Merging Colors -- here's the yarn! 

Merging Colors

That's what the package was, all right -- and there's a (washed-out) pic of the contents. The Adagio shawl on Candace' website will provide an idea of the effect (www.strickwear.com), but I want to do a sweater. That's going to involve -- as well as a lot of ball-winding -- working out pretty closely in advance how many rows there will be in the finished item. But I've done that in my day for Fair Isle patterns; it's not impossible, and will indeed impose a certain attention to detail before I start.

That won't be until I've done the Clapotis (we're roughly half-way), the hat for my Games entry, and the negative-image striped Koigu for grandson Thomas-the-Younger's first birthday. All relatively quick projects.

The sweater will be for me, unless my husband deems it Unsuitable. He has become very adroit recently at whisking away FO's which he deems to fall into that category. I did the Round Trip jacket (Knitters', Fall '03) for example, for the simple love of the pattern and of Noro Kureyon. Just the thing for Cathy, he said, and off it went to Beijing. That would have been too small for me anyway. Then there was the Striped Fringe scarf from IK -- I don't have a note of the issue to hand -- where the vertical stripes disconnected from each other to form a fringe at either end. That went to a neice.

Non-Knit

I've been re-reading my mother's thrillers. The first, A Talent for Murder, is really rather good, even after all these years. The second,. Murderer's Choice, begins with a brilliant McGuffin -- I hope I'm using that technical term correctly -- but is rather dull thereafter, and the ending, which turns on a confusion between woody nightshade and deadly nightshade, is simply bad botany. Mother was fully as confused on the subject as her characters. (The McGuffin is this: the book begins with a meeting between two cousins, who hate each other. The rich one tells the poor one that he has made him his heir, and also taken out a huge insurance policy on his life with his cousin as beneficiary. He means to commit suicide, he says, in a way that will look as if his poor cousin had murdered him. So far so good, but the real brilliance is to follow: when the serious action of the book begins, the rich cousin has been dead for six months, apparently of natural causes, and not the slightest suspicion falls on the poor cousin. He can't stand the suspense, and consults a private detective.)

I've gone on to the third, Sin of Angels, which starts reasonably well. My mother's name was Anna Mary Wells, and her books are available on Abebooks.

My garden, yesterday 

A potato (Lady Balfour, by name) -- coming up! 

May

Here we are back in Edinburgh again. For the moment, sans illustration, as the camera battery was warning of flatness as I took the farewell pictures yesterday. I'll charge it and post them soon.

Starting with the usual garden one. Still not much to see, except rhubarb. But the eight water bottles which currently protect the newly-planted courgette (zucchini) seeds should be visible, and the runner bean teepee. I am sure it was runner bean seeds that Jack swapped the cow for. They are big and shiny and beautiful and under ideal conditions grow with something like fairy-tale speed.

The garden is planted. The first week we were there, the weather was as lovely as May can be. Pretty amazing. It passed for me in a sort of frenzy of anxiety -- would I get everything done before either the weather or my strength gave out? I did, and the rain came this week just as I was beginning to get more than a bit worried about dustiness. In the last 24 hours before we left, three different things appeared above ground: Indian mustard and mizuma among the saladings, and some cabbage elsewhere. And the potatoes planted in April are showing. The seedlings are too miniscule for photography, but I have tried to represent a potato. I had thought that rocket (arugula) would be the first to show, but there was no sign of it yesterday morning.

The pleasure in vegetable-growing, as in knitting, is largely but not entirely in the process. One of the happiest by-products of the former, for me, is the view. The grounds around our house look loved, I think, and to a degree, tended, but by no means manicured. I love the sense of order in the vegetable patch, those nearly-straight green rows, those few square yards of wilderness tamed.

The 2005 weeds haven't really hit their stride yet -- I was still able to make headway against them. This happy state fosters every year the illusion that this year I will tweak out every weed as it appears, so that in 2006 it will require no effort at all to get the ground ready for seeds. Not so, I am afraid.

All that, and the glorious light, and, best of all, no midges yet. The rest of the year is just there to lead up to and away from May.

I got quite a bit of knitting done on Rachel's Koigu sweater -- picture tomorrow, I hope -- due to coming in paralyzed with exhaustion and capable of nothing else for half an hour. Koigu is heaven on the fingers. The Clapotis was a bit hard to resume yesterday -- the 50% silk in the beautiful yarn seems very harsh and unyielding by comparison.

Amongst the knee-high pile of mail behind the door was a card from the Post Office about a package they couldn't deliver. That'll be my Merging Colors yarn, I hope. I'll go collect it today.

 

It's Done! 

There It Is

Finished. If I have another go at reducing the Shetland jumper-weight stash next winter, I'll knit a pullover, and pay more attention to detail.

I had a pleasant evening knitting more Clapotis -- I even finished a skein of yarn. I keep track on a spreadsheet of yarn-in and yarn-out, a meaningless statistic especially for one who knits as many stripes as I do and thus rarely finishes a ball of yarn. The current score for '05 stands at a rather unsatisfactory 14 out, 32 in, with a custom-dyed order of Candace Strick's Merging Colors on its way to me as we speak (www.strickwear.com).

So, we're off to the country today, and the weather forecast is good. We may be away as long as a fortnight: no blog. Yesterday went well on the worm front until late afternoon, when another batch of 50 or so arrived. (None this morning, which is very encouraging.) I wrote to Demon but they entirely failed to grasp the problem, and wrote back telling me not to open attachments and to keep my virus software up to date, when what I am worried about is an overflowing mailbox. Would I know the name of the worm if my software wasn't up to date?

Knitting magazine put in an appearance yesterday. I think I was wrong to worry -- it comes out in the second week of the month, whereas my cookery and gardening magazines turn up the week before. It -- Knitting -- seems to be going from strength to strength, although there's still nothing there I want to knit.

Mary Morrison makes the current Rowan magazine sound interesting, including something from Sharon Miller who wrote Heirloom Knitting.  

 

 

I did it!

There's something to be said for blogging. I was peacefully knitting away on the Clapotis last night, watching an episode of the Simpsons, when I realised that the night was no longer young and that I had PROMISED to sew those buttons on. So I did. I'll hold off on the final photograph until I've got it blocked. It looks pretty good, until you try it on and see how awful the neckline is. I'll take a picture of it with the terrestrial camera, too, for archive purposes. I've become sloppy about the paper archives since I started blogging. I know I could beam digital photographs into the ether and get them back through the letterbox as prints, but I never get around to doing it.

