A quick touching-of-base. No photograph.

We’re poised for London. Catching the train will be tough. Once on it, a happy day’s knitting stretches ahead, with the latest collection of Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories to fall back on.

Yesterday went well. The Secret of Life is not to do any ironing or cleaning. Then it becomes possible to achieve quite a bit, even if slowed down by old age. I think the income tax is about ready for on-line filing. A terrifying prospect, but I’ve done it twice before. And this year, I’ve left things so late that I’ve missed the deadline for filing on paper.

I’ll double-check everything when we get back, and then just do it – in time to start on the Christmas cards.

I attended to the must-do’s-before-we-leave, unless I’ve forgotten some of them, and got quite a bit of knitting done, as well. I’ve reached the 15th increase row, of 25, on the front of the ASJ. And finished a skein of Charcoal – all stash-holders will recognise the thrill of actually finishing a skein. And knocked off two full repeats of the Mysterious Christmas Project.

The discussion of sleeved shawls has been interesting (yesterday, including comments). It is a demonstration, I am absolutely sure, of the thesis that great minds think alike. I am sure that Sarah Hatton’s pattern and the previous Sleeves-in-Your-Pi were separate inspirations. (Although I read something by a classical scholar once about the difficulty of knowing whether the brilliant idea that occurs to you in your bath is indeed original, or something you read four years ago.)

I’m glad to hear (Fleegle’s comment yesterday) that Sleeves-in-Your-Pi is still popular on Ravelry. And I will remember, if it makes its way back to my HALFPINT list, her idea of shaping the sleeve caps.

Day is forming outside the window. It is time to face up to it. Goodbye for now.

Sorry about yesterday’s gap, especially as I had been looking forward to labelling it “La Fete des Morts”.

Good progress, however, on the knitting fronts. The Christmas Project is moving along nicely, as is the ASJ. For the latter, I had to do 25 more increase rows – that’s 50 long, long rows of knitting – after reaching the neck edge, to get me to the front edge. I’ve done 11 of them. It would be nice to reach 13 today, half-way, before we go off to London tomorrow. Back in the middle of next week, insh'Allah.

Helen C.K.S. will be the one with her finger on the trigger when the deadline comes up later this week for that Vogue Knitting Book I have my eye on. She has nerves of steel, and has acted as my agent on several similar occasions in the past.

If the weather is reasonably cooperative, I’ll take a picture of the ASJ today just lying there, not forced into something approaching its final shape. I’ve just finished a narrow stripe of Envy and am about to go on to a broader one of Roadside Gerry.

I’ve printed out the free pattern for the Claudia hat. Now that we’re actually in November, however, time presses, and I can begin to feel panic at the back of my throat. The Income Tax! The Christmas cards! One thing to be said for these dreadful, dark months – they go by all too fast.

Here’s a question for you:

Take a look at this (November 2), Fleegle’s recent, splendid FO. (I don’t read The Knitter – who’d have thought there’d be a magazine I’d skip? – but I do extravagantly admire Sarah Hatton’s work.) However, the question is this – there was a sleeved shawl in one of the magazines, probably Knitter’s, within living memory. It spent some time on my HALFPINT list before slipping back into oblivion.

Does anyone remember it?

[My notes are better than I thought they were -- I'm thinking of "Sleeves in your Pi", Knitter's, Winter 2000. I haven't looked at it yet.]

I really ought to document the HALFPINT list more carefully. I used to keep notes in my electronic Filofax of interesting patterns in the magazines as they slipped by. I haven't noticed anything worth recording in Knitter's since 2003 but, as you see, I found that useful note on an earlier page.

The Scam

Mary Lou, thank you for that most interesting comment, which I have forwarded to Mary. An English friend of hers phoned the police on Friday, but they weren’t interested. Whereas in your stepmother’s case, Western Union already knew. Maybe this is a standard-variation scam these days. Maybe the police take it more seriously, states-side.

Gretchen, the scammer had thought of your points: “I would have loved to call you but i don't have any money on me and the hotel telephone has been disconnected at the robery incident” and “I've been to the US embassy and the Police here are not helping issues at all.” It doesn’t stand up when you think about it, but when you think you’re reading a message from a friend it is, at least for a moment, unsettling.

And it is very unsettling to think of a hacker not only hacking, but reading one’s emails to construct a plausible appeal. As if a burglar went through your underwear drawer.

Knitting

I moved forward yesterday, but not very far. Less than an inch on the ASJ, and a full repeat but no more on the Mysterious Christmas project. It’s too wet for a doorstep photograph this morning. The latest stripe is Pilsen.

Non-Knit

My sister grumbled in a telephone call the other day that my blog was of little interest these days, being all about knitting. She should enjoy this one, at least.

I’ve been holding back on this, but it’s all completely public-domain. The Chambers of which Thomas-the-Younger is a member has been much in the news lately.

And Thomas himself has at last got his page on the 4 New Square website. They make much of his months at JP Morgan Chase without mentioning that his Aunt Ketki was influential in securing the post for him.

