A day of unspeakable and rather delicious idleness.

C. phoned, and later sent me this nice picture of Manaba with his son Hamish and his cat Poe. The cat is (as often, in such situations) not best pleased with the new arrangements, When I was born, my parents had a cat named Norman Thomas, after a then-well-known American socialist. He walked out.

No knitting, except for a bit of inconclusive swatch. I remembered, however, that there is a swatchless way to knit a mitred sweater, and set myself to find the means. I knew it had something to do with Shetland, and started with the various volumes of “Simply Shetland”. No. Then on to the equally various volumes of Jamieson’s Shetland Knitting Book. Yes. And the interesting thing is that my hands knew I had it right, even before I found the pattern.

This is it:

Cast on 2 stitches. Knit one row. Thenceforth, right side, k1 f&b into first and last stitch. Wrong side, knit. (Could this not equally be done in st st?) When the base of the resulting triangle  -- that is, the stitches on the needle – measures ½ of the desired distance across, set it aside and knit another such triangle.

Then combine the two triangles on one needle, with a marker in between. Thereafter: every right side row: k1 f&b into first stitch. Knit to within 2 stitches of marker. K2togtbl. Slip marker. K2tog. Knit to last stitch. K1 f&b.

Your mitred piece will get longer without otherwise changing shape.

This technicality reminds: Arne & Carlos have posted an unusually spirited item in which they argue against top-down sweaters. For various interesting reasons. For them, when you are aiming at a raglan sweater and  have knitted up to the underarm and made two sleeves, the number of stitches on each sleeve should be ½ the number of body stitches. I have fetched “Knitting Without Tears” from my shelf and find that in the EPS, the sleeves are only 1/3 of the body.

Arne and Carlos don’t believe that stitches are happy upside down. They also don’t believe that short-row shaping to raise the back neck is necessary. The shape of the human body will take care of that.

Back to sourdough tomorrow. Thank you, Ron. I tried the float-test a few days ago, and it sank to the bottom of the cup and lay there inertly. Today, inspired by you, I tried again. This time, it hesitated before sinking, and blew a few bubbles. I think I’m probably making progress.