Comments

Lisa, (comment yesterday), the Games are awfully boring; the Queen is as old as my husband, although apparently in slightly better nick; and all the things that make the day fun for us, are denied to Royals – seeing old friends, and having a drink with them from the back of their car or ours; running a race or joining in Tilt the Bucket or the Pillow Fight, or cheering on a relative who’s doing it; having a look at the Home Industries Tent in the hopes that Neighbour G. hasn’t won anything for baking this year; trying, once more, to come top at Musical Cars.

Braemar comes right after us – they must be down for the First Saturday in September. We saw the Queen arriving there on the news last night. The commentator said that Queen Victoria started the tradition, and the family is now stuck with it.

I don’t know anything about the Queen in 3-D. I don’t think I’ve heard any mention of such a thing. I went to a 3-D movie in NY close to 60 years ago and was sick afterwards and have stayed well clear since.

Maureen and Theresa, I am happy to be corrected on the matter of Meg’s teaching. I remember Amy Detjen from Camp Stitches on Lake George in ’99. I don’t think she was teaching, more like Head Counsellor. A tower of strength and good cheer. Amy is very tall, and strongly built, but that praise is meant without irony, metaphorically.

I think she later parted from the X’s rather acrimoniously – I must have read that on the Internet somewhere – and I am happy that her subsequent history has turned out so well. A tower of strength for Meg.

Life

We’re going to London this week. On Tuesday. I’m not looking forward to it, although it will be grand to be with Rachel and her family. My husband is not really up to it, and my role as facilitator gets progressively harder. The effort is no doubt good for him. Rachel, despite working full time and hosting language students at home, does all she can and much more than could be expected, in the way of driving us about.

We’re going right now in order not to miss the “Fakes” show at the National Gallery, which is about to go off. I’ll enjoy that myself, once we get there. And the Vatican tapestries at the V&A are about to go on, so we’ll see those too.

And I will press on with vigour at Helen’s second sock. I got an inch or so done yesterday, sitting in Waverley Station waiting to buy our tickets. I have even presumed to put the ball of Lang Jawoll I showed you the other day in my knitting bag, in the hopes of starting Matt’s socks.

Knitting

I have passed the half-way point of the 8th scallop on Helen’s Amedro shawl. The 8th is one of the big ones – the full 48 rows. There was a mini-crisis yesterday when a dropped stitch involved frogging, but all is well. I not only got the stitches back on the needle, but seem to have succeeded in figuring out where I was in the pattern, to proceed.

One of the routines of Games Day is the group picture taken at the end of the afternoon, back at the house. Alexander, the photographer, has now sent me this year’s version. It’s a particularly good one, with most of us looking unwontedly cheerful. Alexander himself is in the back row, framed by Rachel and Ed in the row in front, with the tense, anxious look which invariably identifies the person who has just set the delayed shutter action and run around to join the group.

Two of our guests are missing – my husband’s great-niece (his sister’s granddaughter, putting it another way) and her boyfriend. They had sloped off somewhere. I don’t think the group picture has ever been incomplete before, and it distresses me. The great-niece/granddaughter has been with us before, and appears in the appropriate photograph(s). She should have known.

They turned up again much later in the evening. Perhaps it was all just too boring…

(That picture could only have been taken at the Braemar Games, not all that far from us.)

Before I leave the subject of the Games, Helen’s sweater deserves mention. Here it is on the Games field.


I knit each of my daughters and daughters-in-law a Wedding Sweater when they married. Helen’s, here, was far and away the best – but the marriage failed. She decided this summer that 15 years was long enough, and got it out again. Mercifully, it seems to have escaped the attention of the moths.

All the colours are natural. It dates from my lichen phase. The pinks and almost-reds derive from ochrolechia tartarea which I found somewhere above the Croft of Cultalonie. When I Google’d just now, to check the spelling, I found a reference to my own blog of January 27 this year – and that blog entry includes a picture of the left-over yarns from stash.

I think the rich brown may have been logwood, bought in. The other variations in colour were contributed by sheep. The motifs refer to various things in both the families involved. Helen’s dear horse Milligan (long dead, even then) appears at the top of the sleeve. All the wedding sweaters have the Crown of Glory on the shoulder, meant to be the reward of a life well lived.

