Gretchen, that is simply the most brilliant thing I have ever heard of (comment yesterday). Shouldn’t your friend patent it and make a fortune and open the door to Kaffe’s patterns to everyone?

I’m coming along nicely. The only way I have ever managed to deal with the yarns as I proceed, is the one The Master recommends – cut off about a yard at a time, so that you can just pull it through the tangle. It can be a slow and wasteful system, especially in a pattern like the Green Granite Blocks where the colour sections are large enough that a yard won’t do. For James’s sweater, I think, I could cut lengths appropriate to the task – and soon learned what they were.

Mary Lou, there is a sort of rhythm in intarsia knitting, at least if the pattern is geometric. I once tried one of Kaffe’s (few) patterns with cloud-like shapes. It might have been “Ancient”, in “Kaffe’s Classics”, and it was a Rowan kit. I hated every stitch, and abandoned it after about six rows – ripping back and using the yarn to knit his “Afghan” pattern in a big jacket for Helen. Very successful.

He says himself in the introduction to “California Patches” that “all of the designs here have a natural rhythm to knit that can quite quickly be committed to memory…” I sort of imagine myself weaving, or doing embroidery, when I’ve got into the swing of one of his patterns.

When “Glorious Knitting” first came out, I thought the same as you – I can’t do that stuff, beautiful as it is, and I’m not going to try. But then the “Crosspatch” vest turned up very cheaply, a Rowan kit in the January sales. And I got hooked. (Rowan kits often used to figure in the January sales, which has probably got something to do with why Rowan doesn’t do kits any more.)

Ron, I’ve found one flaw in the chart so far, a section for which no colour was specified. I’m sorry to hear your friend had such a struggle. I think I’d recommend anyone to start with Tumbling Blocks or one of its variations.

If I finish this one, that leaves one more kit in the stash, that vest based on the Ravenna mosaic. (It’s called “Mosaic”, and it’s in “Kaffe’s Classics” too.) Will that feel rhythmical to knit? Or is it too intricate? I love it, and must find out one day.

Somewhere in all that stash must be a bag of Rowan left-overs, the subtly-coloured fine yarns you can’t get any more. Maybe they could be combined into one last Classic Kaffe. Looking through the books again, I find lots that I admire but have never attempted. I am also inspired, by “California Patches” itself, to think again of his striped patterns.

I wondered for a while yesterday just when it was that I knit “Mini Roman Blocks” for James. The photograph I posted yesterday doesn’t come with a date. But then I remembered – I was knitting one of the sleeves on 9/11. I interrupted the pattern with two rows of purple. You can’t see the stripe in yesterday’s picture, so here is another one, in which it’s just visible, low on the right sleeve. It is supposed to be on the left sleeve but James has put the sweater on backwards.



And, oh yes, here’s the Chevron Scarf. Once wet, it was exactly the right size, no violent blocking necessary. There is no substitute for wool, like the man said. It looks curiously shortened in the picture, but I can assure you, it's the full five feet.

A good day’s vegetable-growing. Vaut le voyage. Now I am tired, and must spend today re-grouping, as far as possible, and resting for the assault on London tomorrow. Knitting is packed – what book to take? I’m too near the end of Hornet’s Nest to rely on it.

(When I read Warrender, I am impressed by how early everybody gets up in the morning. In Steig Larssen, it’s how much coffee they drink, and all that easy angst-free sex. Warrender won’t do for London – too much Sweden, too soon.)

In the eight days I had been away from Strathardle, and despite leaving it under a cover of snow, spring had done that thing it does. Sprung. All the trees faintly misted with green along the motorway, and when I got there I found the seedling weeds. And that sudden feeling of the power and generosity of the earth.

There was not much actually to see, just the baby weeds and the feeling. The radishes are up, good old radishes, and I brought a few sticks of rhubarb back.

I watered in the nematodes. Fortunately the day was wet enough that I didn’t need to follow on with more water – we have to carry water from the house, for historical reasons too dull to go into here. That would have prolonged the job quite a bit. I got the potatoes planted. I stopped at a garden centre in Blairgowrie on the way to see if they had parsley yet, and they did, so that’s in. I planted peas, and some parsnips, and a few more spring onions.

