I have just spent a weary hour struggling to print a response from St Andrews to some queries of my husband’s. “Docx” is not a format my computer enjoys. I have succeeded, although the ill-formatted nature of my success will irritate him when he sees it. And I have used up all my blogging time on the project.

Rachel phoned last night and said, among other things, that she has a virus, despite being fully protected, as she thought, by McAfee. It took out first her computer and then internet access for the whole house. She blames Joe, still home from university and visiting recondite websites. I’ve got Norton, whom I trust implicitly. But this is rather scary.

Anyway:

Here’s the Wikipedia link to Rest and be Thankful. It’s not a road or a village, Kristie – more a concept. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen the words on a road sign, although they are constantly used in speech. Wikipedia says there’s a stone, and I will try to remember to ask to have it pointed out, the next time we’re there.

Ketki had done some investigating about why the road was closed, Mary Lou, and I think she said it was because of a fatal accident. You’re absolutely right, of course, that driving an extra 50 miles on top of an already-long day is a good deal to be preferred to being involved in one of those.

Knitting

I’m half-way around row 31 of the Mourning Shawl border, and beginning to catch at straws. There’s a big decrease round coming at 39! The first chart ends at 54! Onward!

I had a bad stitch-drop yesterday. I thought I had secured things, albeit untidily, but when I got around there again, I found several stitches still errant. The problem remains to be resolved. In general, it’s going well.

My current plan is to knit on through May, hoping to get near the end of the border, and then lay it aside to do an Aran sweater for the Games. C. used to maintain that I am fiercely competitive. (She had the misfortune to be with us in ’07 when Sam the Ram won the Glenisla Shield for the best entry in any of the handicraft sections.) I honestly don’t think so. I feel I ought to enter something to support the Games – the more entries, the more fun for everybody. Victory is rare. We were celebrating our Golden Wedding in ’07 and the Glenisla Shield was God’s present.

We had a grand time.

It’s no use trying to take pictures of happiness, though. It gets away.

Here are a lot of us, on Good Friday in the evening. I’ll explain in a moment why we had unanimously decided that Lent was already over. That's Hellie's boyfriend Matt, Hellie herself, Thomas-the-Elder, his brother Joe, standing behind Lizzie, and Rachel, having a little something to drink.

Here are Matt, Rachel’s husband Ed, and Joe, I think, skipping stones on Loch Fyne during our Easter Sunday walk.

My husband and Alexander, same occasion.

We were in the one part of Great Britain that didn't have blazing sunshine on Easter Sunday. It didn't matter. It didn't rain, and the year was at its moment of greatest beauty, as I think you can sort of see.

The way you get to Alexander’s house is to drive up the west side of Loch Lomond until you get to Tarbet, and then turn left through Arrochar and over Rest and be Thankful to Loch Fyne. When we got to Tarbet we found a police road block. Rest and be Thankful was closed. This often happens – in the winter because of snow drifts or mudslides; in the summer it’s fatal road accidents.

We were dispatched on a 50-mile detour, on up to the very top of Loch Lomond, across country skirting Rannoch Moor, down to Inverary on the far side of Loch Fyne, 12 or 15 miles beyond Alexander’s house. There we found another police road block. That was a bad moment. But they cheerfully let us through when we said we only wanted to go around to see Alexander and Ketki, not on to Rest and be Thankful.

Fortunately I had my largely-unused mobile telephone along, fully charged and accessible. I had armed it with Alexander’s land line number only that morning. So I could phone Ketki and let her know we would be late, and she – who until then didn’t know the road was closed – could phone Alexander and Rachel’s party in Glasgow and divert them. They took the ferry to Dunoon, not super-speedy but better than our detour.

So that was exciting.

I got lots of sock-knitting done, more than I had set myself to accomplish. The diabetic appt next week should add another inch or two. Then I’ll just have to take some time out of the larger schedule. I got Joe to try on the first sock, and it fits fine.

Matt wasn’t wearing his. I hope that doesn’t mean they have let me down in the wash – the yarn was the usual 75-25 blend of wool and acrylic, but it was an unfamiliar brand.

Helen phoned from Pelion on Easter Sunday in the morning, so I was able to say -- I had it in Greek in Word, but it hasn't come through here to Blogger. “Christ is risen” “He is risen indeed”, is what it amounted to. That is what Greeks say to each other on Easter Sunday.

The drive home yesterday was uneventful -- fraught with holiday traffic, but it kept moving.

All set, once I’ve done some ironing and watered the plants and made some sandwiches for the journey and got my husband up and breakfasted. I am feeling cheerful and confident about the driving, for what that’s worth. We’ll double back to Arrochar this evening for Stations of the Cross, having missed the Good Friday liturgy.

We hung the picture, no small task but not as bad as the last one. It’s not hung as high, and the wall is sounder.

It is a watercolour by Ian Fleming – not the progenitor of James Bond, and not the contemporary artist (who paints pictures of nothing and remarkably like, to borrow Thackeray’s comment on Turner). “Our” Ian Fleming was born in 1906 and died in ’94. We have another picture by him. There are three in the national collection.

And they had plenty of Weston’s Vintage Cider at Tesco’s.


I’ve reached row 25 of the border of the Mourning Shawl. I started just over a month ago; I’ve done roughly a quarter of it – so I couldn’t possibly finish before July, even if I neglect my vegetables. That will mean I must decide whether or not to lay it aside to do an Aran sweater for the Games. At least I know how things stand.

(The computer has been very bolshie this morning, and while I was sitting here waiting for it to pull itself together I clicked on a previously-unnoticed icon at the bottom of the Word screen called “Reading view”. It produced the current text in a format which is precisely the way I want “27 Wives” to look on-screen. How to persuade Word to do it?)

It’s no use wishing you all a happy equinox, with it nearly a month behind us. So – have a good weekend.

Somewhere in row 22. Things seemed a bit slower yesterday, not exactly hard, but it took me a bit longer to get the hang of each successive row. An additional motive, if one were needed, to knit all the borders at once. Once the pattern is mastered, I can whiz through the rest of the round. There’s a sort of lattice-work going on at the moment, which will soon subside.

Lent and general non-knit

We are poised, more or less, for the drive to Loch Fyne tomorrow. There are two ways to do it – drive to Glasgow, and then turn north up the west side of Loch Lomond; or go to Stirling, and then across country, and then up Loch Lomond as before. I’m going for the latter, this time.