Knitting

Little to report. I’m half-way through the 6th scallop (of 29) of Helen’s Amedro shawl. As you can see from yesterday’s pic, it is lace knitting of the most simple. The problem is to stay awake and remember where you are. The scallops are of different sizes, with a fish-tailed double one in the centre. That helps a bit, I think.

I read Woolgathering through to the end, and discover that Meg is going to teach at Vogue Knitting Live in Manhattan in January. Has she ever done such a thing before? I had already had an email from Vogue about it. Franklin will be there. I can dream.

I am particularly grateful to Mary Lou, Gerri and especially Kristen for addressing seriously my anxiety about knitting socks for Hellie’s boyfriend Matt. (Comments, Sept 1) I am reassured by your arguments, and I think he’s next on the sock list. This is the yarn I have in mind. It's 100 grams: I’ll need either to add wild toes, or to buy another ball.


I bought it at I Knit London, if memory serves. I nipped over for a link just now, and got a most alarming “Account Suspended” page. Their website was up a fortnight ago.

Here is a rather sweet picture of Matt and Hellie at the Games. I asked him his foot size when he asked for the socks, so I’ve got that.



I am also grateful to yesterday’s commenters for filling me in on what Annie Modesitt was upset about. It doesn’t sound good. If people are saying what Sulky Cat says – and obviously, they are – it’s Annie’s job to stop complaining about "lies" and ask herself why. I follow her blog pretty closely, in appalled sympathy for what her family is going through and admiration for her determination to use knitting to pay the mortgage. The class that the Fishwife and I went to here in Edinburgh – Helen CKS had booked it, too, but wasn’t feeling well enough – was well-prepared and interesting enough.

I spent a lot of time over on Ravellry the weekend before Knit Camp, following with interest and horror the unravelling saga of the US teachers’ work permits. I haven’t been back since. I must have a look.

Back at the ranch…

I dispatched the preemie jacket yesterday, and started Helen’s Amedro shawl. She wants me to keep Amedro’s patterns in the wings, but there’s a centre rectangular section 71 stitches wide which I can “improve” with a pattern from Heirloom Knitting, so everybody’s happy. Here’s what I’ve done so far. There's an irritating error in the big second scallop, but I'm not going back.


It's yesterday’s darg, in fact. For Sharon Miller’s book did arrive, and I learn that “darg” is a Scots term for the product of a day’s work. Most useful word.

And a terrific book. Sharon is a scholar who operates on many levels, collecting Shetland shawls and studying their construction; examining museum examples; tracking down printed patterns; reading pretty obscure sources (e.g., Arthur Laurenson & Co., Lerwick, ‘Truck Report’, 1872); and above all, knitting. The point of this book is her belief, well substantiated, that “Aunt Kate’s Home Knitter” of 1910 contains the first patterns ever published for fine Shetland lace and that the patterns actually come from Shetland, probably from Unst.

Sharon reproduces Aunt Kate’s patterns photographically as well as providing modern charts and abundant advice on construction. A “love darg” is a darg done for love.

Yesterday’s post also brought the new Woolgathering. Never rains but it pours. I reflected during the course of the day that I don’t need to grumble about the postponement of the new book. If I want to knit some EZ stash-gobbling garter stitch, I’ve got the Bog Jacket and/or the Round the Bend to look forward to.

I must tell you how my vegetables are getting on. Tomorrow, perhaps.

Games Week dawns.

Here’s the current state of the entry – half-way through the second sleeve, and the body suddenly looking too long. No turning back now. Helen will be here this afternoon, with two boys. She’s going Festival’ing with a friend in the early evening -- not conducive to knitting, at this end.


I have been ticking my way pretty industriously through the list of things I wanted to get done this week, and should polish off a couple more today. I hope we’re going to Strathardle on Wednesday where my targets will be to cut the grass around the specimen trees down the commonty, preparing them for their annual photographs with grandchildren, and to shop and shop and shop for food for our picnic lunch on the Games field.

And to cultivate a Zen – or at least bovine – calm in the intervals.

We are to have a rice salad of Jamie Oliver’s, from “Ministry of Food”, and a French bean salad with feta of Gino d’Acampo’s, forget which book, plus sausages and barbequed chicken and crisps and beer and cider. Lots of people drift off and get themselves fish and chips from somewhere anyway.