Just as you said, Helen: the Royal Mail system for translating an on-line customs-fee payment into action on a specific package lying on a shelf in Edinburgh, works just fine. I got the yarn from Angelika in yesterday’s post (marked "Paid") – two more skeins of Charcoal, and one colour, Huron. Even I don’t need to have that one explained. It’s green-y, pretty bright, similar to Panopticon. That must have been the idea, to help link Panopticon in.

It’s a relief to have the Charcoal. I bought two skeins to start with. The first one is nearly finished, won’t last for more than a couple of further dividing stripes. And I need it not just for dividing stripes, but also for a final edging of the whole and perhaps a collar.

I reached the neck edge yesterday, as hoped. I’ll take a pic tomorrow, when I’ve advanced another inch. The neck-edge stitches left behind don’t do much to make photography easier. And it won’t get easier, until I’ve finished mitering and left all the front-edge stitches above the diagonal on waste yarn. Another 48 rows.

I could happily spend the rest of my life knitting Lorna’s Laces colours into random stripes, but if I had to choose one, it would be Mother Lode. Not a Chicago place at all, unless there’s a local (copper?) mine.

I’ve packed my knitting for London next week – I am determined to finish those tiresome red socks for my husband, and start on a Christmas-present hat – I don’t think I’m giving too much away, there – with the Lorna’s Laces Charcoal Shepherd Sport yarn I bought by mistake (instead of Shepherd Sock).

Indeed, it occurred to me as I worked on the Mysterious Christmas Project yesterday that I will have enough expensive and delicious Cocoon left over that I might just dash off a brioche hat – EZ has a pattern somewhere – for someone not on my Christmas list at all. Daft.

Non-knit

I was the non-victim of a brilliant scam yesterday. I belong to a little group of knitting friends, six women, the other five American-based. We haven’t met as a group since Stitches East in ’02 but we have a name for ourselves and we are, I am sure, grouped in each other’s mailing lists under that name.

One of us, Mary, is an Englishwoman by birth, from a numerous family. She made her career in Hollywood – as a writer – and still lives in California. But she is an intrepid traveller, adventure-prone, and the message from her was therefore perfectly plausible, saying that she had been robbed at gunpoint in London -- she often comes over to visit family -- and needed money urgently to pay her hotel bill so that she could catch her flight home.

I assumed the message was for our little group. We haven’t been in close touch lately, but we still love each other.

The prose didn’t sound like Mary, but she was supposed to be upset. I didn’t do anything but felt guilty and uneasy all afternoon, until I heard from her alive and well in California. Someone had hacked in to an old email address and sent the appeal for help, apparently, to her entire address list, not just our little group. She doesn’t know whether anyone fell for it – a Western Union address was given, to which you were asked to wire money. The police aren’t interested.

I have always felt not too worried about security for things like Googlemail, although I’m pretty careful about on-line banking and eBay. This episode sort of shows what a dangerous world we're involved in.

A less good day, yesterday. But the sky didn’t fall, and at my age I think that has to be counted as a plus.

I got back from the supermarket to find a card from the post office – they do function, intermittently – to say that they didn’t deliver a package for me because there is a customs charge. That must be the package from Angelika’s – two more skeins of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in charcoal, essential for finishing the ASJ, and two or three more colours, just for fun.

The actual customs charge was modest, as befits a modest package. But then the post office superimposed a charge of their own, three times as large, as is their wont, to compensate them for their trouble. I paid on-line, and now I am worrying about whether that will translate into anyone’s actually picking up the package (when there is anyone available, not on strike, to do so) and bringing it to me. The sorting office used to be near here, and one could walk over in the afternoon and straighten things out. But it recently moved far, far away.

At least it’s American yarn. In my early internet days, when the world was suddenly open to me and I hadn’t learned any better, I paid charges more than once on packages of German sock wool being re-imported to the EU (=me) from Patternworks.

Later yesterday I learned that the chain that runs my local off-license has gone into receivership (like Chapter 11, only worse – teetering on the brink of bankruptcy). That’s where I buy my Sunday cider, Weston’s Vintage, and I have no other handy source, not Waitrose or the local Tesco’s. (I could divert to Sainsbury’s. They have it.) I’d rather become an out-an-out teetotaller than drink Magners.

And my troubles are small compared to those of the pleasant people who work there.

Knitting continues to chug forward. In fact, today I might reach the point where I have as many stitches on the needle for the ASJ as I started out with – a major milestone. That will mean I am at the neck edge, and can abandon six inches worth of stitches, secure on waste yarn, as I go on mitering. That will speed things up a little bit, at least at first, and also may make photography easier.

And I got in a repeat and a half of the Christmas project yesterday, too.

Mary Lou, you're absolutely right: brioche stitch is so quick and pleasant to knit, and trying to do it in the round so awkward, that there’s really no point.

A good day, yesterday: we have been having postal strikes, are having another one today. Yesterday, the system coughed up an armload of accumulated mail for us, including three knitting magazines and a wonderful package from JeanfromCornwall (posted only the day before) with photocopies of a Sunday Times series of articles about knitting from a quarter of a century ago.