There’s a tricky passage in Stirling itself because (oddly, to my mind) the cross-country road, the A811, doesn’t have its own exit from the M9. I am told that the secret, on the outward journey, is to leave the motorway at exit 10 and at the ensuing roundabout take the third exit, at 3 o’clock, and set off eastwards, with your back to Loch Lomond. The Red Queen would approve.

Alexander phoned last night about my husband’s dietary requirements (there aren’t many) and mentioned that they hadn’t been able to get any Weston’s Vintage Cider for me. I’ll go down to Tesco this morning, where they should have it. BYOB. There’s not much point in Lent if I can’t have Weston’s Vintage on Easter Sunday.

I broke my Lenten resolutions a couple of times, most notably when C was dying, and a week later at the time of the funeral. But mostly I’ve stuck to it, and lost about five pounds, so that’s good.

We bought a picture yesterday. It’s nice, but it seems at least twice as big and heavy as it did in the auction room. My feeling is that we are past our picture-hanging days, and need to wait until we can get help, but my husband seems to think we can do it. Maundy Thursday will be as penitential as anyone could wish, if we go ahead with the attempt.

I’ve started row 18 of the Mourning Shawl border – slightly more difficult than its predecessors. The great fun of border knitting is that every row is different but proceeds so naturally from the one before that chart-peering is largely eliminated. This was true even of the vastly intricate border of the Princess.

I’m getting on a bit faster than I anticipated, even without the bonus of stitches reduced at the corners. That doesn’t happen until row 39 – and even then, only 10 stitches per side disappear whereas the standard system – one stitch each end of each border every other row – would have got through twice that number by that time.

But I can’t count on continuing at this pace, what with the most delicious months of the year beckoning us to Strathardle. And this isn’t a project to take along – not at all the thing for grubby, rough hands to attempt after a day in the fields.

I will not worry about the calendar. At least, not too much.

Non-knit

Enid, thank you for the crib to the royal wedding video (comment yesterday). I’ve watched it again, and it all seems perfectly obvious now that you’ve explained it. I think I was confused by that scene just before the bride appears, when the minor royals reassemble and I felt that they couldn’t all be Beatrice and Eugenie. The Camilla lookalike is so good it’s hard to believe it’s not her. I didn’t recognise Princess Anne, on the other hand – I’m a great fan of hers.

And I’ve watched Jill and Kevin. A real wedding, I gather. It’s delightful.

27 Wives

Meg, thank you for your expression of interest. I finished scanning the second wife yesterday. My plan is to start publishing right away – I’ve now got two wives, and my mother’s substantial introduction. I figure I can re-edit the early chapters as life unfolds if I feel the need, as well as adding more. Doing it that way should be a valuable incentive to me to keep going.

So we’ll see what Alexander advises at the weekend. And I’ll have to write a brief introduction of my own.

My current printer will let me scan a set of pages into a single document, which speeds things along. (Maybe the old one did that too, but if so I never grasped the fact.) Every so often, a page comes out as complete gibberish, without a single recognisable word. Attempts to re-scan just that one produce the same result. This has happened twice. In both cases, the page in question was a nice clean one, not full of writings-in and crossings-out. Baffling. I gave up and typed them in.

Blogger

Page breaks continue to disappear when I post. I’m getting used to calling the text back and re-inserting them, but I find this baffling too.

Very successful hair-do: it came out looking as I had imagined.

And another good day with the Mourning Shawl. I’m now in the early stages of row 14. Here are some pics:

This early passage begins with chevrons on a bed of mesh which they gradually consume. Where I am now, the mesh is gone and some additional mild excitements are about to be introduced. Disregard the colour, as usual.

Here’s the Fleegle’d bit. It works.


I finally spent a few minutes yesterday with Alice Starmore’s Aran book. Some grand things, which left me wondering, I don’t have to knit back-and-forth, do I? Which sent me to EZ, of course, and at the moment I am greatly enamoured with the Hand-to-Hand Aran in Knitting Workshop.

There are no instructions. That sent me to Google, and I am comforted to find that there is a Spin-Off. I’m pretty sure it’s not in any of the Woolgatherings I’ve got on my shelf, but I then took down “The Opinionated Knitter” just in case it was there.

It isn’t, but Woolgathering No.6, which is, has some very brisk and useful instructions for designing an Aran. Get a gauge, thence a stitch-number, work out a sequence of Aran patterns to fit ¼ of it. That’s not entirely going to work, is it? if you want a wide tour-de-force pattern centre front-and-back. But it gets things started.

This is all still pretty tentative, depending on how the Mourning Shawl proceeds. I’d have to start Aran knitting somewhere in June, to do it comfortably. Will I have finished the borders by then? Could be.

Non-knit

Thanks, Angel. The YouTube version of the T-Mobile royal wedding loads and plays briskly for me. It’s brilliant. They’ve got some very convincing look-alikes, and some I can’t identify.

I looked around a bit yesterday. There are plenty of places where I could hire web space for "27 Wives" for £3 or £4 a month. Wait and see what Alexander says.

I have an early hair appt this morning – Look Tidy for Easter – so not much time here.

I’ve advanced to row 10 of the mourning shawl border. A bit of stitch-count trouble yesterday, nothing serious. I hope to have pictures soon, including the Fleegle part which is currently somewhat untidy. In all the anxiety at the very beginning I wasn’t as careful as I might have been about tugging the ends when I introduced the new ball and subsequently changed yarns. There was every danger, too, in those first few rows, of introducing a Moebius twist even if there wasn’t one in the first place.

Comments

Angel, I can’t get your T-mobile video to load [comment yesterday]. It seems to be trying, but doesn't get anywhere. I’ll try again later. It sounds to me, in general, as if the USofA is keener on the forthcoming wedding than we are, at least we here in Scotland. St Andrews, understandably, is full of it.

I had a good session with “27 Wives” yesterday. I have nearly finished scanning the second wife. The first one died young, leaving a couple of children who passed to the care of her capable successor, a formidable pioneer woman named Mary Ann Angell. I am nearly up to the page on which, “on June 15, 1842, aged 39, again big with child, she stood before Joseph Smith and placed in her husband’s hand the hand of a girl of 20, saying clearly and steadily that she freely gave this woman to be married to her husband”.

I looked at publishing options a bit, and rescued your valuable comment from Google’s spam collection, Gail: they do make mistakes sometimes. Kristie, my browser turns out to be too primitive for publishing in Kindle format (or even finding out much about doing it that way). I’ll keep that one in mind. And talk it over with Alexander at the weekend.