Oriental knitting

Melanie, I ordered something from YesAsia once, perhaps a Nihon Vogue, and they wrote to say they needed me to fax them pictures of my credit card. I didn’t fancy the idea, and cancelled the order. Perhaps I should try again. But I think I have reached the stage where book-buying has to result in a serious attempt to knit Japanese, before I do much more of it.

Lisa – I’ve said this before, I think – when we were in Beijing, James drove us out into the countryside one day to see sections of the Wall. We wound up at the famous place where kings and presidents are photographed, but before that had seen some interesting and less-known fragments. In one village, where the Wall was marked with a plaque saying it was a national monument, a youth told James that we were the first westerners to have visited.

In that village, some women were sitting by the road knitting. One of them was doing a very interesting all-in-one baby clo’. Stitches had been left behind, I remember, while she finished off an arm or a leg. It was densely knit for cosiness in a desert winter. I asked, through James, if I could take a picture but she wasn’t keen.

That’s what I want to know more about. All I came home with were some magazines of utterly western designs, whether rip-offs or Chinese designers aping the west, I don’t care. I’ve got Judith Gross’ “Patterns from China”, not without interest but still pretty urban.

Maybe I should ask James or Cathy to do a search on whatever passes for Amazon in China (perhaps it’s Amazon) to see if any Chinese writers have tackled the subject.

Redness

It has a role in nature, too. I have to net the red currant bush if I don’t want the pigeons to take 85% of the crop. There’s no need to protect the white currants which taste so similar that – we discovered this year – they make a perfectly satisfactory if rather pallid Summer pudding.

Thank you for the kind words about the baby jacket, Lisa. I’m happy too, although beginning to reflect that time presses. The Games are a week today, and today is the last of what might be called tranquillity. On the other hand, I can go ahead and block it while knitting i-cord for the ties.

(Do you ever write about Chinese knitting?)

It occurred to me that if I want a swing jacket, here it is. All I would have to do is re-jig the front, doing away with the cross-over chest pieces, and re-size it. Garter stitch is infinitely slow – as I discovered knitting the ASJ, if I hadn’t known it already – but it’s slow because it’s eating up yarn. That’s a plus.



Back view. I should reach the second sleeve today.


The sight of the stash cupboard after nine months’ abstinence is pretty depressing. The only slip was one (1) ball of Heirloom Knitting merino lace for James’s jabot – and I knit it. I’m going to have to be firmer with myself than I had planned, when the year is up in November. Some KF sock yarn, certainly. But perhaps only one sweater-sized lot of a solid or near-solid colour. I'd been thinking two. And perhaps I could buy yarn specifically for Meg’s travelling-stitch hat in whatever magazine it recently appeared.

Then on with the show.

My new Japanese knitting books have arrived from Needle Arts. I bought two more of the Let’s Knit series. Marvellous stuff, but not as bizarrely wonderful as the first one I bought. Maybe I should ask Needle Arts themselves if that designer has done anything else. I don't even know his name, although there's a rather sweet picture of him included. (That's not him, below.)



I also got “Scandinavian Jacquard Caps” in Japanese – there are a couple of good ear-flaps. I ought to be able to manage one of them as a replacement present for Rachel Miles of Beijing, whose first hat never got there, given especially that I have a vague idea how to knit an ear-flap hat.

I wonder how much red there is in the stash? I seem to remember having to dig deep for the missing hat. It was lined in red, and had a Fair Isle pattern in which red figured. It’s funny how the appeal of that colour seems to transcend culture. Hindu brides wear it, and Chinese dragons. When I was a child in Detroit during the war, we occasionally had “coloring” when crayons were spilled out on a table and we helped ourselves. I vividly remember how red was always highly prized, and in extremely short supply. The big self-confident children got it all.

If need be, then, one ball of red something might be added to that November list.

MP3

The new earphones are a great success – they stay in, and the sound and my comprehension of it are transformed. It is as if I had put a BabelFish into my ear. I am less happy with the new shoes.

Games 2010

We’re going to be all right – we’ve got “our” flat at the hotel for all three nights. Auxiliary accommodation is much reduced. I might have done a bit better yesterday if I’d made more of a fuss, given that I was entirely in the right. The main downers are that there will be no room for the Loch Fyne Mileses on the Friday night, and that there will be more people at Burnside itself than will be entirely comfortable for my husband. Nice people, to whom he is closely related in blood, but still a lot of them.

