Non-knit

Norwich City held Chelsea to a goal-less draw, the best news we've had for a while. Liverpool have still got to beat Crystal Palace today.

Knitting

We've all known for the last few days that people in the audience at the production of Titus Andronicus at the Globe have been fainting at the sight of the violence. What I didn't know until yesterday is that the actress playing Lavinia, whose mutilation causes such havoc, is Flora Spencer-Longhurst...

...the daughter of old friends.

The sweater she is wearing here (I was not responsible for the trousers or shoes) is based on the patchwork jumper in Pam Dawson's “Knitting Fashion” from the mid-70's. That was one of the pivotal books in my knitting career, up there with Kaffe's “Glorious Knitting” and Amedro and later Miller on Shetland Lace. It's available for pennies on Abebooks, if you're interested.

EZ doesn't figure in my list of pivotal books. She sort of crept up on me. An article in the Sunday Times first introduced her to me. This was probably in the 70's, too – knitting was suddenly everywhere. You could send in for the pattern of the Baby Surprise. I did, and still have it, much-tattered mimeographed pages (that takes you back) from which I have knit many times.

EZ's books came later, for me.

As for Flora, Greek Helen and Archie and I saw her in a two-hander called “Wonderland” with Michael Maloney at the Festival Fringe two or three years ago – can't remember which – and Helen said then that Flora would go far. There os a picture of her in yesterday's Sunday Times, page 3, picturesquely smeared with stage blood.

I've reached round 77 of the borders of the Unst Bridal Shawl. Round 78 will finish off the current motifs, an attainable goal for today. And this time there are five whole easy rounds to be done, before I am to launch the next set of motifs. That should speed things forward a bit as well as moving me to the third and final page of the “long charts”.

If I carry out my scheme of knitting the edging on to the shawl when I finish the borders, and keeping the edging already knit as the first element in a future Queen Ring shawl, I will need to add 32 points to it, eight per side (obviously). That's do-able. The great thing is that the Unst edging is as deep as the proper Queen Ring one – a narrow edging really wouldn't do.

Knitting the edging on would probably take about a month. I am a bit worried about the need to finish the Kate Davies Rams & Yowes blankie in time for Ted's first birthday at the end of October, two days before The Wedding. Archie's 18^th is on the same day, but I don't think he'll want a blankie. Ted will celebrate, according to the current plan, at the wedding venue which is somewhere in the north of England.