Talk about cups running over!

The little package from Loop arrived – a ball of Juniper Moon (what a forgettable name!) as a potential material for the pocket squares for the wedding. It looks very promising indeed. It's a 50% merino and silk mixture, DK, a deep, rich colour. I think I'll knock off another sample square as soon as Archie's sweater is tidied away, while I'm winding the opening skeins for the Tokyo Shawl and Sous Sous.

For the package from Webs also turned up – with no VAT to pay. The Queen must have overlooked it. She's getting on a bit. Whiskey Barrel is exactly as I hoped, for grey-brownness. Exactly as I imagine a whiskey barrel to look. Splendid.

And Archie's sweater is finished, as far as knitting goes. The neck edging includes the tops of the plackets. The start I reported yesterday, those first 20 stitches picked up, proved to be exactly right. The edging is tending to flop outwards, just as the hems at the bottom are trying to flare. The sleeves, at least, are behaving themselves.

I still have a few more ends to deal with, and buttons to buy and sew on. I don't think I'm going to see Archie this weekend – his mother Greek Helen (who will arrive late this afternoon, another cause for joy) will be at the school tomorrow for a parents' evening and a university application talk and a parents' supper. But Archie will be here overnight towards the end of the month, before his early-morning flight to Athens a couple of days before my own. If I can get the blocking right on the basis of earlier try-ons, he can wear the sweater home.

Comments

I was deeply touched yesterday by how many of you rushed in to join my unknown benefactor in the gift of the Tokyo Shawl. Thank you, one and all.

I was interested to learn, BirgitR, that this blog turns up on your Zite. I have it in mine, most days, but I thought they were maybe just doing it to please me. And I promise to get to grips with the interaction of Windows 8 and my camera. Or my iPad and my new MacBook.

Non-knit

The moon is full tonight, I think. Observing it nearly so, the other evening, I was sort of surprised to work out that the impending eclipse will coincide with a new moon.

I've just had a wee look at Wikipedia and discover, not to my surprise, that the Greeks and the Chinese were both able to predict eclipses in the fourth or fifth century BC. That seems awfully clever of them. I often marvel at how, after millions of years of evolution, high civilisation seems to have begun in the same split second (evolutionarily speaking) in China and India and Europe and the Middle East, and probably elsewhere, roughly four thousand years ago. Something to do with agriculture and aqueducts and sewers, no doubt. High civilisation needs cities.