Alexander and Ketki often don’t come on Friday night anyway. This year, I had hoped to lure them by booking a particularly luxurious apartment with two generous-sized rooms. This is probably the last time we will observe the Games on such a scale – my husband really can’t take much more of it.

But having “our” flat is the important thing. For the last three years, at least, we’ve eaten the big communal meals there, Friday night and Saturday night. That room with the bay window is still a lounge, large and comfortable. Without that, the weekend would have been miserable, even if we’d found somewhere for everyone to sleep.

MP3

I spent a dizzy morning in town yesterday, polishing off errands and making decisions too fast. I am worried about my new shoes, Ecco as usual, but… And I think I jumped in too fast on a set of earphones at John Lewis. Beadslut, Skull Candy is available here. They look like just what I want. I’ll see how I get on for a few days, but I think I may go that way. Thank you.

Meanwhile, however, the Italian women’s program continues well. They were even talking about knitting, at the point where I left off yesterday. Something about women’s traditional tasks.

I had the instruction book up yesterday – it’s on a disk, of course – to see how to set it to repeat, and find what you techies must have known all along, that I can set it to repeat a small chosen section of the whole. I think that will probably be the way to go. For the time being, I’ll go on listening to the whole program. And this morning, I won’t walk at all, because I’m having my hair done. Games Day has much in common with Christmas, minus the damp and cold and dark and card-sending and present-giving. One wants to look one's best.

Knitting

Always a relief to get back to knitting, especially in times of stress. I’ve finished the left sleeve of the little Portuguese jacket. Today’s first task will be to cast it off and pick up the abandoned body stitches and carry on across the back.

I think maybe this new camera is better for colour.

Jeanfromcornwell, yes, Portuguese knitters seem to carry yarn around the back of the neck – or over a little, special pin worn on the left shoulder – and flick it around the needle with the thumb. I think I’ve seen it done. I’m going to try, when time presses less urgently. My own technique is a very clumsy self-taught drop-and-throw. But I’m afraid I agree with Mary Lou, that retraining is hopeless at my age. (And by the way, Mary Lou, I love Coquille.)

I start today with what can only be termed a Jo Watson Moment. (Is that her name? Watson?)

The difficulties of Games Weekend in recent years have been greatly relieved by booking a lot of self-catering space in the old Kirkmichael Hotel. I think you can see, towards the left of the first floor of the hotel in that link, a bay window. The room behind used to be the lounge of the hotel. I remember my mother sitting in that window, waiting for us to come walking over the bridge to join her in the morning.

It’s now part of an apartment that sleeps six. At least since ’07 we have had it (plus other, smaller flats) for Games weekend, and, indeed, consider it “ours”. Last year, I booked it for this year (plus other flats) in late August.

Yesterday I began to wonder why I hadn’t yet heard from Angie about paying. I wrote – thank goodness. Sometimes it’s worth being neurotic. I’ve just had a note from her saying she has no booking for us.

I’ve copied for her the whole correspondence from last August, with comforting phrases such as “I shall put your booking in my diary” and concluding with her own “consider it done”. I anxiously await events.

It’s no use being in the right if people have nowhere to sleep.

On the knitting front, at least, things are going well. Changing horses in mid-stream was the right thing to do, and I continue to enjoy my little Portuguese jacket. At the moment, the short rows at the neck edge are on a six-row cycle, those forming the cuff on a four-row one. It’s all rather exciting but I seem to be keeping my head above water.

And maybe learning things about short-rowing that might let me return to the swing-jacket issue and design one for myself.

The Portuguese apparently don’t wrap a stitch when they turn in mid-row. At first I did it their way, but then decided that wrapping was neater. An eagle-eyed judge will see the difference, but I’m not here for the glory. I leave that to my six pea pods. The jacket is just to swell the number of entries, and, with luck, keep some wee soul cosy for a while.

I had a good time with my MP3 player yesterday, although the rush hour traffic swirling around Drummond Place makes listening more difficult than it was on my first such attempt on Sunday. I am going to pursue the advice Mary Lou and Donna gave the other day, about getting some fancy earplugs. Yesterday I listened to a women’s program – still lots of rapid-fire talk, but less laughter, and I think I did a better job of getting the general drift of what they were talking about. On we go. There’s no hurry.

