I realized I was picturing him, in my mind's eye, passing you (listening to your Italian) on the path.

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