I would have liked to add some more broad beans, and a bit of salad stuff, but time pressed. No pics. I could have showed you the baby radishes, but it was raining gently much of the time and I didn’t think that would be good for the camera.

As for knitting, I have cast on stripe four of the Chevron Scarf. I’ve got the hang of the long-tail cast-on now, picking up and putting down yarn and needles. And I finished a whole ball of Koigu on Monday evening, as hoped.

I was sufficiently alarmed by JeanfromCornwall’s comment about the possible waning of KF sock yarn that I went to my favourite supplier, Modern Knitting, and there found, I am glad to say, the complete range still on offer. There’s many a slip twixt the computer screen and the stash cupboard, I know, but I was glad at least to see no “out of stock”’s listed yet. They’ve got a lot of other wonderful things, too, if you want to be tempted by sock yarn.

Half-way through stripe three, of six. I’ve reached the point where it gets boring – I’ve done it, so to speak. Now it remains but to grit my teeth and go on doing it. One substantial consolation is that very soon, I will actually finish a ball of yarn. That happened often during the knitting of the Grandson Sweater, and I think I finished some red in the construction of the ear-flap hat for Beijing (which still hasn’t turned up there). Otherwise, not. No wonder the stash stays the same size.

And if I go on from here to Kaffe, the same situation will prevail.

And, Jean, yes, it’s going to be a bitch to block. My hope is that with a pin in each of the external points, and the whole thing stretched, the internal points won’t need individual attention, I can dream. It’s not terribly complicated, catdownunder. Feather and fan stripes, with the ingenious twist of semi-detachment.

And, yes, Mary, I’m afraid the doorstep was wet when I took yesterday’s picture. It wasn’t actually raining at the time, and the moment was brief. I don’t think any harm was done.

Non-knit

We sat down yesterday to face the question of going to London – my husband remains keen, although I’m not at all sure he’s up to it. He’s very short of breath, these days. I’ve been sort of dragging my feet and preferring to talk about something else – I don’t like leaving my vegetables this time of year, anyway.

However, he is determined. And when we sat down with the list of London exhibitions, and had nearly decided to go in June which might never happen, he kept sighing for the Gorky expo at Tatmo which goes off soon – so we’re going this week. Rachel, unfortunately, has room for us, in her household which involves much coming-and-going. I’ll go up to the station this afternoon and negotiate tickets.

I will try to fit in a day trip to Strathardle, all by myself, in advance of this. A couple of hours in reasonable weather (which we’re more or less having) should let me water in the nematodes – they expire on May 10 – and plant some or all of the remaining potatoes and perhaps a few seeds. So if I’m suddenly not here for a day, that’s where I am.

London should let me finish off Ketki’s socks and start another pair – some relatively boring ones for my husband next, I think, to make the KF yarn last longer. I noticed the last time I wandered around the yarn dep’t in John Lewis that they didn’t seem to have it any more, and tried to suppress a feeling of panic.

And Rachel has Free Cell on her computer.

Tamar, thank you. It is a good thing you don’t have a blog of your own, so that you can devote serious computer time to knowing where the find the answer to everything. I am very grateful, and very comforted. (See comment yesterday – the problem was how to find my way around on the Stirling campus at Knitcamp in the summer, when I arrive breathless and need to find Franklin's class.)

Good progress with the scarf. I’ve started the second stripe, and although the process of casting off, casting on and picking up, and resuming the pattern over the cast-on stitches, is all a bit awkward, it’s do-able. And the fact that the scarf suddenly looks like the illustration is a great incentive to proceed.

I found that, for myself, the way to do the casting-on row was to *pick up the next stitch for joining and keep it there on the RH needle while cable-casting-on 11. Then knit it.* Repeat indefinitely.

The designer is called Irina Poludnenko. I google’d her without finding anything else that interested me. She seems to work mostly for Tahki Stacy Charles. although searching their website for her name yields nothing.