Knit Camp

No more news, much chatter. The British Yarn website is down. A list of tutors is still available, with all the non-UK names removed. The matter should be resolved today. A long life has taught me that days which ought to bring resolutions often don’t – but it’s hard to see how we could fail to get some news today.

What I want (and lots of others do too) is a solid, informative communication from the organiser – an email to the paying customers, not an oh-my-ears-and-whiskers post to Ravelry. Meanwhile, most of the non-UK tutors must be in the country already. Have they all, like Annie, been economical with the truth on entry? If so, will they be allowed to change their tune and teach? And many campers have begun their journeys, too.

There will be knitters in Stirling this week, whatever happens. Buzzing around perhaps like left-over bees when a hive has been emptied, but it’s likely to be fun. Annie took a picture of a man wearing a kilt.

Knitting

Just at the moment, I’m sick of this fiddly thing.

I’ll take socks with me to Strathardle today. They are always soothing. There will still be plenty of time to finish the baby jacket in Edinburgh next week.

One of Helen’s very-best-friends is in Kirkmichael with her. They were in the north of England somehow or other for a couple of days last week, children and all, and went into an LYS because the friend, who used to knit, thought she might like to start again.

Helen wouldn’t let her buy any yarn until she consulted me. She told me on the phone to bring the new Rowan book, and anything else I thought useful. I’ve chosen Sally Melville’s “The Knit Stitch” and “The Purl Stitch”. Perhaps I’ll add “Knitting Without Tears”.

Fuzzarelly, thank you for the link to the techknit blog (comment yesterday). It’s brilliant, except for the use of “lay” for “lie”. What it seems to amount to, is that p2togtbl is still p2togtbl, but first you realign the stitches. Maybe I’ll try swatching that.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, because it is the single most useful piece of knitting lore I know – for any decrease, the stitch the needle enters first, winds up on top.

So anyway, we’re going to Strathardle today, back at the weekend. Have the “walking onions” come up? What is there to eat? Broad beans, surely. Helen says she’s kept picking the mange-touts, so I hope they're still in production. Salad? Spinach? Potatoes? French beans? Peas? It is all very exciting.

It is wonderful to have the Fishwife back on her allotment. It looks better after a month’s neglect than mine ever does.

Knit Camp

Well. Annie Modesitt’s blog says it all – non-EU tutors need work permits, and none have yet been issued. The organiser and a lawyer hope to pick them up tomorrow. “Lorilee” has been turned around and sent home from Glasgow airport – I’m afraid I don’t know who she is, or what she was to have taught. Her posts to Ravelry about the episode are calm and cheerful. Annie herself has apparently been admitted on a tourist visa. The opinion over on Ravelry is that you can’t switch from that to a work permit without leaving the country and coming back.

There is a great cacophony of voices on Ravelry, but as far as I can see, no more information than that. It's worth reading through the comments on Annie's post, however, if you're interested.

Annie sounds cheerful, and confident that she’s not out-of-pocket. That’ll be important for all tutors, but those of us who follow her blog with devotion will be particularly glad that Annie’s OK. I trust she means that travel expenses have been paid on her behalf – not just promised – and that she has somewhere to sleep in Stirling.

The organiser herself has little to say. She has started a thread called “I’ve had enough”. Is that what was heard from Monty before El Alamein, or Wellington before Waterloo, or even Leonidas before Thermopylae? (I say “even” because the Spartans were slaughtered to a man on that occasion.)

Knitting

Any further remarks seem superfluous, but I suppose I should note that I finished the other front of the little kimono jacket yesterday. The pattern says to join fronts to back at the shoulder with a 3-needle bind-off. I think Kitchener would be preferable – smoother – and will do that.

The pattern has its oddities. A nice little chain of stitches runs up the fronts as you decrease to form diagonals. On one side – the baby’s right side – this is done with K2tog on the right side and P2tog on the back. On the other side, we have SSK on the right side and – bizarrely, to my mind – SSP on the other. What does that mean? How do you do it? What’s wanted is P2tog through-back-loops which is what I did. I think there are fancy ways of doing that manoeuvre, but through-back-loops works well enough for me.

