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Back to Kathy’s Knits.

It is an extremely interesting shop. Had I but world enough and time, I would spend more of them there. She sells British yarn, as local as possible. No Rowan or Patons or Sirdar. The most familiar name you’ll spot is Jamieson and Smith.

I bought one of those things, I had heard of them, no idea what to call them, a strip of machine-knitted yarn which the artist has hand-painted after knitting the strip, and you’re meant to unravel it as you knit your sock, or whatever. It’s from ceaberrys.etsy.com but there are no other examples on the website – just yarn. I’ll have to take a picture of it for tomorrow.  I can’t even think of how to phrase the concept for googling.

The yarn is merino, cashmere and nylon and I could always just keep it as a scarf. But I think I’ll cast it on as a sock pretty soon.

I also bought two balls of Pure Natural Guernsey Yarn: Hebridean/Manx/Romney from Blacker Yarns with a pattern of Kathy’s own for a simple cabled hat. I don’t know when I’ll get around to that.

I’ve been thinking about the Faded Blue Raincoat yarn mentioned yesterday. I think, on close inspection, that the pattern in The Knitter would have to be classified as a poncho. Is that really what I want? Maybe so, as I am not one to twist a scarf artistically around my neck like some.

There’s no schematic. Front and back are identical, with a scooped neck rather like Relax itself. The model is wearing it almost off one shoulder, but it could be narrowed a bit. The final instruction is: To make up – sew edge seams. That’s it. And I think it must mean, sew the shoulder seams, the bottom remaining open.

I think the only reason I hesitate is that Franklin has an anti-poncho cartoon in “It Itches”. This one is rib-length and maybe doesn’t even count as a poncho. The thing to do is to wind the yarn and swatch.

I’m getting on fine with Relax2, if slowly – a third round of eyelets was added last night.

Non-knit

I’m going to have tea this afternoon with a neighbour who lives high above us. She owns the picture I would most like to have in the world. It was painted by an artist of some distinction – he’s in the national collections – who used to live on the south side of Drummond Place. It's quite small. It’s called “Going Round to Monty’s”, Monty being the familiar nickname of the famous man who used to live in our house.

It’s November (surely) in the picture, it’s dark, it's wet. The picture shows the whole tenement, thus including the top layer where our neighbour has lived for very many decades. But Monty lived down here, in our house. Climbing up to see her is hard work – I don’t see how she ever gets out at all. But I will be rewarded by spending an hour with the picture again.