I haven't heard from W32.sober.O for 24 hours. I hope that means the infected machine is cured -- or maybe it just isn't switched on on Sunday? If I was getting hundreds, that computer, wherever it is, must have been sending many, many thousands. I'll keep fingers crossed through today, just in case.

The excitement of the promotion of Cathy's book sent me back, yesterday, to my mother's first and best, A Talent For Murder. (Her name was Anna Mary Wells and there are lots of cheap copies on Abebooks.) It's not half bad. I wonder if I have ever before re-read it? I was ten when it came out in 1943 (no secrets here). I certainly read it then, and remember it vividly, including whodunnit.

The celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe are raging. I only really grasped when we went through this ten years ago for the 50th, that this anniversary is far more meaningful to people here than the real end of the war, in August. My husband was serving in the Far East so he, like all Americans, regards the real end as the significant date.

We are reading Churchill's "The Second World War" as our bedtime book at the moment. There's some good stuff there. I'm learning a lot. He paid meticulous attention to detail, a characteristic I hadn't entirely expected. Had he been a knitter, he would have got that neckline right. A little paragraph in one of the Sunday papers yesterday recalled that, the day before the German surrender, he wrote to the Ministry of Food ordering them to make sure that there was enoigh beer in London.

The Clapotis in progress 

I didn't sew those buttons on. (I will this evening, I really will.) I got to the first ladder in the Clapotis and it was such fun that I pressed on to the second. The yarn doesn't want to ladder; it has to be helped -- but that's fun, too. The ladders are on the corner to the right, and you can't really see them in the picture.

We've decided to take an extra day here, and go back to the country on Tuesday. It was an exciting week, one way and another, and I feel I didn;t get much forrad'er with the business of life, such as ironing and paying bills.

I am being beseiged by a virus -- a worm, strictly -- called W32.sober.O. It's one of those ones that sends copies of itself to all the addresses it finds on the infected computer. This sort of thing is perhaps slightly worse for people like me with their own domain name -- the wretched thing can make up addresses and I have to receive anything sent to Anyname@jeanmile.demon.co.uk.

I'm not infected myself. At the moment, Norton is set to tell me every time it finds an incoming virus. I can probably change that if I exert myself. The trouble with this one is that I'm getting batches of 50 or more, several times a day. While we're here, it's just irritating. But when we go away on Tuesday. my mailbox will soon get stuffed full. I'll try writing to demon, but I doubt if there's anything they can do. I used to get quite a few viruses in my Knitlist moderating days, addressed to Knitlist-owner. Life has been peaceful since then -- until this.

Still no Knitting magazine. Something must be wrong. I can't imagine there's much I want to see in a summer issue, but I've got every copy since they started and I'd be sorry to break the chain.

 

FOA 

How's that for an unexpected picture?

Catherine Sampson is my daughter-in-law, wife of James-the-Elder in Beijing. FOA is her first book, published last year. (Hand on heart: it's good. It's published by Macmillan, and it's available in the States too.) Yesterday morning we got a message from China (from James, not Cathy) to say that the cheap edition was being launched so in the afternoon after our lunch party I sent my husband up to the bookstores on George Street with the camera. I used to think that three-for-two was the bookstore's way of offloading books they couldn't otherwise get rid of, but that is apparently not so. It is a great boost to sales if you are selected.

She has delivered book two to the publishers, but I know no more -- neither what it is called or when it will be out or whether she has a further contract.

My mother had a modest success writing thrillers ("detective stories", they were called in those days) in the 40's and early 50's. Hers was a difficult, depressive, mistrusting character and she missed out thereby on a lot of the joy family life might have brought her. I so wish she had lived to see this. She would have been delighted by Cathy's success, without complication or reservation.

James has bought the domain name catherinesampson.com for future use.

We had a nice lunch. Our recent purchase occupies a lot of space, at the moment, in boxes in the dining room (well away from the leaky part of the ceiling). Our guest, a publisher, said "Ah! Cook & Wedderburn!", although those words do not appear on the spines.

I spoke to Mrs Carson yesterday, and can only hope that things are in hand upstairs. I want to get back to my vegetables (and grass-cutting) next week. We can't sit around forever waiting for water to come through the ceiling.

Anyway, knitting.

I did a bit more Clapotis, and reached the first ladder. Great fun. Tonight I'll have to sew those buttons on.

I had a nice note from Marilyn, in the form however of one of those comments that I can't reply to. Hi! Marilyn, and thanks.

 

Rocking-horse 

Mrs Carson

Truly devoted readers will remember the name.

I didn't sew the wretched buttons on last night, because someone is coming to lunch today and therefore the dining-room floor is not available for blocking purposes. No use finishing the jacket if I can't block it.

I have been keeping a close eye on the state of the dining room since our little difficulty in January when water came through the ceiling. Yesterday, I even thought we could go all gracious and remove the newspaper which covers the oak chest under the Fatal Spot. But when I went to do it, the paper, although absolutely dry, looked suspiciously pock-marked. So I replaced it with fresh paper and checked every half-hour and sure enough, just before we went to bed, a fresh, wet spot. I phoned the girls upstairs, who promised to have no more baths (they can shower without inundating us, oddly) and left a message for Mrs Carson who lives in North Berwick and owns the flat on Scotland Street from which bath water emanates.

Blast.

I knit more of the Clapotis, but still havn't reached the first ladder. I was sort of worried about the large wodge of solid fabric I was accumulating and, reading ahead, worried also about how few stitches I would soon be asked to drop. But then I got it, I think. The diagonality of the thing means that I will have plenty of ladders (which will run back into the present solid wodge) if I stop fretting and follow instructions. This is the first time I have knit anything from an on-line knitting magazine, for what that's worth.

Still no sign of Knitting magazine.

So today's picture is neither jacket nor Clapotis but a rocking horse which was in the auction sale I went to this week. It cost somebody nearly six thousand pounds. I have never seen anything like it. Those two little wicker seats, front and back, of DIFFERENT SIZES, mean that the rider could keep two of her younger sib happy as she rode along. And I say "her" not from a misplaced wish to use it as the generic pronoun, but because the horse is fitted for riding sidesaddle.