Here we are back. We had a grand time, and the driving went well. If I can do the East Neuk last week, I ought to be able to manage Loch Fyne this. It’s further, but there are fewer critical junctions at which decisions must be made, and fewer opportunities for my husband to suggest we stop and get out and look at something – as long as I can get him through Stirling.

Our friend really doesn’t remember Miss Middleton – I’m sure he wasn’t just being discrete. She was one of the many Home County Gels who pitch up in the St Andrews art history department, indistinguishable from the pack. He remembers the terrible security surrounding the Prince – CCTV cameras everywhere, which the city had never had before; ominous vans with blacked-out windows lurking in the streets. There was a rumour that the poor young man had a microchip implanted, as your pet poodle might, so that Security would always know where he was.

You’ve probably seen this already, half the world has; it’s charming, very St Andrews. At the end she walks towards the camera down a narrow street with a bookshop visible on the left – we were there on Friday. It’s the only decent one left in St Andrews. I bought an Alice Thomas Ellis, very bad, and a Le Carre, “The Russia House”, which starts sensationally well. I didn’t know there were any good ones left I hadn’t read.

One thing, though. The few ill-lit mirrors in this house know their trade and reflect me back as, perhaps, a faded 60. In other people’s houses I look old. It’s scary.

Knitting

I hit my target, namely finishing Joe’s first sock and getting halfway through the 50 rounds of ribbing on the second. OK: so this weekend the goal will be to reach the heel. Ten days or so after Easter a routine diabetic hospital appt looms – that always affords plenty of scope for knitting. After that, I fear what’s left of the second sock will have to displace the mourning shawl for as long as is necessary.

The shawl itself is fine. There are 106 rows in the border. I’m working on No. 6. I am allowing myself one percentage point in the sidebar for every two of them. I’ve started Fleegle’ing. It’s too soon to say much. I’m sure it’s going to work. The second ball of yarn is a nuisance. It can be tricky, at the end of a round, turning and deciding which ball to use and then wondering a bit and finally I wind up wondering which side is which – since they are perfectly symmetrical, both ends start off the same. I’ve got it right this time, for row 6 (i.e., it’s not turning into st st) and will mark the wrong side with a safety pin in a moment.

No news from Loop about the April Madeleine Tosh shipment. The new EZ book has receded a little bit further over at Schoolhouse – “spring” (or was it originally even “early spring”?) became “May” and now it’s expected back from the printer by “June 1 or sooner”. They are clearly trying.

Thanks for the help on websites. I hope to explore your suggestions this afternoon.

Jenny, thanks for the early tip-off yesterday that my links weren’t working – and just when I thought Blogger had given me an easy ride, for once. I went in and fixed them right away, but when I called yesterday’s post back for editing, it came without most of the last two paragraphs – it broke off in mid-sentence. Something’s wrong at Blogger. (I had, as usual, already saved the thing here on my desktop, so that was no problem.)

A good day with the shawl yesterday. I picked up all the stitches, knit back, and did the first pattern row. It was so easy that it was fiendishly difficult – an endless series of k1, YO, k2tog. Except of course that it wasn’t endless, it was interspersed with occasional k3tog’s and the special treatment of the corners. But I got it, after an agony of stitch-counting and marker-placing, and all seems to be well. I’m now halfway back across Row 2, on which virtually nothing happens. It’ll get easier yet as the pattern begins to be visible. When I finish this row, I’ll attach a second ball of yarn and start Fleegle’ing.

For a while, I couldn’t think how the work would ever be connected into a circle. In Fleegle’s demonstration, she uses a tiny shawl knit centre-outwards, so she is already knitting in the round when she starts her wonder-working. The answer is (I think), that when I get to the end of the row I’m going to knit with the second ball of yarn, I’ll need to reach across to the beginning to get the other ball to knit back with. Fleegle herself will join the thing into a circle.

This is such an exciting juncture that I hate to abandon it, but we’re off to St Andrews today, there’s no help for it. Back here Sunday, DV.

I’m worrying about time. Now that I have taken this major step forward, it seems safe to estimate that the borders will take the better part of two months. I can’t possibly finish the whole thing in time to knit an Aran sweater in time for the Games (4th Saturday in August, as always). I hate knitting against the calendar. What to do? If I lay the shawl aside to knit the sweater, will it then languish like poor Kaffe whose jacket suffered the same fate last year? And never be resumed? Surely not.

Non-knit

I have resumed work on a project mentioned here long, long ago – scanning the yellowed pages of an unpublished manuscript of my mother’s so that I can publish it on-line. My new printer seems better at character recognition than the old one, and I am moving forward steadily. The book is called “27 Wives” and is about Brigham Young, the early Mormon leader who married that many. My mother started work on the book when we lived in Salt Lake City in the ‘30’s. She had a successful career as an academic and writer of both fiction and non-fiction, but she never found a publisher for that one.

I’ve never read it before, and am finding it rather interesting – not so much for religious history or Women’s History as for an unvarnished account of settling the west, so familiar from so many preposterous movies.

The original plan was to use some space on Alexander’s server, and I may go with that. But free or near-free webspace seems to abound these days. Can anyone recommend a site? I don’t want to profit from this enterprise in any way, just to make the book available.

Something completely different….

As we watch the waxing – at last! – of the Paschal Moon, here’s a tip I recently acquired for determining which direction any given moon is headed in. I’ve learned various ways of remembering that in my lifetime, and have forgotten all of them. I think this one is a keeper.

Hold your right hand out in front of you, palm forward, thumb extended, rather as if you were trying to stop traffic. If the moon fits roughly into the shape between your index-finger and thumb, it’s waxing. Do the same with your left hand. The moon that fits there, is waning.

The edging is finished. It’s an exciting moment.

First, I thought it would be prudent to spend half-an-hour counting scallops, just in case. Then I thought, no, just start picking up stitches – from the other end, and even that doesn’t matter if I use a dp. If the count comes out wrong, a scallop or two can easily be frogged or added. So that’s what I’m doing.



If you count from the right-hand edge, I think you can just see the mess in the ninth scallop, the one I tried to knit one of the evenings after a day spent in the hospice when C. was dying -- the mess I left to show our niece when I give her the shawl.

Stove says to “pick up and knit”. That’s what one does normally, of course, but I’ve never applied it to lace, because Amedro doesn’t. There’s a little picture in her book showing clearly a needle sliding through edge stitches. It’s easy because (in all modesty) I have a lovely chained selvedge. In fact, if I did it Stove’s way, I’d come out the wrong way around, not that that matters much in garter stitch lace.