I have so far only dipped a toe into all this richness. First impressions are that Knitter’s is really pretty tedious, Knitting (the British monthly magazine) continues to improve, and VK (now called Designer Knitting here) is pulling away from the pack.

There’s a KF in Vogue which caught my eye as I first flipped through, but I didn’t spot it as his. That’s unusual. It’s in Rowan Colorscape Chunky – Kaffe does half the work and the yarn does the other half and it looks easy and fun.

Lots of cowls, but I continue to prefer the Moebius one. Perhaps I’d better buy the pattern and salt it down with the others on my HALFPINT list.

“Meg’s hat”

(The mysterious and surely unknit entry on my Christmas list of last year.) Thank you for thinking about the problem, Tamar, but I don’t think it was the swatch cap. (I’ll have to do one for the Grandson Sweater, though, and am looking forward to it.)

I thought for awhile yesterday that I had cracked it – the i-cord lattice hat in a recent Woolgathering. I half-intended doing that for the Knitted Hat class at the Games this year, but didn’t get around to it. But I looked it up and it was published in March ’09, which rather rules it out for last Christmas.

I’m sure I wasn't thinking of the Dubbelmossa. I looked to see if there was a hat in Meg’s VK articles last year. No. One remaining possibility: her invention of brioche-in-the-round. There is such a hat in the spring ’09 Woolgathering (along with the lattice one, and others) but I think it was previously published in a magazine, probably in a brioche article. And I did cast on some circular brioche once, fairly briskly abandoned.

Maybe I should try again. It would be quick and cosy and fun to knit, if I could crack it.

ASJ

It’s very slow, now, as I keep saying. I’ve moved the Progress Bar forward a bit, but it’s pure guesswork. The Schoolhouse leaflet I am working from doesn’t really give us a full-length picture of an ASJ. We have adults wearing jackets, but the photograph is sort of cut off at the waist. I can’t yet guess how much lengthening of the body I’ll want to add once I finish mitering. That’s the point at which a BSJ is finished (except for finishing).

Not terribly much, is the answer, I suspect. I don’t want a jacket as long, proportionately, as the CSJs which are fully illustrated in the leaflet. I’ll use a favourite, beat-up cloth jacket as a model for length.

Mostly Comments, today

Stash Haus, I don’t at a glance see how to search the IWOOT website by personality, just by price. There are enough miserable gits on my list that I’d like to try. So far, as is my wont with Xmas shopping, I’ve been working with the paper catalogue, turning down the corners of pages. I’ll order on-line in the end.

Jane-Beth, it is more than slightly unnerving to learn that you passed us as we were setting forth on our afternoon expedition yesterday. Two worlds colliding. I wish you had spoken, although my husband would have been disconcerted.

It was certainly us – the man in the anorak said he was from the media dept of Belfast University, maybe he even said he was a professor. He was trying to identify the locations in which the film version of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was made. He had all of them except one, in which a little girl leaves a house – Miss Brodie’s house? – and runs along a road towards some park-like greenery. He showed us the clip on a digital camera. We couldn’t help. The whole episode was so improbable that he must have been genuine.

Donice, I love the Claudia hat. The Ravelry link is to your projects page, because your photograph of it is brilliant, but it is easy enough from there to find the free pattern. It reminds me slightly of a hat pattern in Vibeke Lind’s “Knitting in the Nordic Tradition” (love that book) which I knit once for my sister, where stripes of colour swirl and merge as the ribs do in Claudia.

I’m not absolutely sure that one repeat a day is quite enough for the Mysterious Christmas Project. I may step it up a bit, for the sake of moving on to other delights. I’m keeping its progress bar up to date.

One of my Christmas problems is unexpected, and rather disconcerting. I keep an Xmas spreadsheet of presents. It goes back many years now, and can spare me embarrassing repetitions. Last year, I have Ketki down for “slouch hat?”, Kirsty Miles of Beijing for “Meg’s hat” (what was that?), and Greek Helen for a watchcap. I don’t remember knitting any of those things, and suspect that they were supplanted and that the list was never brought up to date. But can I be sure?

There is other knitting recorded, which I do remember: The Rowan Earth Stripe stole in ’07 for Hellie Ogden (that’s when I resolved never to touch KidSilk Haze again), the Lynne Barr “Ribbed Links” scarf from “Knitting New Scarves” that same year for her sister Lizzie. I clearly remember knitting both of those.

Stash Haus, I like your stash-limiting rules. I think my stash largely grows from the feeling that I-may-not-be-able-to-get-it-later. (How long will Regia go on marketing KF sock yarn? Merely phrasing the question tempts me to order a few more colourways.) And from buying-too-much-to-be-on-the-safe-side.

As for the ASJ, it inches forward. Scarcely that, but it’s moving. I now have only 9 more increase rows – 18 rows of knitting – before I have as many stitches on the needle as I started with. But there will still be another 25 increase rows – 50 rows of knitting, on lots of stitches – before the mitering is finished. Pic soon.