 

Some of my new yarn 

Polling Day

...and it's bliss. The early-morning BBC radio programme claimed not to be allowed to discuss candidates or issues, so we had a lovely mixture of salamanders and dinosaurs and violence in Baghdad and lay-offs at IBM just the way it used to be. The campaign has been intensely boring from the beginning. The only interest tomorrow will be the question of how well the Liberal Democrats have done.

The Auction

...went as I expected. There was "interest" in the Gents' Seats, the auctioneer announced, before starting the bidding above our upper limit, and way above his own upper estimate, and it went on up from there, so I didn't have to intervene at all.

My husband had feared that libraries around the world would want Cook & Wedderburn's Ruskin (only 2000 were printed) but no. There seemed to be no external or telephone bids, it was only me and someone on the other side of the room whom I never saw. We had a brisk ding-dong, starting from quite a low point, and then the other bidder suddenly stopped when I still had at least three bids left in my quiver, so that was nice. It's an absolutely pristine set, uncut. We looked it up in Abebooks the night before the sale, and found only one -- one book, that is, not a set. It was pricey.

I haven't often bid in person at an auction. Usually we leave bids if we want anything. It's pretty stressful but knitting helps a lot -- I had never tried that before. I was at an ideal point on Thomas-the-elder's sock, just past the heel, so I could knit on and on without having to think.

Knitting

The picture shows the new order of Koigu I got this week. The off-white is to be the background for a "Jamie" for Thomas-the-Younger's birthday in November. At the last moment, because I had heard that supplies are getting harder to come by, I asked Mary (www.foxyknits.com) to add six variegated colours to the package, her choice.. There aren't many yarns you could do that with, even with a good friend picking.

Soon I will knit the Cranberry Squares hat from Knitters' Winter '04 as my Games entry for this year. (The knitting classes are "A poncho" -- that would be against my religion -- and "best use of 100 grams of yarn" -- I could do a pair of socks, but the judges probably want something sillier. But in the Handicraft section they ask for "A Hat -- any craft", and that's what I'm going for.)

Janis Witkins who designed Cranberry Squares is a friend. She told me in her Christmas card that it was designed for Koigu, but the magazine wanted a different yarn, so I hope I can just knit it in Koigu without adjustment. I will use the black which forms the background for Rachel's "Jamie", seen yesterday, as the main colour, and I have been trying one after another of Mary's choices as the contrast, and like each one better than the last.

I bought the buttons for the Fair Isle jacket yesterday, but that's all. The Clapotis proceeds -- soon I get to start dropping stitches and making ladders.

 

 

Rachel's striped Koigu, approaching the neck 

Yesterday

...was more than ordinarily eventful.

1) After two months of faffing about, I phoned my oculist and asked him to refer me to the NHS for my eye replacement operation(s). I should be called for assessment in about three months, he said, and for the operation itself in about six. That's fine, since I have already decided to live on the edge and continue driving right now for the sake of this year's vegetable-growing. If the winter looks like wearing on with no action, I can always go private in January, but the politicians make so much fuss about "waiting lists" these days that I suspect even old-age pensioners in Drummond Place will be dealt with in reasonable course.

2) I decided to take the Coward's Way Out with the Fair Isle jacket, and leave the unsatisfactory neckline as it is. If Rachel really can't stand it, I can always re-do it later. I think that would be less painful psychologically than another fortnight with the damn thing now. It still needs buttons to be bought and sewed on, a much-loathed chore; and blocking.

3) In the afternoon we went to an auction view, a frequent entertainment. This time, it was the contents of a country house somewhere, removed to Edinburgh for sale. It included -- to stray from the point -- a number of costume items, nineteenth century, beautifully kept. I hoped to see a Shetland shawl -- they became high fashion in the mid-century. But no.

However, there were also lots of books. I'm not sure I've ever had a copy of Bentley's Horace in my hands before. It's boring -- we don't have to buy it. But there are two items my husband wants, and I am going back this morning to bid for them. I'll take my knitting, in the hope it will keep me calm, but it won't. I will have to lie down with a cold compress this afternoon. One of his items is six volumes of Neale on Gentlemen's Seats. (Pray, don't misunderstand me, as the dreadful Mary Crawford might have said in Mansfield Park.) We think that lot has been estimated rather low. The books are nicely leather-bound, and contain lots of nice engravings, so I'm not too optimistic, although we're prepared to go well over the auctioneer's estimate.

The other is the complete Cook & Wedderburn edition of the works of Ruskin, all 39 volumes. We counted. Sets the pulses racing, no? My husband says he has seen it only once before in his life. Then, it cost £20 which was far more than he could afford. Now, it will cost about what one eye-replacement would cost privately. But, hey! we saved that much yesterday morning. The bindings aren't particularly attractive, and there are no pictures; I have high hopes on this one. But of course the Internet means that everyone else in the world who knows about the Cook & Wedderburn edition of Ruskin, will know that it's coming up.

I'll tell you the results tomorrow.

Meanwhile, above is a pic of the current state of Rachel's striped Koigu sweater, in the country.

 

The garden, yesterday 

Rhubarb 

Safely home.

We were unlucky with the weather. Less was done than might have been hoped, but still something. Most of the tatties are in, anyway. The "Picasso's", I thought, still weren't sufficiently sprouted. And seed beds prepared for some of the seeds. And a pea-support put up. And the forced rhubarb consumed. It was ambrosial. May is a month of unbelievable beauty here, even in bad weather, and of great happiness in the garden.

Knitting

Take it in order --

1) The country knitting, Rachel's striped Koigu , progresses, although I didn't get very much done on that, either. Still, I arrived at the armpits and divided for front and back and proceeded, therefore, on only half the stitches, which created an illusion of progress. Picture tomorrow.

2) Here, last night, I finished tidying the steeks of the Fair Isle jacket and tossed it aside and started the Clapotis. On a third attempt, I think I've got it. But I've also got to face up to the question of what to do with the jacket. I was terribly tired last night (not much better this morning) but will, today, try it on again and contemplate the result. If the neckline is too low, as I am sure is the case (Starmore's fault), I could take out just the front band and raise the neck with a clever use of short rows, yet to be devised. Or, as I said before, take out the whole thing and make a single continuous band. Watch this space.

3) The new issue of Knitting magazine, now monthly, hasn't turned up as I expected.

4) But an order of Koigu from Foxyknits (www.foxyknits.com) has appeared, just now, and is gorgeous. Picture soon.