Stove says to pick up and knit with the right side facing, and then launch into the pattern. That means the pattern would start off on the wrong side. Her pattern charts are intended for back-and-forth knitting, with the decreases meticulously distinguished according to which side they’re done on. And clearly the pattern is meant to start on the right side.

I don’t have to worry about all that. I’ll pick up my stitches, and knit back, and there I’ll be in the right place. I’m going to knit a few rows back and forth before joining, just to make it that little bit easier to avoid the dread Moebius loop. It happened to me once, on one of my pre-natal shawls for a grandchild. I knew the danger and thought I had avoided the trap. When I found that it was twisted, I’m afraid I took my scissors to it and just knit on. As I remember, there was no problem with ravelling and the scar, in the end, didn’t look as bad as you might expect. I don’t want it to happen this time, though.

The Loop website is fine this morning but they haven’t had their Tosh shipment yet. Donice, thanks for the tip about Jimmy Bean. I was introduced to Madeleine Tosh by Knit-Purl. -– I bought that Japanese pattern book from them, and since then they have me on their list for enticing e-mails. But I prefer a British source, not necessarily because it works out cheaper, but because I know from the start what the cost will be and can look forward to the package without dreading the knock at the door demanding more money. And Loop carries a good range.

I don’t know what I’m going to do about Aran. I have at least taken Starmore off the shelf. I like St. Enda – the one you recommend, Theresa. I am also rather taken with Killeany which has a few more judge-impressing twists to it. And I notice that she includes travelling stitches (“Irish Moss” and maybe others) under the heading of “Classic Aran Designs”. If Starmore can do it, who is a Strathardle judge to demur? Had I but world enough and time, this would be my chance to do the travelling stitch sweater I have been talking about for the last couple of years. Perhaps if I aimed at one of the Little Boys…

The first thing is to spend a serious 20 minutes with the book.

Non-knit

Theo’s wife Jenni has been been confirmed as Assistant Secretary to the Treasury. If you follow the link, you will find a senator from NY who sits on the Finance Committee grumbling that he preferred her maiden name, Engebretsen. She has used her married name since the wedding day. Rachel’s husband Ed, in a speech at the reception, made a nice little joke about its being a change for the better. Senator Schumer wasn’t there to disagree.

I expect to have news about Theo himself soon.

I might even finish the edging of the mourning shawl today.

Otherwise, little to report. I phoned our local B&Q, hoping that a gnome or two might linger. The nice young man who answered sounded surprised, and said that they had never sold any such thing. Perhaps the higher-ups at B&Q consider Royal Naff as not-quite-Edinburgh.

On the Japanese shirt front, I am waiting for news from Loop – they are expecting more Madeleine Tosh yarn “in April”. They have promised to phone, but I look at the website most days anyway. This morning, when I tried to go there to include a link, the website seems to be down -- maybe they are updating it.

I haven’t yet got Starmore out to address the question of an Aran sweater for my Games entry.

And that’s about it.

Non-knit

We are having an election to the Scottish parliament next month, even more tedium-inducing than the royal wedding. The Big News yesterday was a survey on the subject of issues which people felt were important, or didn't: with prompt access to a specialist when cancer was suspected, coming out near the top of the list.

C. had that, and a fat lot of good it did her. The specialist – at the Western Infirmary, which is Edinburgh’s leading cancer hospital – did an inadequate examination and sent her away with the assurance that she didn’t have cancer. He suggested that a colonoscopy might be a good idea in six weeks time or so, when someone or other got back from holiday. That was in early October. She was diagnosed a month later when she was taken in by ambulance as an emergency. Cancer was all over the shop, by then. The operation was on 9/11, British style.

Oddly, to my mind, no blame seems to have attached to that silly man in all the anger which has swirled around since, directed at God and at the blameless GP. I don’t suppose the outcome would have been much different, but she would have been spared the suffering she went through in October, which was considerable. When someone brings my husband a picture to consider, the first thing he does is look at it. C. had lost a lot of weight by early October. She was skilful at dressing to conceal the fact, but a cancer specialist is meant to be able to look, just as my husband is in his different way. And weight-loss is a major symptom, I gather, of almost all cancers.

I’ve probably said all this. By now, I am as cross at C. and her daughters for not being cross at that specialist, as I am at the man himself.

Today I composed a web page in MS Word and then, here on Blogger, worked on the "Edit HTML" page. So far, I haven't had to replace any paragraph breaks -- but the final "Publish Post" hurdle remains.

What happened yesterday was that I composed at home in Microsoft Word as usual, pasted the result into Blogger as usual, and it looked fine. Then I added some pictures and when I got back from that occupation to the Blogger “Compose” screen, the paragraph breaks were gone. Later, when they had been re-instated, I published the day’s work – and found it stripped of paragraph breaks again.

As far as I know, I’m using the most up-to-date version of Blogger. Could this have anything to do with my out-of-date browser?

I've spotted a typo in yesterday's work. Do I dare retrieve and correct it?

It’s irritating, all this, but it has nothing to do with knitting. I have passed the half-way point on the fourth side of the mourning shawl edging. Things should get exciting this very week.

A curious thing about this pattern is that the border decreases don’t begin until the 39th row, and when they do, they are distributed through the work rather than forming a mitre-line at the corners. The result is that the border pattern flows around the corners, rather attractively – a strong argument for doing the whole thing in the round, the Fleegle way.

It’s a new technique to me. The pattern is from Margaret Stove’s new book, “Wrapped in Lace”. It is based on an antique Shetland shawl whose owners asked Stove to restore it. It was full of what appear to be m**h holes. The original was knit in the late 19th century by an émigré from Shetland, of New Zealand wool.

Later this week – on Thursday, in fact – we hope to go visit an old friend who lives near St Andrews. He is younger than we are, recently retired from the Art History department there. Can he be tempted into some indiscretions about Miss Middleton? (She did a full Art History course; the Prince started Art History, but switched to Geography after the first year.) Our friend’s partner is a passionate gardener, and we want to take them a Royal Wedding gnome, but the B&Q website this morning [scroll down] says that they are sold out, and Google strongly suggests that they are a B&Q exclusive.

We’ll stay two nights, and my plan is to finish Joe’s first sock and get well started on the ribbing of the second. Then the very next week is Holy Week when I will press the project forward on the shores of Loch Fyne.