All this talk of Japanese knitting sent me back to the Needle Arts Book Shop yesterday. I wound up ordering two more in the “Let’s Knit” series – those words being the only ones in the book in English – and the “Clear and Simple Knitting Symbols” book. I think the latter should go a long way towards making Japanese stitch dictionaries accessible.

What I need to do now is apply myself, instead of just oooh-ing and aaah-ing. Thank you very much for the offer of hand-outs, Mary Lou and Maureen. (And, boy! am I impressed that you can teach Japanese knitting, Mary Lou!) I think I’ve got all I need, what with the Knitter’s article and the free pages on “Interpreting Japanese Knitting Patterns” from Needle Arts itself. I downloaded and printed those yesterday.

Going back just now to get titles and links, I noticed for the first time the book on “Scandinavian Jacquard Hats”. In Japanese, of course. That could be IT! I knit an ear-flap hat for Rachel-the-Younger in Beijing earlier this year, at her request, using the plug-in-your-gauge self-generating pattern the Fishwife pointed me towards. It never reached its destination. A Japanese-Scandinavian hat might be just what Rachel would like, and just the incentive I need to get to grips with a Japanese pattern.

An ahah! moment.

Needle Arts is a delight to deal with, up there with the Schoolhouse and Heirloom Knitting.

As for actual knitting yesterday, I finished the first front of my tiny jacket, and started the second.


While I was lining up links yesterday, I noticed that K1 Yarns has some nice classes coming up – one on Shetland lace next weekend, when we will be occupied with a visit from old friends from our Birmingham days, and anyway I know how to knit Shetland lace; and one on Freeform Knitting, which I’d really rather like to attend – on Games weekend. So I won’t be there.

Emily Dickinson

Skeindalous, you posted a comment in late July mentioning the new biography of ED by Lyndall Gordon – the book which posits epilepsy as an explanation for her oddity. There is a full page review of it in the current “Economist” – that’s a lot of space for a book review, for them – in which they call it an “astonishing” book which will “revolutionise the way in which Dickinson is read for years to come.”

That’s the one I tossed aside because it didn’t have my mother in the bibliography, but maybe I should take another look.

I looked at my mother’s book again yesterday. It suggests nothing more than clinical depression as an explanation, but does say that the family were worried about Emily's oddities and reclusiveness when she was in her twenties. I didn’t pursue it – what is the evidence for their concern? But if she was epileptic, those closest to her would have known, and closed ranks, rather than trying to get her out into the world, wouldn’t they?

There’s a new bulletin from CT on Mungo’s blog this morning. My job on Games Weekend is to provide the picnic eaten on the field – clearly it will be impossible to come up to the picnic standards of the Connecticut River. (Helen will do Friday evening, Rachel will take Saturday, and on Sunday we usually manage to get by on leftovers.)

Here’s Mungo in CT shucking corn.

Not much knitting yesterday, but I finished the back of the little kimono jacket, did the maths – with what success, we will soon see – and started one of the front pieces. The pattern is curious in the way it leaves edges unfinished. The lower “skirts”, unattached to each other, are just raw st st at the sides -- I have frogged and started again with garter st borders, you will remember – and the back neck is similarly stark.

I felt yesterday that, whether I go to Stirling on Thursday or not, it sort of behoves me to get to grips with Japanese knitting. Helen CKS and I went to a lesson at K1 Yarns once, taught by Mrs Habu, so I’ve got a vague idea of the basics.

I spent some time yesterday, therefore, in the Japanese Knitting and Crochet group in Ravelry – I’ve been a member for nearly a year, but don’t go there much. In a list of resources, I found a reference to an article by Gayle Roehm in the Spring, ’97 issue of Knitter’s, “Understanding Japanese Patterns”.

And there it was, almost at the bottom of my pile. That was in the great days of Nancy Thomas’ editorship. The article is four pages long, and consists of solid, serious information. All I need now – once I’ve finished the Green Granite Blocks and some lace for Helen – is a KAL. (Interestingly, at the end, when she is listing resources, she gives only addresses and telephone numbers, both in the US and Tokyo – there’s not a website to be seen. How the world has changed in 13 years!)

The experience made me wonder, for a moment, if it is a good idea to go ahead with my plan for phasing out knitting magazines. Some of them, anyway. Starting with Knitter’s.

Miscellaneous

Angel, I like your idea a lot, of being able to pay the Twist Collective a flat fee for a particular issue that would let you download all of those patterns. Should you suggest it to them?