 

Gloom

I finished knitting the second front band last night, cast off, and tried the more-or-less finished whole on my lumpy self. I thought, at a brief,horrified glance, that the neckline was impossibly low.

This is therefore a good moment to go away, as we will now do. If I am right, the solution probably is to undo the front bands and the neckband and re-do in one continuous sweep -- kimono fashion, do I mean? We shall see. I allowed myself a few moments last night of winding a skein of yarn to start the Clapotis with, to cheer myself up.

So no more blog until the weekend, or even early next week. When we get back, if I can avoid bumping into any cows on the way, I will have a new picture of the kitchen garden and of the striped Koigu.

Eyes

I think I see my way forward, so to speak. Of that more anon.

I saw a television program the other evening about the cold war. It was interesting to me reminded of the fear in which we lived for so long. Al Qaeda is pretty small beer by comparison. The program included interviews with pilots and crew who flew the British nuclear deterrent. Since seeing a nuclear explosion, which could easily happen to such a pilot, under certain scenarios, can blind you, someone had the very bright idea of having pilot and co-pilot wear a patch over one eye, so that they would have one eye left and be able to fly on.

Looked at like that, my situation doesn't seem so bad.

The party 

There seems to have been a rather jolly party at Rachel's house the day before we arrived in London for our recent visit. Ketki with James-the-Younger is center left, Al;exander with Thomas-the-Younger on the right, my sister second from the left, various other sisters and cousins and aunts hither and yon. I don't see Rachel in this picture. Her husband Ed is behind Ketki, to her left.

Our country sojourn has been postponed for a day, as my husband hit a glitch in his work here last night and wants to get it straightened out before we leave. The weather forecast for the week is not good. Our soil is very light, however, and I should be able at least to plant some potatoes in the intervals of showers although seeds may have to wait. We'll see.

Fine by me, as it gives me a chance to stock up at the supermarket today and also to finish, actually finish, the knitting of the Fair Isle jacket. I'm currently doing the second front band, the one with the button holes. I'm using the variation of the one-row buttonhole which Meg gives in Sweaters From Camp. It's so neat and tight that the result (over three stitches) is smaller than I expected but I am forging on. There's still more steek-tidying and end-securing to be done, of course.

Footnote-copying also proceeds. I've done more than 60 files by now, something over 10% of the whole job. At least that's enough to register on the scale. Sure enough the Palm can swallow them all with quantities of memory left.

 

Reading Party 

A dearth of suitable knitting-pics at the moment, and alas we have no cat. So we'll have a couple of days of pictures my brother-in-law took in London recently. Here are Ketki and Jamie and my sister.

I fussed a lot about picking up the front-band stitches on the Fair Isle jacket yesterday. Photographs of the prototype -- the only other Fair Isle jacket I've ever knitted -- make it look as if the pattern doesn't quite match across the front. That's impossible, since, like this one, it was knit in a tube, but it could mean that the front band stitches were picked up unevenly. The buttonholes, of course, will be located in relation to the completed button band, not to the jacket patterning. 

Well, that may be an illusion created by photography, but I wasn't (for once) taking any chances. I was satisfied with the result in the end, and have knit most of the ribbing for the non-button band. I'll re-post a picture of the first jacket, along with its successor, when I finally FINISH.

I have been thinking of the future, too, and writing to Mary Hughes-Thompson about getting some more Koigu to make "Jamie's sweater" for his brother Thomas-the-Younger, and to Candace Strick about her Merging Colors, destined I hope to metamorphose into a sweater for me. www.foxyknits.com and www.strickwear.com, respectively.

And footnote-copying progresses. I'll be able to go on with that, at a somewhat reduced pace, when we are in the country next week, as we now have an up-to-date laptop there. I have decided, though, that the simplest way to be sure of keeping it virus-free is not to attach it to the Internet, so no blog again for a while, after tomorrow.

 

Fair Isle Jacket

I nearly finished picking up stitches for the front bands last night -- I have one of the most extensive collections of circular needles in the Second New Town, so I thought it would be a good idea to pick up both sides at once in order to be fanatic about evenness. So far so good, I think. I hope to begin knitting this evening.

I re-read Meg and Starmore on cardigan-finishing yesterday, AFTER doing my neck-band, and learn that I should have decreased some stitches at the back neck on the first pass. I hope the day will at last arrive when I take a moment to find this sort of thing out, before making the mistake.

I am full of ambitious plans for the future, after the Clapotis interlude. Until I actually commit myself to one project, I can knit them all in my head (and buy yarn...)

Life

I did a good day's work yesterday on footnote-copying, and squirted a further eight files into the Palm in the evening. I've done four easy ones already this morning, before hitting a major obstacle, still not as big as yesterday's big one. Onward!

On Monday if all goes according to plan, we'll go to the country for a week of potato-planting and revelling in spring sunshine. This is absolutely the most delicious moment, before the grass has to be cut on a weekly schedule.

 

Nearly Done 

There's the jacket, with its neckband half cast off. I'm pretty pleased. Notice the discrepancy between the cuffs. I think now that it's perfectly acceptable as a Design Feature. I will try to make the two front bands identical, however. Maybe I'll do another Fair Isle next winter, given that the stash is endless. I'll keep better notes next time -- I have only very sketchy ones for this job.

Meanwhile, however, thoughts are turning lacewards. It'll have to be scarves, I guess, since nobody I know goes in much for shawls. Much as I love knitting them. My sister-in-law, rejecting the offer of a shawl, said once that she'd like something she could wear in bed, so maybe I'll enlarge something into a stole for her. Meanwhile, it's time to take Heirloom Knitting down from the shelf again.

And then I read Mary Morrison's Blog, and start thinking textured. Life is too short.

Life Is Also Long

I've got my husband's first 25 files into the Palm. Now all I have to do is slog on patiently forever. I've done two already this morning -- copying endnotes from word processing limbo into the main text, then saving the result in MS Word 2003 -- but the next one has 230 of the wretched little things, so that will take me awhile. Meanwhile, although I can create and name folders on the Palm, I haven't figured out yet how to copy files directly into them, nor even exactly how to move them once they arrive on the Palm. I'll worry about that later.

My husband is a great one for getting the bit between his teeth and pressing remorselessly on with whatever it is. Lately we have been shopping for a think, solid cushion for him to sit on when working at his new laptop in the country, to make it easier to reach the keyboard which is, in the usual laptop fashion, separated from the user by an empty expanse. And he has been nagging me to fill out an insurance claim form relating to the peeling of ceiling paper in the dining room where Mrs Carson's tenants' bathwater dripped through in January.