Comments

Ruth (yesterday) that sounds like a good tip, about slip-stitching the sleeves of that pink Strathardle sweater into place. I will try it. It also occurred to me that if the seam looks bad, and maybe even if it doesn’t, I could cover it with applied i-cord since the collar and neck placket are already edged with i-cord, and I mean to use an i-cord bind-off for the shoulders.

Ted, thanks for the background on EZ’s “New Zealand sweater”. That sounds rather likely. One of the most frustrating tidbits of knitting history that I know is that EZ was puzzled by the phrase “Kitchener stitch” when she first came to America. (Until quite recently, when the internet made us all one, it was used by North American knitters only.) She enquired, and was told that it derives from a pattern Kitchener submitted to a Red Cross leaflet in WWI. Did she press her informant for the details which would get “Kitchener stitch” into the OED today? No.

KristieinBC (Saturday), thanks for the suggestion that I get a Macbook. Alexander made the big switch a year or so ago – I’ll ask him about it over Easter. Also, he and Ketki can tell me what one does with a new computer these days. The last time I bought one, all one had to do was walk across the room with a fistful of disks and re-install them. Now, one’s entire life has to be transferred.

Janet, what is WSD? Please come to Scotland, whatever it is!

Five scallops (of 21) done on the fourth side of the mourning shawl edging.

Yesterday’s knitting news, however, such as it was, related to one of those dread cards from the post office which was on the mat when we got back from Strathardle – they had failed to deliver a package, and removed it to a fairly remote local post office for collection. I trudged westward yesterday for no little distance and got it – and it was my order from the Schoolhouse, as I had hoped.

The New Zealand sweater is very interesting – but with no explanation, alas, of why it is so-called. I wonder how it escaped becoming famous? Round-the-Bend has given me a taste for EZ’s engineering; this one is a real contender for Thomas-the-Elder’s electric red sweater. Especially if England don’t win the Rugby World Cup – an appropriate logo would be more successfully incorporated in Jared’s “Brownstone”, I think.

Also in the package were Aino Praakli’s two books, mittens and socks. I discovered to my very considerable embarrassment that I already had the mitten book. There’s no excuse. One of the few things I do right, these days, is enter new knitting books in LibraryThing as soon as they cross the threshold. All I have to do is look there before ordering a new one. The sock book, with a wonderful cross Estonian cat on the cover, sort of makes up for my confusion.

What a curious language Estonian appears to be.

Strathardle and general vegetable-growing

We are famous for our daffodils. If 50 maids with 50 mops were to toil for half a year dividing them, we would have even more.

Here are the bunching onions. They don’t seem to have made much progress in the last six weeks, but they’re clearly alive. I have since read that red-bulbed bunching onions are even hardier and stronger-tasting (I have probably told you that already). I’ve got some seed of that, ready to go for this year.

And some of the walking onions have re-appeared! I didn’t have much hope for them – they went in rather late in the season, and were rather wispy, and then had to contend with what proved to be one of the famous winters. But there they are.

Here you see my dear sorrel, upper right; the Mara des Bois strawberries, looking well; and, lower left, three Good King Henry plants. From memory, chenopodium bonus henricus. It is nearly the perfect vegetable – perennial, hardy, tidy. It used to be very common in cottage gardens. The only drawback is that it doesn’t taste very nice.

My favourite gardening writer, Robin Lane Fox, doesn’t often get around to vegetables in his Saturday column in the Financial Times, but he did yesterday. He gardens near Oxford and has badgers as well as rabbits to contend with. It was from him, long ago, that I learned that rabbits won’t eat courgettes. It is absolutely true. In yesterday’s column he says that runner beans “are of no interest to wildlife”. Sensational news, if true – I shall certainly try.

So far this morning I have replaced paragraph breaks three times -- I will try posting again and see if they can make the leap.

I’ll revert to my original system of composition, and hope Blogger has pulled itself together in the intervening week.

We had a grand time in Strathardle, with lovely spring weather except for one day. Our niece joined us on Thursday evening – it wasn’t so bad, leaving yesterday, with someone there to enjoy it, as she was clearly doing.

A happier picture of her and my husband than the last one you saw. Here they are discussing possible walks.

Little C. will come up today – she (like Joe Ogden) is in the last weeks of her university career, and hesitated to come if we couldn’t offer internet access. We have wi-fi, in fact – but I was afraid it might be protected by a password known only to the man in Beijing who installed the system.

But it isn’t. Our niece’s computer found the “Burnside network” at once, and happily connected to it when encouraged by a couple of clicks. That means that I could use our recent income tax rebate to get myself a brand-new laptop, and it would be as wonderful as hers, and I wouldn't need James's help to get it going.

And I wasn’t too late to start on this year’s gardening.

Before:

After:

I got a lot done – not nearly as much as I would have liked to do, that goes without saying. The soil was surprisingly warm and workable. I planted ten potatoes at the end, and a small square of radishes. It is particularly gratifying, gardening in April, because jobs stay done at least for a little while.

Knitting

I fell upon the Araucania sweater with my newly-rekindled enthusiasm intact, and have nearly finished the first sleeve. It has been a long time since I set a shaped sleeve top into a shaped sleeve hole and I am not entirely looking forward to the experience.

The Games programme is out – the knitting classes are “A Dressed Doll” [absolutely not] and “Aran Sweater – any size”. I’ll go for that – I’m thinking vaguely Mungo. I’m a bit worried about time – Joe’s 21st birthday socks have to be finished for his 21st birthday, in July, and I don’t want the mourning shawl to drag on for too long. I’ll be better able to judge the progress of that when the edging is finished and I get down to business. I rounded the third corner last night.

More to follow -- but I must get on with Saturday. The paragraph breaks were here when I first pasted today's production into Blogger, but soon disappeared. I have reinstated them. Now they are excessive, but I am not going to meddle further.

So today I'm going to do it Blogger's way -- compose directly here in Blogger, and then copy the result back into Word for my archives. The main drawback will be the lack of any sense of how much I've written. Word-counting is not on offer.

I've now done 16 scallops (out of 21) on the third side of the Mourning Shawl edging.

And we're all set for K*rkmichael. The weather is vernal, if sometimes chilly and windy. We probably won't be back there until the end of the month, after Easter (which is to be spent on the shores of Loch Fyne, happiest of prospects). Should I take the seed potatoes? They are happily chitting on the dining room windowsill. I think I'll compromise and take the most advanced of them. Likewise I've got a box of nematodes in the refrigerator -- the Green answer to slugs -- due to expire on the 26th, the Tuesday in Easter week. They'll have to come, and be applied at the last possible moment. I'd better take the herb trough from the doorstep -- it needs to be untangled and re-planted.