Reaching yesterday's milestone in my Yarn Fast has made me reflect again on the enormity of the problem. Effectively, there has been no new yarn for nine months now. The stash is totally unaffected. I've thought of some yarn I could take to the charity knitters in Alyth -- I'll look that out today. Short of actually dying, I can't think of what else to do. Well, I can. I must buy very little in November, and resume the fast at once.

Kind of a pivotal day on the yarn-fast front. My only lapse, since November, was a ball of merino lace from Heirloom Knitting, for James's jabot. And I knit the jabot, so stash wasn't enhanced (much).



Today is also Thomas-the-Elder's birthday. He's so old I've forgotten exactly which one.



The Yarn Yard website is back up: good news. Natalie doesn’t always name her colours these days, and I think it’s a pity. It must be very difficult to keep doing it, but Posh Yarn manages. The Posh names are very good, and it’s part of the pleasure of browsing that wonderful site. My very first purchase when the yarn fast is over…

And speaking of websites, I’ve only just discovered that the Fall Twist Collective is up. Who needs magazines on paper?

Knitting

Better garter stitch edgings have failed to eliminate curling, but have reduced it to a point where I can hope that blocking will do the rest. I should move on to one of the front pieces today. Don’t apologise, kirstieinbc. I should never have entertained the idea of not entering something in the Games, especially this year when it is for a good cause and can be done so quickly.


We sat down last night with the calendar, and although August remains as complicated as ever, coming-and-going-wise, saying it out loud somehow helped. We’ll go back to Strathardle on Monday, insh’Allah. I’ll take my Japanese knitting along – both the things required for the class, and some magazines/books I’d particularly like to be able to knit from. Thursday is the day, and you never know.

Will the walking onions be up?

Southern Gal, my MP3 player is a 2GB Logik. (It’s worth following that link – Southern Gal’s most recent post is about the sad news that knitting is to be cut from the curriculum in Shetland’s schools.) I have packed it away in its plastic box and put it in The Box to take to Strathardle. I can do no more by myself. But when I tackle the problem again with Archie, I will remember what you say, Theresa, about holding the menu button down for an unconscionably long time. I think I’ve done that, but it’s worth trying even longer.

So yesterday I was forced to do my power walk (four circuits of Drummond Place Gardens which I think add up to about a mile) alone with my thoughts. First I settled yesterday’s meals – mussels for lunch, chicken for supper – and then went on to the question of whether I should knit a Games entry after all.

I decided that I would, and I would do it properly, with a schematic and a swatch.

Kristieinbc, this is your fault, for Sunday’s comment.

After breakfast I printed out the kimono pattern – which lacks a schematic – and chose a yarn from my Yarn Yard collection. (Natalie’s server seems to be down this morning, hence no link.) I had the uncomfortable feeling that I could spend a year knitting exclusively Yarn Yard without running out – Adult Surprise Jackets, anyone?

Winding took a while. The schematic was easy. The back of the kimono is a square – 9 ¼” for the smallest size in the original. All I had to do was knit a 6” square and calculate the other pieces from that. While I was out shopping for the mussels and the chicken later in the morning, I reflected that I might as well take a guess at the gauge. If I got it right, that was the back done. If not, I had my swatch. Solvitur ambulando was the order of the day.

And I did get the gauge right – my piece is about 6 ¼” across. The fabric is lovely.


But it curls appallingly, despite a garter stitch border. Too much so to rely on blocking.


So I’m going to take it out today and start again, with a wider garter stitch border at the beginning and with garter stitch edges of at least four stitches each side. Curiously, the pattern lacks those. The bottom of the little kimono hangs loose – there are no side seams below the armpits. So it won’t even have itself to give it substance.

Mary G., thanks for the vote of confidence on the question of old women and long hair. I was afraid I'd been offensive. The Rowan model has hers in a bun in some of the pictures, and looks terrific.

Non-knit

I thought Mr Clinton looked alarmingly gaunt in the wedding pictures, but dieting often affects men that way. Our former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, still looks haggard, a decade or so after he and his wife took his weight in hand.

Vivienne, it was a great comfort yesterday to know for sure that I have ordered the right replacement needles (because Knit-Pick = KnitPro Symphonie). Thank you.