But he doesn't seem to include the state of my eyes amongst our current problems, great and small. I'd rate it high, but I'm just as glad to have the mental space to myself. One morning while we were in London last week Rachel came over early with my sister, who was staying with her, and we dealt in record time with a number of outstanding problems -- preliminary arrangements for my husband's 80th birthday in November, and for Thomas-the-Elder's 21st in August. (That one was easy: no party.) Then there was accomodation for the Games -- we can house two families-with-small-children in Burnside itself, in addition to me and my husband (priority for those places goes to the families with the youngest children), and I've already secured an entire bed&breakfast house in the village for some of the overflow, but I need to look for more space when we are there next week. Then we got on to the subject of eyes and the advice contradicted the decision I thought I had come to and I feel like a rabbit in the headlights. I did make a phone call yesterday, though.

Thomas's Socks 

The neck stitches on the Fair Isle Jacket have been successfully picked up, I think, slight unevennesses decreased away leaving behind slight anxiety. I should be ready to show you a picture tomorrow -- and should be finished with the whole thing in the forseeable future. Next will be the Clapotis. Then it would probably be a good idea to get to work on my friend Janis Witkins' hat design from a recent Knitter's, as it is going to be my Games entry this year and I hate deadline-pressure. ("Games" = the Home Industries Tent at the Strathardle Highland Gathering on the 4th Saturday in August)

But then what? It's time for lace, I think. I had a look at Sharon Miller's website yesterday. (www.heirloom-knitting.co.uk is the address, I think.) She's added a delicious range of very fine PLYED merino yarns. My collection of lace yarns overfloweth, and of course each ball or skein takes weeks to get through -- but I'm sorely tempted.

Then there's Candace Eisner Strick's Merging Colors to look forward to...

The picture shows my progress last week with Thomas-the-Elder's socks (which I had hoped to finish). I was half-way through the ribbing when we left last Monday. The trouble is, the long train journeys aren't as productive of knitting-time as one might think. The carriages were stuffy, and I dozed when I should have been knitting. Still, progress of a sort.

Life

I got the first 25 of my husband's files into the Palm yesterday -- and discovered that they had left their footnotes behind. Endnotes, strictly. They survived the transition from the DOS-based program he uses, Word Perfect 4.2, into today's World Perfect 12. They survived the subsequent translation into MS Word 2003, although they mysteriously became footnotes in the process. But they're not there on the Palm. When you tap an endnote number you get a prissy message to the effect that this feature is not supported by Documents to Go.

There seems to be a way of moving whole folders to the Palm without going through Documents to Go. I might try that. The only alternative I can think of is to copy the notes, one by one, into the body of the text. I made a start on that yesterday, and if I keep at it long enough I'll get it done. But crikey.

Formerly attached to the FI jacket... 

Top Dog

...or The Day of the Rottweiler.

I was disappointed at the choice of Pope, but will have to trust that the Holy Spirit knew better. My fishmonger told me yesterday morning that the new Pope, when elected, would take the name Benedict, but he got the nationality wrong -- he thought it would be a Frenchman.

Cardinal Ratzinger used to be called "God's Rottweiler" (or maybe it was "The Pope's..." -- I do my blogging early, before I walk across the square to get the papers). Diana and her friends used to call Camilla "the Rottweiler".

Knitting

A good day yesterday with the Fair Isle jacket. Both armholes and sleeve "seams" are now tidy, and the front steek trimmed and pinned down and partly secured. My books agree that I've got to knit the neck band before the button bands, so today I hope I'll finish a first pass at the front steeks and pick up stitches for the neck. That's the last tricky bit. If I can get them even -- which means, if I've calculated right up to now -- we really are on the home stretch.

Starmore seems to think that I should make a second pass at securing the steeks -- having overcast them once with stitches which go like this: / I should go back over the work in the other direction, making stitches which go like this: \ and thus cross the first ones. I don't think that's necessary at the armholes, where I seem to have a fair amount of fabric and have largely turned it under, but the front steek seems more precarious so it's probably a good idea. Starmore reduces a steek to two stitches per side, which seems distinctly precarious.

The photographs shows the results of my toils to date.

Life

I got the first 25 of my husband's files converted and moved to the launching platform yesterday -- and then couldn't persuade them to make the crossing into the Palm. I was nearly in tears. But just as I got to the point where I had to switch off and attend to an evening meal, I think I spotted my mistake. We'll soon see.

Beverkey Nichols' Neckline 

Today's picture, while we are on the subject of horrible necklines, shows another interbellum gent  -- this one doesn't seem quite so bad to me as yesterday's Prince of Wales. He is Beverley Nichols, and the picture is the frontispiece of his Autobiography, "Twenty Five", published in 1926. People who were around to read British women's magazines in the 1950's will remember his name well.

His neckline seems to be a sort of facing with a small Fair Isle motif, clearly, somehow or other, knit separately and attached.

My Knitting

Just to keep you posted -- I finished tidying one sleeve-hole of the Fair Isle jacket last night, and then dealt with the yarn ends down the corresponding sleeve "seam". I started tidying the other sleeve-hole steek, but haven't finished that. I should manage it, along with the yarn-ends, this evening. Then I think I'll do the edges of the front steek before I pick up stitches for the button bands, but leave the neck-tidying for the very last. One great advantage of a cardigan is that all the body yarns were attached in mid-steek and won't have to be dealt with one-by-one.

Non-Knit

In London we bought an up-to-date Palm on which my husband means to store his magnum opus so that he can have access to the whole thing when looking up niggling points in libraries. It is a thoroughly wonderful little machine, about the size of a RyVita. (It's neither a camera nor a telephone, which keeps the size down.) Yesterday I got it talking to my computer, and started on the job of getting my husband's files into it. Every one of them, and there are hundreds, has to be loaded into my computer, thereby upgrading it from his old DOS-based system to a modern format, and then saved as a Word file which the Palm can read. It will take me the rest of my life. Maybe I can compose a macro of some sort.

I profoundly lament the demise of the computer manual, a literary form I used to adore. I fell I am going to be floundering around for a long time, stumbling on features of this terrific little machine, instead of reclining in my bath and getting an overview, as I would once have done. Yes, I could print out the Adobe PDF manual, but ink is expensive and I don't want to.