Will the sorrel be ready for soup-making? The nettles? I put the forcing-pot over some rhubarb before we left in February. What will I find there? It's all rather exciting, although I know that my first sight of the battlefield will fill my heart with gloom.

Our niece and her daughter Little C. are coming up to stay at some point next week. If we can get it right, we'll overlap by a day or so -- meaning they won't have to open the house, and I won't have to close it. A great luxury, both ways.

I went up to John Lewis yesterday (despite the non-arrival of the desired prescription at Boots) and looked at yarn for awhile, to no effect. Rowan yarns don't seem to be labelled with the colour name, so I didn't know whether I was looking at "Kiss" or not. There were several good reds, but I am not quite sure I know what "electric red" means, although my husband thinks he does. I have told him about Thomas-the-Elder's request and maybe the only way forward now is to let him take me yarn-shopping. He tends to get the bit between his teeth when it comes to a purchase -- it could be anything -- and pursue the matter remorselessly to its conclusion. "That will have to do" and "Let's just forget about it" are not in his vocabulary.

This is slightly dangerous, stash-wise. If I went and bought yarn for everything on the HALFPINT list -- the swing jacket I've been prattling about, the Bavarian travelling-stitch one -- the stash situation would be much worse than it is. I couldn't have anticipated the need for the Mourning Shawl -- the diagnosis was in early November, just the other day in knitting terms. Or falling for that Japanese shirt.

In Strathardle the pink Araucania sweater will be waiting for me, sleeves remaining to be done and my enthusiasm re-kindled.

Non-knit

Grandson Joe has contributed an article on "South Sudan's Road to Independence" to the Nottingham Economic Review, an on-line student publication. He was worried about it when he was here last weekend -- would it be published? Was it rubbish? But it's up. Even if you're not interested in African politics -- they could be counting hits.

Blogger: I posted this a moment ago, and then remembered that I wanted to tell you about Joe's article, and called it back. The paragraph breaks have disappeared. What is one to do?

Half-way along the third side of the shawl edging. A quarter of a side – a bit over five scallops – seems to be the most I can hope for in a day. So, six more knitting days of edging. Then it gets fun.

I’m at the stage where the real danger now is that thoughts will wander and I’ll re-surface with no knowledge of what I’m doing or where I am in the pattern. So far, OK, and the pattern may be just demanding enough that that is unlikely to happen.

I’ve just bought Jared’s “Brownstone” pattern; the printer is working on it. At first glance, I would agree with you utterly, Kristie – it looks the very model of what a pattern should be. (My new printer reads through the assignment and prints the last page first, so that when the job is finished the pages are in order. Perhaps they all do that these days. What fun!)

Kristie says in her latest blog entry (follow link) that there are two things she hates about knitting: sleeves, and sewing. That set me considering my own chest of horrors, but I find it close to empty. I don’t like doing all that ribbing at the start of a sock – I do a full 50 rounds for men’s socks. But ribbing is the only way to get to the fun bit, so it gets done. I don’t like making-up – who does? – but it’s the only way to get to the FO, so it usually gets done. I never thought about sleeves. The Brownstone is a true son-of-EZ, with no seams. The more I look, the more I like. It’s the depth of the neck opening that makes the difference.

I hate bobbles and solve that problem by never doing them.

FiberQat, Dale of Norway is a splendid idea for an electric red yarn. I would trust them sight-unseen. It’s just possible that Boots will have a prescription for us this afternoon (I email the request to the dr, he sends the paper document to the chemist by post – so far, Britian requires that a prescription be on a physical piece of paper.) If so, I can drop in to John Lewis and see if they carry “Kiss” in any Rowan quality. I was startled yesterday to find how many different yarns Rowan do.

Non-knit

Today, at long last, my husband will keep the podiatry appt which has nailed us to Edinburgh all week. Tomorrow, Strathardle. Our niece and Little C. will join us next week and probably stay on after we leave. I am keenly looking forward to it, although I fear my vegetable plot when seen tomorrow will look as if it had gone out of cultivation some years ago, and I doubt the limits of my strength. Also I have lost the address and telephone number of the man who now cuts our grass and does the heavy work – my first job will be to track him down.

Bereavement (or something) is now a great leaden weight at the pit of my stomach although at the same time death remains hard to believe in. C. must be here somewhere, ready to tell me to spread compost, and that earthworms are beneficial. My husband seems to have aged five years, slower-witted and worse-tempered.

In today’s attempt to outwit Blogger, I have composed a Web page in Word. The shape and appearance of the screen is disconcerting. In the old system, I knew that when my Word document started a second page, I had said enough and should stop.Now the screen is a different size and shape, and holds more.

And it worked, up to a point: Blogger has preserved my paragraph breaks but continues to strip out the hyperlinks. So henceforth I'll insert them in situ as I do illustrations. But why should the system have changed? Cui bono?

I was afraid the Mourning Shawl would produce even-more-then-ordinarily boring blog posts, and I was right. There are fewer pauses now to undo stitches, and I’m moving along nicely. Here’s where we are, six scallops along the third edge:

The newspaper on the front step is because things are a bit damp out there this morning. The drought of March is being pierced to the root, just as the poet says. March was unusually dry this year. The colour would appear to be the most faithful I have yet achieved. Because of the newspaper? Live and learn.

I was glad to read in yesterday's comments of the enthusiasm for EZ’s New Zealand sweater. I’ve ordered the Spin-Out (and the books about Estonian socks and mittens,to make the postage worthwhile) and await it keenly.

Meanwhile I learned from Jared yesterday – because I’m on his mailing list – of his new pattern, Brownstone. Very nice, although I’m not sure about the toggles. It occurred to me that I could knit Thomas-the-Elder an electric red sweater even if England don’t win the Rugby World Cup.

Jared’s “Shelter” yarn, which I’d love to have an excuse for trying, doesn’t seem to come in electric red. That set me looking about – it’s not going to be quite as easy as I hoped to find such yarn. But several pure wool Rowan qualities have a shade called “Kiss” which might fill the bill – I think this may be a case for actual looking, as distinct from on-line ordering.

Miscellaneous non-knit

Stash haus, I love the line you quote from Garrison Keillor in yesterday’s comment. I’m a big fan, but I didn’t know that one, and will treasure it. I like what you say about your father-in-law’s donation of his body to medical research, too.

