Saturday, August 18, 2012


My hair looks much better, for the moment.

Knitting

I am nearly finished with the first Italian sock – a few more rounds of ribbing.

Candace recommends a tubular bind-off. I am perfectly happy with the Surprisingly Stretchy, which in addition I can now do without consulting a text. But the purpose of this project is to learn things, so perhaps I had better try. It sounds sort of like one-handed Kitchener stitch.

The drawback is that it is done on k1,p1 ribbing, not my style for a sock. My new “Cast On, Bind Off” book agrees. So I’ll have to do a round or two of k1,p1 at the top of the sock, on top of my usual k2,p2. How will that look?

And then the immediately-following excitement will be an attempt to do a provisional cast-on using the cord of a fine, short circular as the waste yarn. It will be a noteworthy achievement if I can master that.

If both of these procedures go smoothly, I should embark on the 2nd sock today. I mustn’t try to rush it. I mustn’t settle for the tubular bind-off if the k1,p1 rib looks silly on top of k2,p2. There’s no hurry.

I think perhaps I had better cast on a plain-vanilla, top-down pair of socks to keep in the emergency bag. I wouldn’t like to spend the night in a&e trying to do a provisional cast-on.

I heard from Knit Purl this morning, as I do from time to time, singing the praises of Olgajazzy. I should have recognised the name – she’s been in IK, and the Twist Collective. Some very nice Japanese-y things, no one of which quite makes me want to fling away the current sock and start this afternoon.

Strathardle

I didn’t take any pictures for you. I'll do better next week.

We all went to a matinee of J.M. Barrie’s “Dear Brutus” at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre on Wednesday, and enjoyed it very much. We used to go often when our children were young – 40 years ago, indeed, we saw “Dear Brutus” which I remember fondly. In those days the theatre was in a tent, and of necessity simpler and smaller than it is now. The programme included more high-brow elements then, and the audience was younger and poorer than the third millennium crowd. 

Amazon let me download the text free, so I did, and was interested to see that Pitlochry had sweetened the ending. Or is it always played like that? Perhaps in 1917, when it was first produced, too many people had lost too many sons to believe in happy endings. 

3 comments:

  1. Jean, there exists a k2, p2 tubular bind off! I have instructions in one of my Threads Handknitting compilations...it must be out there on the internet as well.

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  2. Ruth in Ottawa1:56 PM

    I once made a sweater with the sleeves knitted from the top down, and finished off the k2,p2 cuffs with the k1,p1 tubular bind-off - I think it looks fine, rather a decorative element, actually. I think I worked two rounds of k1,p1 rib before the bind-off, if memory serves. And surely the tops of socks will be less subject to scrutiny than sleeve cuffs!

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  3. Re your last post and your husband. My experience with older family members suggests that variable hearing really affects group participation. Perhaps your husband cannot hear voices around the table?

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