The Prince of Wales (as was) 

TGIM

I can't remember ever liking weekends.

Knitting

I finally finished off the second cuff of the Fair Isle jacket, and am now tidying cut steeks, not a very photogenic occupation. I was surprised, nay, alarmed, to find an inch and a quarter or so of patterned fabric inside, where the sleeve joins the body. Not exactly a steek problem, but a matter of having maybe followed the wrong stitch when I was picking up the sleeve stitches. However, it seems to have happened on both sides and, more importantly, the whole thing looks even. Maybe I'm OK. I think I've been sloppy about this job, knitting it for winter comfort and for stash reduction without paying enough attention to the details which contribute everything to the result.

There will still be the front bands and neck band to knit when the inside is tidy. My sister told me once that the wine you find left in the bottle when you've had your pudding and coffee is called "King Olaf's Soup". That's how I feel about the knitting left over at the very end of a project like this one that requires a lot of tedious finishing.

The Prince of Wales

In London, we saw a picture by Sir William Orpen of the Prince-of-Wales-Before-This-One in a golfing sweater. It's in an exhibition currently on at the Imperial War Museum. The picture belongs to the Royal and Ancient at St Andrews. It appears above, I hope (I haven't tried to take the photograph yet). It's not the famous Fair Isle sweater; that portrait of the Little Man, reproduced in many a knitting book, was painted by Sir Henry Lander, an artist unknown even to my husband, which is a pretty rarefied level of obscurity.

This sweater is Shetland -- a simple geometric design in natural colours. The pattern repeat is about 2 1/2", I would guess. The fun thing is that the pattern seems to flow continuously up the sleeve and into the body. That is because the pattern is both horizontally and vertically symmetrical, so the designer has been able to take advantage of the squareness of a knitting stitch in colour work to calculate a join -- there is clearly a seam at the dropped shoulder line -- where the sleeve stitches can be connected to the body rows, one for one, and the pattern appears to be uninterrupted.

The very same trick that Meg Swansen employs in the cover sweater of the current Woolgathering!

My husband is no knitter, but he has a sharp and critical eye.  He commented on that feature as if I might not have noticed it. But I had.

(Assuming the photograph appears): Isn't the neckline horrible?

 

...and Back Again

safe and sound and exhausted.

Knitting

I didn't finish the travel sock, but I got a fair amount done, round the heel and onto the home stretch. I love Lang Jawoll, and no longer so sadly lament the demise, or absorbtion into something else, of Socka Colors.

We saw a lot of art in London (hance the exhaustion) but only one item of knitterly interest, which I will report on soon. I can't scan the image from the exhibition catalogue, out of respect for its binding, but I should be able to photograph it and at least give you a rough idea.

Other

We saw lots of family, of whom the most engaging was Thomas-the-Younger. He is now five months old, and has a broad smile which implies that YOU are the person he has been waiting to see. He will go far in life if he can hang on to that. My sister was there, and said she missed the Blog, although she understood the reason (=that I was in London, as she was). She is probably the most faithful of my ten or a dozen readers. It was odd to hear her say it, like meeting oneself on the stairs.

Comments

Ann asks why I can't reply. When a comment is made via the Blogger system, it is relayed to me as an email (I have to check the Blog myself for the Halogen ones). I think maybe Blogger has changed things recently, so that replying is sometimes possible. Certainly yours came, Ann, in a format I could reply to, and the other comment on my last post was deliberately anonymous, an option Blogger wisely provides. When I first started this caper all the emails arrived anonymously. I happily replied to each one before I noticed that my answers were going into the Blogger Anonymous Basket.

Camilla: the other comment asks, why not Camilla for Queen? and I couldn't agree more. I think she is an admirable woman, who will make the Prince of Wales a good wife and the nation a good Queen Consort. I also think (paradoxically) that the marriage cost her more than it did him, altholugh it elevated her at a leap from commoner to senior royal. She already had the love of her prince, and I am sure all the diamonds and horses a woman could require. She had to give up privacy and expose her fragile (I think) nerves to constant public scrutiny and also will have to spend a lot of time doing boring things and smiling through it. The Prince, on the other hand, has lost nothing and gained much. Whereas I am sure Diana never cared for Prince Charles himself, or was ever very interested in him. She was dead keen from the beginning on the idea of being Diana, Princess of Wales, however.

(I didn't buy or read those Andrew Norton books, but I looked at one in a railway station once and found that she complained that Prince Charles took a BOOK along on their honeymoon on the royal yacht. The complaint, of course, was made years after the event. It was a slight she had suffered and remembered. Crikey.)

But we have had centuries of blameless Queens and Queens Consort recently, and I was taken aback, no more, last Sunday when I heard the joke which I repeated in my last Blog, at the idea of having a Queen -- a Queen -- of whom such a thing could be said. I recalled it over supper one evening in London last week -- Alexander and Ketki had heard it too, and agreed that it was funny -- and said that the Queen would probably be willing to part wioth a good few Canaletto's not to have a daughter-in-law people could make such jokes about. "Or a son", Alexander said. Rightly.

...on to London

...I'll try to log in from there with an unillustrated message, if I get access to a computer during the week. We're staying with Alexander and Ketki -- he makes his living from computers, and strenuously keeps his mother away from his ones, but I may get a chance at our daughter Rachel's house at some point.

Comments

Three, yesterday! Beat that, Queer Joe! They came to me in Unanswerable Email form. Maureen stumbled on us looking for Wonderful Wallabys -- the news there, Maureen, is that Fergus' WW shrank irretrievably after the first washing, and has been passed on to his much younger cousin, Thomas-the-Younger (aet. 5 mos.).I've got lots more of the yarn, and will knit Fergus another a.s.a.p. But "p" in knitting doesn't always come quickly.

Ann and Linda wrote about the royal wedding. Ann is soon to be a mother-of-the-bridegroom, unenviable role, except that it's cheaper than the other one, and hopes to look as elegant as Camilla did on Saturday. Linda expresses general doubts and lack of enthusiasm, which I must say I increasingly feel. I mean, they're soulmates, absolutely made for each other, and I never liked the other one, from the beginning. But -- Queen?

There was an ugly joke on a satirical program we watched last night. Saturday was the day of the Grand National, and indeed the Queen herself began her speech at the wedding reception, we are told, by letting everybody know who won. The satirist -- this was mainstream, network British television, so it must be all right to repeat -- sort of wove the two together: "...owned and trained by Andrew Parker Bowles, ridden by the Prince of Wales."

