Saturday, November 07, 2015

So – the sleeveless vest is finished. It fits to perfection, and I have kept adequate notes. Not only could it be replicated, but I could knit a full scale sweater for my husband without much further cogitation. As long as I knit it in madtosh DK which is no hardship.

It has seemed so long since an item has been subtracted from the WIP list that I scarcely know what to do with myself. In fact, I have cast on the front of the Sous Sous – 179 stitches by the long-tail method, and I wound up, first try, with an end about 8” long. I was rather proud of myself. I have knit the preliminary rows and established the cable pattern. The plan is to work on it for a few days, finish the first full pattern repeat, perhaps, or run out of yarn and have to wait for the package from Webs, and then resurrect the Tokyo shawl in similar fashion.

Then return to the Dunfallandy blankie – I'd like to have the cabled bits finished and assembled before the end of the year, as I've probably said before. I don't understand why mailing myself that picture of it from the iPad didn't work. Perhaps I should try mailing myself a different picture. It goes off with the usual WHOOSH and then disappears into the void.

The hat will take care of itself. All it needs are a couple more sessions in Kathy's Knits.

Gosia and I made a good start on the stash cupboard yesterday, but didn't actually get as far as discarding any yarn. It is a walk-in cupboard off the sitting room which also serves as a stationery store. Whenever something arrives in a sturdy cardboard box which might be re-used, that is where it goes. I had far too many cardboard boxes. Our first job was to cull them, and that is done. The top shelf is empty. Think of it full of nice clear plastic containers of yarn.

As for grammar, the shorter Oxford says that “knit” is a weak verb, end of story. That means, if I've got it right, that the past tense is “knitted”. Webster's derives a lot from the OED and I thought that maybe so womanly as verb as “knit” would be undeserving of Mr. Webster's full attention. But that was to underestimate him. He says that the past tense of “knit” is “knit or knitted” – with “knit” first, note.

I am myself confused by now. The difference certainly isn't one I noticed when I first came to live among the British. Maybe I use both – “I knit the Princess shawl a few years ago”; “I knitted all through the lecture”.


I have never cared for calling verbs “strong” or “weak”. I feel it simply encourages misbehaviour. When the nice German woman found “knit” as a past tense in the book she was reading in Kathy's shop, she said, “I didn't know 'knit' was an irregular verb”. That is the way I would prefer to approach it.

14 comments:

  1. Could be worse. We could've ended up announcing 'I knat that'! Good Saturday to you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous10:38 AM

    So pleased about the vest.

    I'm about set to tat a Christmas doiley which I will give to my friend as something I tatted myself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous10:52 AM

      ......only a very small doily as I am a beginner tatter...
      http://www.roseground.com/books/tatting-books/festive-snowflakes-amp-ornaments

      Delete
    2. I am now chuckling to myself....I wish I could think of a clever rejoinder!

      Delete
    3. Anonymous3:09 AM

      I must be careful not to titter whilst I tatter...

      Delete
  3. More education from Jean - I've never heard of a strong or weak verb. I think I use knit and knitted as the mood strikes. I recall a conversation with a British co-worker years ago about 'got' vs 'gotten' with gotten appearing to be a US aberration. And I think that unlike the German woman, most of us would be hard-pressed to know what an irregular verb is these days.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous4:15 PM

      Actually, "gotten" is an old form retained by English-speakers in America. Reducing the past participle to "got" was a later development in Britain.
      -- stashdragon

      Delete
    2. Anonymous1:18 AM

      Yes, a friend in England once commented, "Americans aren't destroying the language, they're preserving it!"
      - Beth in Ontario

      Delete
  4. Irregular verb?? I too have long forgotten all those niceties we learned in high school English class,

    ReplyDelete
  5. irregular verbs.. reminds me of french class.

    a tip for your photo problems - you can log into your icloud account on a windows computer - and then access your photos. so you would be able to download the photo and upload it to blogger. your icloud logon is your apple id . you do have to set up icloud on your ipad and iphone to get the photos up to your account but it is seamless... the moment you take the photo it will sync up to your icloud account and then you would be able to access it on your windows computer/laptop by logging in...

    you could save your photos to FLICKR which gives you 1 terabyte of space for free and then i imagine blogger would let you pull the image. i dont like blogger and use wordpress after years on typepad.

    anyway, hope this helps with the photo moving process!

    a good clear out is always so satisfying. i really need to destash but mine is in my studio workroom in the basement - i will just have to man up and get a good opera or some good radio 4 or 4x dramas and comedies to listen to and plough thru.

    ReplyDelete
  6. =Tamar5:07 PM

    Just a thought - have you checked your spamtraps for the missing emails? I recently found one of my own email-to-self messages in the spamtrap.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Well done for finishing that vest with everything else that you have going on. The birthday boy will be able to appear in it for the celebrations next week.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous1:19 AM

    Congratulations on finishing the vest and making those useful notes for yourself.
    - Beth in Ontario

    ReplyDelete
  9. I am an old German woman (trying to be nice, too) and learned English almost half a century ago. I read a lot in English, and for the last years I often thought I remembered a piece of grammar wrongly(?). But it seems that the use of the language just changes. It is the same here, only much worse, because there is so much English mixed into the everyday language.

    ReplyDelete