MP3 player

I might as well start here, since we are all now embroiled in my titanic struggle. I am now seriously entertaining the possibility that there is something wrong with the little machine – although, obviously, I must consult Archie before taking any more radical step.

I read the manual again this morning. The idea, repeatedly, seems to be that you scroll through the options – I can do that – and then press the >II/M button – the big one, in the middle – to get a menu, and to do everything else. I cannot get any response out of the >II/M button. I’ve tried re-setting.

Yesterday I downloaded a couple more worthy radio programs from the BBC and moved them to the MP3 player, I think successfully. I thought if I presented it with a choice, it might offer me a menu. No.

So that’s where we are. It’s no use worrying about the Italians until I can play the player.

Knitting

…provides a more cheerful topic.

The third rank of green granite blocks for the right front is established, and well forward. I should put in the central dots today, and get well on towards the point where the tops of the blocks begin to recede.


And a good stint of GGB’s leaves a little time in the later evening for the sock. I’m not all that far now from the first heel-turning.


I think the stripe-repeat on the yarn is shorter than in some KF yarns, but I may be imagining that. I've got more stitches than usual (64 instead of 56) for a woman's sock because Helen wants them loose. That could explain it.

Knit Camp looks less hopeful, as it looms nearer. August is just too stressful. If I could be picked up and put down without effort in Stirling, if I could be guaranteed a stress-free and preferably kitchen-free day or two afterwards to recover, I’d love to go. None of that is possible. But the option is still open. We’ll see how next week unfolds.

Writing yesterday about the Games and not-knitting has at least prompted me to have another look at the selected pattern – the Sachiko kimono (Ravelry link). It really is rather perfect – simple, elegant, easy to put on a small fragile person. Maybe, after all…

The beans survived another couple of hours on the doorstep yesterday. I think I will leave them out there a while longer today, as long as it’s not windy. We have decided to go north on Thursday – the forecast for the weekend promises a slight improvement, warmth-wise.

I finished the first sock, and got ten rounds into the dread ribbing of the second. My husband tried it on – the toe is a bit too long; easily fixed. I used my usual formula for the toe shaping, and thought as I did it that, with 72 stitches instead of my usual 64, it was going to come out long. A 64-stitch sock has 22 rounds in the toe; I’ve done 25 (I think).

The Future

Jenny, thank you for the pointer to the Baby Sachiko Kimono sweater (Ravelry link). I had already seen it in my search of Ravelry, and put it on a mental short list, without grasping the important point you make, namely that it is written for worsted so that I can probably downsize it for a preemie by using a finer yarn. Perhaps some of the sock yarn, I’m afraid there’s lots, left over from last year’s ASJ? Anyway, I’ve downloaded it, and it’s the one -- my 2010 Games entry.

I thought a lot yesterday about that Bavarian Twisted Stitch jacket. Current yarn choice is Rowan Extra-Fine Merino DK. The next time I’m in John Lewis – and there is a prescription from Boots to be picked up this very day – I’ll try to have a look at it. The Rowan website mentions stitch definition specifically. The colour range is very good. “Blood”, I think. Maybe “red wine”.

The pattern – in Meg’s book “Knitting” – has a good paragraph about the importance of swatching and blocking. Bavarian travelling stitch is essentially ribbing writ large, and she points out that you can stretch it out and block it flattish, or not. Unless I've missed something, however, she doesn’t say that the swatch has got to be circular.

Bavarian travelling stitch is hard enough by itself; it’s next to impossible on the flat, because there is action in every row. Maybe this point is covered in the DVD.

I’ve still got my circular swatch from the Grandson Sweater, waiting to be turned into a hat.

Politics

This is a most extraordinary situation. Seeing the three party leaders at the Cenotaph the other day, I was reminded of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Gondoliers”. One of them is king – but which?

Emily, my son Alexander has been arguing your very point with me – that there are more Labour voters in England than you might think just to look at all that blue on an electoral map. I believe it is true, however, that if you remove Scotland from the equation and just count the number of constituencies won by each party, England will be found to have chosen a Conservative government, not just this time but in most post-war elections. But I’m not going to do the arithmetic.

David Blunkett was extremely sensible on the radio this morning on the absurdity of the idea of a “progressive alliance” with a Labour Prime Minister, in the present situation. David Blunkett.