Queen?

 

I think I'll skip an illustration again today, although all went smoothly yesterday. When I was having trouble the day before, there were no error messages, nor did the program seem to try and then fail. It just wouldn't do it.

I didn't get much further with the ribbed cuff yesterday, although I did rip the first attempt out and got the decreases right. I discovered a few rounds on, that I've used the wrong grey for the first stripe. Wrong, at least, in that it doesn't match the other sleeve. I'm leaving it, for the moment, as yet another Design Feature. It won't take long to frog and change if I decide afterwards that it looks too silly.

I tidied up the coloured yarns and put them back with the rest of the stash. My Shetland Jumper-Weight collection looks entirely undiminished. I didn't buy a single inch of yarn for this project -- it's all done with stuff left over from the second millenium, and the finished weight of the garment is appreciable. But I've still got just as much yarn as I started with, it would seem, and it's sort of depressing. I don't think I actually finished a skein of a single one of the pattern colours. I did better with the background ones, of which there were fewer.

Royal Wedding

I watched some of it. I still remember having to miss the actual exchange-of-vows at the Prince's first wedding because I had to drive to Birmingham Airport to fetch my husband home from some trip. The streets were utterly deserted, I remember, except for a couple of chaps walking their dogs.

This time everything was very nice, but I was surprised at how strong a note emerged of sadness and doubt, although all the reporters were smiling away in their nice clothes and genuinely wished the couple well, I believe. I wondered how it looked with American commentary. Even more doubt, I imagine. I thought Camilla's clothes were marvellous. When I grow up I'll go to her dressmaker.

 

 

Rachel's "Harmony" jacket 

Camilla's Wedding Day

I have always thought it a slightly odd coincidence that both of Prince Charles's choices had pagan names (not a saint's name).

Blogging

I had a titanic struggle yesterday to get that little picture of my children up. The program I use, called "Hello", wasn't doing things they way it usually does. I think that the fault was at the receiving end. I had another go on Typepad, and feel even cooler. I'm very inclined to think I'll stay here and try to figure some more things out.

Knitting

I did finish the Fair Isle aspect of the Fair Isle jacket. I then did the wrist decreases wrong -- got rid of too few stitches. And since I started ribbing as I decreased, there's no painless way to do the additional decreases on the next round. Rip it out and try again, this time paying a bit more attention, is the action now required. There are still two evenings to go before London. That should be enough.

Eyes

On Thursday we crossed Edinburgh to call on my husband's sister. She is a depressive character, and has been depressed lately, so it was a depressing visit. (How rich English seems to be in suffixes.) She needs a cataract operation too, and hasn't done anything about it, and it seemed to me that she has nothing to worry about -- her garden (which means a lot to her, as mine to me) is right outside her door; she has a daughter on the spot -- they live separately, but under the same roof -- who could drive her about when necessary during the recuperation period; and no one will complain at whatever arrangement she makes, whereas my husband's dislike of my optician is, I have come to believe, the major complicating feature of my own situation. But gloom and anxiety of course expand to fill the space available, and she is just as miserable as I am on the subject if not more so.

Illustration

If Blogger is functioning properly today, I'll out up a picture of my granddaughter Rachel, taken last summer in her "Harmony" jacket. It's a Candace Eisner Strick pattern with which I thought I was assured a gold in the "Child's Cardigan" class at the Games, but I was unplaced. I got some seconds and thirds for various vegetables, which was some consolation.

Us chickens 

I should finish the actual Fair-Isle-ery of the jacket today -- there are only a few rounds left to do at the end of the right sleeve. That leaves the ribbed cuff to do, then what may be weeks of securing ends and tidying steeks, then, finally, the front bands and the neck ribbing. But finishing the Fair Isle is definately a landmark.

If there is a photograph above, it is the one I am using for "wallpaper" this year, taken at the Games last August, showing Rachel, Alexander, James and Helen, in order, with Mungo Drake, Helen's son, in the foreground. I'm not quite sure where it is to be found on my computer, however. If I switch to Typepad I can have photo albums, and one thing to do would certainly be to have orderly pictures of all the people who keep being mentioned here. No more progress to report on the Typepad front. The near approach of a week in London induces a near-panic state in which computer time is spent accomplishing useful things, like balancing bank statements.

My sister and her husband should arrive there today, from Mozambique.

 

Travel socks 

The state of the current travel socks, destined for Thomas the Elder. Flash photography has done rather well for once. I intend to press hard when we are in London next week, and see if I can get them finished. The contrast toe is because I had only two skeins of lovely Lang Jawoll -- spelling not guaranteed -- which isn't quite enough for a pair of gents' socks the way I make 'em.

I struggled on with Typepad yesterday without making much progress. Perhaps I'll stay here after all. I like the way Blogger gives one complete access (apparently) to the HTML code for one's template. I'd like to choose a stronger color for the things in the sidebar to the right, and then to put in some links to the few patterns of my own which live on my website. I tried Googling once for "knitted First Holy Communion veil" and was surprised that my one didn't come up in the first page or so. Nor did any other, come to that. I got a lot of religious stuff, with the word "knitted" used metaphorically. Perhaps I should try again. I doubt very much whether there are many other patterns out there and it seems a shame that anyone searching for one, shouldn't find mine.

The veil can be seen at http://www.jeanmile.demon.co.uk/veil.htm    I'm really rather pleased with it.

I had my hair cut yesterday in the hopes of looking tidy in London next week. I used to have it long, in a bun, as in the photo to the right, until I broke my right arm two and a half years ago. Alexander and Ketki were in NY at the time: I wrote to tell them that I had had my hair cut of course, and Alexander wrote back to ask what having one's hair cut had to do with breaking one's arm. Then Ketki explained.

Current state of the Fair Isle jacket 

Yesterday I reached the point where I had to re-introduce the unsuccessful colours from the beginning of the jacket into the second sleeve, to make it look like a design feature. The picture above may explain what I mean. I should have taken it yesterday when we had a splendid day with lots of natural light. The weather has reverted to disgusting, and the picture is therefore the flash-bleached usual. There are five more knitting days before we go to London. I should finish the sleeve easily.