We went once on Open Doors day to the normally private little museum at the Department of Anatomy here in Edinburgh (and learned what a scourge rickets once was). Burke’s skeleton is there, or maybe it was Hare’s – part of the death sentence, in that case, was to be denied Christian burial. Several exhibits were covered. I asked the medical man who was supervising the proceedings whether that was because they were too ghastly for lay eyes. No, he said: they were body parts from people who had donated themselves for medical research, not for public exhibition. As with your story, Stash haus, the respect for human remains was both touching and pleasing.

My morning practice is to compose in Microsoft Word, save the result, and then copy and paste it into Blogger. The last few days, Blogger has taken to removing hyperlinks and stripping my efforts of hard returns so that it all comes out as one big Joycean paragraph. I couldn’t be the only blog writer affected – but maybe everybody else composes directly on-line. It’s a nuisance.

It has happened again today. The tedious solution is to click the "Edit HTML" button and restore everything. Tomorrow I'll try composing in HTML while I'm still in Microsoft Word, but I don't like being pushed around.

That is a picture of my husband and our niece, approaching the open grave.

The day went well, full as one might expect with the awe-fulness of death. The funeral Mass was exactly as C. would have wished, with Rilke read in German and all very nil nisi bonum. Alexander said afterwards that he would hope his faults would be mentioned at his funeral – I think that’s easier for men. (He also said that one of his Little Boys asked, “Is there a vampire in the coffin?” – fortunately not loudly enough to carry to the entire congregation.)

But, as I have always found with funerals, C.’s personality and presence permeated the entire day, the more so because the party was held at her house. Everybody there knew her partly – some more, some less – and the reflections from all those different lenses added up to something like the whole.

Thomas-the-Elder asked me during the course of the day to knit him an “electric red” sweater to celebrate England’s forthcoming victory in the Rugby World Cup. [Where did he get that phrase? Has he been reading this blog?] I said I would. A promise given under such circumstances – or indeed, under any – must be honoured, and I have been giving some thought to design. I won’t be entirely disappointed if England are knocked out in the quarter-final, but that’s another matter.

As I wait impatiently for publication, I have gone back many times now to the picture on the Schoolhouse Press website of the forthcoming EZ book. [scroll down a bit] “Not actual cover” it says, and then it says that what is shewn is “Betsy Wyeth’s rendition of EZ’s New Zealand sweater”. I have never heard of a New Zealand sweater, EZ’s or anybody else’s. But yesterday I searched the site, and found that they sell a Spin-Off of the pattern. I love that curve in the yoke. I like that neck, too, although I should probably run that past Thomas before attempting it. Finding a yarn should be easy, a symbol or logo for the World Cup victory might be more difficult.

Back at the ranch, I have finished the second side of the edging for the Mourning Shawl. The second half of any task goes faster than the first, so we’re making progress. And I’ve not only measured Joe’s foot but turned the first heel and am happily Oliver’ing down the foot [Ravelry link].

A new follower! I am back to my previous total! An auspicious way to begin what is likely to be a tough 48 hours.

Here we are. No blog tomorrow, and probably not Tuesday, either, as I make bacon and eggs for people who will spend the day on the road.

I am increasingly gripped by apprehension. I am nearly 78 and have only once before been intimately involved in a funeral – that was for Helen and David’s son Oliver who died at 6 ½ weeks. As Helen herself said when she was here last weekend, we didn’t really know him. Both of my parents were carried from deathbed to crematorium without benefit of clergy, as I gather is not uncommon in the US. Both had outlived themselves, anyway – they were in their 90’s with few surviving friends or colleagues or family of their own generation, their minds fogged with age and medication, in the care of strangers. My brother died young, but I was substantially pregnant with Alexander at the time and thousands of miles away: I didn’t go to the funeral.

I’ve been to funerals, of course, of people I have loved and mourned. But tomorrow will be a new experience in many ways.

Helen phoned from Pelion late in the afternoon about flowers. I had completely forgotten. The information – name of undertaker and florist – was there by the telephone. I had asked my husband a few days before what he wanted on the card. Then I forgot. But it wasn't too late. Thank God for Helen.

The seamstress came back with my husband’s trousers. He hasn’t tried them on yet, but they look fine. And I think we have partially solved the mystery of her grandmother, the orphan who was taken in by my husband’s grandparents’ family. The seamstress’ grandmother’s maiden name was Nisbit, no resonance there, but the seamstress’ great-grandmother’s maiden name – the mother of the orphaned child – was Grieg. That was also the maiden name of my husband’s grandmother, Alexander Miles’ wife. My husband and the seamstress must be related somehow or other. James, the keeper of the family genealogies, suggests in an email this morning that they are second cousins twice removed. But there is clearly more work for him to do here.

Knitting

I got quite a bit of edging done yesterday while waiting anxiously for the trousers. Sixteen and ½ scallops (of 21) finished on the second edge – another good day’s knitting, which won’t happen today or tomorrow, should carry me around the second corner.

And Joe’s sock is within a round or two of its heel flap.

And I heard from Franklin, who thinks I will be bored by a day of Tomten. I can imagine few pleasanter ways to spend one.

Much excitement this morning, but first --

What I have to report is that I am half-way along the second edge of the Mourning Shawl, 10 ½ scallops. I am doing better – fewer tinks. I got into slight stitch-count trouble last night, trying to knit just before bedtime. I think I’ll get Joe’s socks out and keep them handy in case the urge for bedtime knitting strikes again.

I re-read Fleegle’s astonishing system for garter-stitch-in-the-round. It sounds so breathtakingly simple that I’m going to trust her and not swatch. All you do is knit around, turn the work, and knit around in the other direction using a separate ball of yarn. Repeat. It sounds as if it would leave an ugly column of holes, but there aren’t any on Fleegle’s swatch. I think I can dimly see that she is exploiting the fact that circular knitting actually produces a spiral, not a stack of rows.

I can hardly wait.

Now for the excitement:

Both Franklin and Joe have posted video blogs this morning. Don’t miss. Franklin has been re-visited by the Queen and Einstein; Joe offers a video diary in which we see him unraveling an unsatisfactory baby blanket, designing a superior one, and eating lunch. He’s really sweet. (That's a phrase of the highest praise, in our family lexicon.)

And KnitNation have posted the class schedule for the July beano in London!

If I took a full-day class from Franklin on the Saturday on the Tomten jacket and garter-stitch jacquard, and his Sunday morning one on Working Antique Patterns, would that count as stalking? (He’s not offering photography.) There’s a Sunday afternoon class on Travelling Stitches (Marjan Hamminck) which I might move on to if I was still on my feet and compos mentis.