I continue to explore Typepad. I've got 30 days free (now 28) before I have to decide whether to go on. I discovered yesterday that the Basic service I've signed up for doesn't let me change fonts or background colour. One thing I really do like about Blogger is its legibility, so that's a downer.

Non-Knit

We spent a significant amount of time in the country last week trying to master our new laptop computer. My husband uses an old DOS-based system here, perfectly successfully, but for various reasons wants to move into the present millenium. His old program is Word Perfect 4.1. Miraculously, the modern version, Word Perfect 12, will not only read his old files but will save them back into the old format if required.

Acquiring mouse-skills is proving difficult for him, both as a physical skill and as a mental set. Since we came back, I've looked around a bit and discovered that really quite a lot can be done from the keyboard. We'll try it that way, next time. But how is one supposed to know about such things, now that computer manuals are no more? Looking things up in the Help index is all very well if you know what to look up.

 

The original "Jamie" sweater 

Rachel's Striped Koigu 

A Day Later

Prince Charles made the right decision, to postpone the wedding -- he had to, but that's easy to say once the decision is announced. It changes the whole aspect of things, and almost redeems the man.

Yesterday was a day of achievement here in Drummond Place -- dispatching a card and birthday present to Rachel's daughter Lizzie, acquiring and fitting a printer ribbon for my husband's obsolete but perfectly functional printer, getting started with Typepad. (The field I was inadvertantly omitting in my previous attempt was the year of my birth.) I think weaving text around pictures is going to work fine. Now I've got to master the rest of it. The Fair Isle jacket progresses well, although the twirling-around-in-lap aspect of things is getting serious as we near the end of the second sleeve.

Above is the current state of the country knitting, Rachel's striped Koigu based on my design for her nephew (my grandson) -- my accumulation of ideas from hither and yon, more like. I'm really awfully pleased, both with the effect of the stripes and with the feel of the fabric. Another stripe or two will bring me to the armpits. Then the stitches for the front will be left behind, and the back knit straight to the shoulder. I'm not tempted to try steeking with a yarn as smooth as Koigu. Things will get mildly more complicated after that, as I'll have to figure out the size and placing of the neck placket. The VK knitting book, and perhaps other texts on my well-furnished shelves, offers some help.  

If I were working in Typepad, I'd put in my fuzzy picture of Jamie's sweater now. Perhaps I'll stick it up there anyway. It's standing up well to wear. His mother Ketki puts it in the machine, on a cold cycle.

I had the idea the other day -- Janis has already heard this -- of knitting a negative-image version of the sweater as a first birthday present for Jamie's brother Thomas-the-Younger, in November. Using, that is, a very-nearly-white yarn for the background. One of the laws of nature, when you knit in stripes, specifies that you never actually finish a skein, so I'll have plenty of colours still available. And according to the Koigu page in the Patternworks catalogue, there are a couple of Aran-y-looking off-whites to choose from.

You see what I mean about the weather... 

And one of those grey days last week was the second anniversary of my mother's death.

Above is the routine picture of the Vegetable Garden Now, as it appeared on Saturday morning. The eyes of faith can perhaps discern rhubarb growing to the left of the pot. It's growing inside the pot, too, and next time we're there we'll have rhubarb to eat. I grew up believing it to be an exotic and expensive luxury. Turned out that my mother didn't like it -- otherwise, it's freely available. Rhubarb can't be forced every year -- too much of a strain. So next year the pot will be moved.

Knitting

The new UK magazine arrived this morning. And reminder notices from both IK and Knitter's.

I'm advancing smartly down the right sleeve of the Fair Isle jacket. I'd like to finish the sleeve this week, before we go to London. But equally, I hate to have deadlines of any sort for my knitting. I very rarely knit birthday or other presents. We shall see. We'll be in London all next week. London is hard work, and it's not an entirely inviting prospect.

The Pope

This is my fifth Papal death, counting from Pius the 12th. Thomas-the-elder will be 21 this summer. He and, a fortiori, our other grandchildren have never known one before. Our children were all unmarried and indeed still mostly living at home, last time. And the other times, the Papacy was something that happened to old men. Even 58 -- the late Pope's age when he was elected -- didn't seem exactly young to me at the time. But this time round, they are almost certain to elect a man younger than I am.

Edinburgh cathedral is our parish church. Our local Cardinal said Mass yesterday. He regularly turns out for high liturgical occasions, but this is only the second time I can remember his appearing for external reasons. The other one was the Sunday after 9/11. That was an impressive and moving affair. Yesterday, the media were there in force, with much equipment, looking like aliens. I tried to pay attention and not think about knitting and not pick my nose, just in case.

No Picture Today

We're safely back from the country.

The sun didn't shine all week, not a glimmer (until the drive home ysterday, predictably). It was an odd, grey Easter week -- the parallel agonies of Mrs Schiavo and the Pope, the peevishness of Prince Charles. ("Schiavo" means "slave" in Italian, I think. How could it become a family name?) Now the week of the Prince's wedding will be completely overshadowed by the Pope's dying -- perhaps the only world celebrity who clearly outranks the British royal family. I'm not sorry.

Spring, despite the gloom, is powerfully coiled for action. The grass has taken on that sinister green colour which means that it is growing and will soon have to be cut. The potatoes are sprouting. The snowdrops are over and the daffodils are out.

Knitting

I made great progress with the striped Koigu -- photo promised soon. I love the effect, and the feel of the fabric. Back at base, I have resumed the right sleeve of the jacket. Sure enough, the colours seem to have gone slightly awry. Tania, thank you for your comment. And Julianne, for yours. I have added both websites to my Favourites list -- click below where it says "Comments (1)" beneath (a) the latest picture of the jacket and (b) the text for Easter Day, for the URLs.

Marian has made an inventory of all the Barbara Venishnick patterns she could find (www.marianknits.blogspot.com), a valuable resource which I shall print and save.

Eyes

I have been thinking a lot, and have still done nothing. We drove north on Monday in a considerable rainstorm. I decided to let the potatoes rot and go ahead with the cataract operation right now. I can't remember quite why I decided that. Then on Wednesday I had to do a variety of errands, a thirty or forty mile round-trip, just like suburban America, and when I finished doing that I felt, what am I worrying about? That was fine. As the week went on and I got my hands muddier -- many a creeping buttercup and fragment of sinister creeping grass has fallen -- I felt again that I simply couldn't be away from Strathardle for too long in April and May. Or june. Or July. But sight isn't good.