Rachel – who will be in Toulouse that weekend, the most attentive of you will remember – assures me that her four children are all full of enthusiasm at the prospect of going to exhibitions with their grandfather. And all four of those children will be here tomorrow; we can talk specifics. It is strange how life sometimes fits together. It’s an ill wind….

Comments

Thank you, Woolly Bits and Mary in Cincinnati, for the advice on Knitter’s. I’ll do it! I’ll drop the subscription!

And thank you very much for the information on StevenBe. How I wish I could visit his shop! I am sure we have nothing like that in the UK. That’s a most impressive story, Gerri, about his advice on s-twist as distinct from z-twist yarns, or vice versa as the case might be.

Angel, all that your say about skiving students is relevant. I am happy to say that in this case, all has turned out well. Joe got his two-day extension, and will be here tomorrow for the funeral with the rest of his family. I can measure his feet which up until now I have unaccountably not done.

I have rounded the corner and am half-way through the 5th scallop on the second side. This is going to take a while. It goes slightly faster now that I don’t have to keep peering at the book – it still lies open, close to hand, but I won’t need it there much longer. It is extraordinary how often I go slightly wrong and either (a) need to tink back a few stitches or (b) can’t remember where I am and what I’m supposed to do next. Even now, even when completely rested and sober and paying attention to what I’m doing.

Funeral arrangements seem to be going forward smoothly on all fronts – assuming my husband’s trousers come home today as arranged. My husband is to do a reading, something from the Book of Lamentations, so one of today’s jobs is to look it up. We have the reference, but not the text, and we have only old-fashioned bibles in this house, King James and Douai and the Vulgate. My husband says the numbering is often different.

What I want at my funeral is St Paul’s “Rejoice! Again I say to you, Rejoice!” I heard it at a funeral once, and thought it was sensational. But C. remained furious throughout at her cancer and at God for inflicting it on her, and it sounds as if readings have been chosen accordingly. Little C. will read something from Rilke, an author known to me only by name.

The party is to be at C.’s house, and in her beloved garden if the weather holds. Our niece has told the caterer to expect 65. (I would be doing well to muster half that number.) The notices were in both the Scotsman and the Times yesterday – easy to spot, if you still have the newspapers lying about, as C. used her maiden name.

Rachel’s son Joe, in his final weeks at Nottingham University, is having trouble getting a two-day extension on a vital essay so that he can come. A weepy girl classmate had just secured a whole fortnight’s extension for “stress” and Joe assumed he would have no trouble, but his tutor clearly regards “great-aunt’s funeral” as next door to spurious. He was told at one point that he would have to submit a death certificate and agree to counselling. He is appealing to a higher authority.

Rachel and Ed and all the rest of the family will be here by Sunday evening, so one of today’s jobs is to iron our one tablecloth.

Knitting

Both VK and Knitter’s have turned up in the last few days. The question looms: will I have the courage not to renew Knitter’s, as previously resolved? I have one more issue to go. There is even a pattern in this one in which I feel a transitory interest – the Cable-go-Round on page 56. Beyond that, everything seems predictable, dull, or bizarre; there is nothing to read except pages and pages of an interview with Debbie Macomber, who doesn’t interest me; and there’s all that X-type photography which continues to grate on my fragile nerves.

Whereas I wouldn’t dream of dropping VK, which has nothing whatsoever this time in which I have even a brief interest.

Tell me, who is StevenBe, the latest knitter in the Addi ad? We’ve had Franklin, I know who he is, and an LYS owner whose name I’ve forgotten. Perhaps he's just an aging pop star who happens to knit?

The seamstress turned up, manifested a distinct air of competency, and went away with the trousers which are promised back for tomorrow. She remarked, a propos our surname, that her orphaned grandmother had been taken in by the family of an Edinburgh surgeon named Alexander Miles. He was my husband’s grandfather.

I didn’t think to ask either her grandmother’s maiden name, or where she was from. I will certainly put those questions tomorrow when the trousers come home. Is this an early example – we’re talking, roughly, about the turn of the century – of the Miles link with K*rkmichael? How interested C. would have been! But of course, the trousers wouldn’t have had to be altered if C. were here to tell the story to.

I’ve just spent a happy 10 minutes at the East website, choosing an outfit for myself. Which I don’t need – I plan to wear what I wore to Theo’s wedding, also from East, and suitably sub fusc. But Easter-at-Loch-Fyne is coming up, and the Games, so maybe… They’ve got some promising-looking cardigans with droop down the front. With an Anokhi Mahal print shirt or blouse and longish droopy skirt…

Knitting

I’ve reached the 20th scallop on the Mourning Shawl edging. There are 21 per side, so I should turn the first corner today, barring disaster. Size is going to be good – tending towards large but not grotesquely so.

I took several pictures for you this morning, indoors and out. Outdoors in direct sunlight is best, but the colour still isn't nearly red enough.

I have mastered the pattern – that’s when the really bad mistakes start happening.

Lace-wise, it’s pretty easy. Faggoting, next to the straight edge (I love faggoting), and then a column of four-row roundels. Then some intermediate stitches and finally the familiar tram-lines, yo, k2tog, yo parallel to the scalloped edge. There is also an extra roundel tucked inside the tram-lines at the widest point.

That’s all straightforward. What has to be memorised is the number of intermediate stitches, row by row. There are 16 rows. It’s no use just knitting along until you come to something to do, because an error in the number of intermediate stitches often – all too often, in my case – provides a valuable signal of a mistake in the present or preceding row, or even indicates that I am knitting the wrong row altogether.

It’s fun, and I keep being tempted to knock off another roundel when I should be doing something else, so we’re sailing along.

I have been moved by all your messages. You guys are good friends.

Our niece and her daughter Little C. came by yesterday – after registering the death at offices not far from here – to talk about the funeral. Would we have been so considerate of them if death had taken brother and sister in the more expected order? We settled on Monday at noon, ideal for us; they phoned both the priest and the undertaker from here and met no difficulties. It seems by now that this is also OK with the other two daughters.

Greek Helen is not coming after all – the expense and the need for her husband to take two more “family days” leave to cover for her sort of piled up against the idea. Neither is James. But Rachel will have three or even all four of her children with her, and Alexander and Ketki will come from Loch Fyne so we will have a considerable presence.

AND my husband agreed to try on The Suit, instead of waiting to stage a crisis on Monday morning. The jacket is still fine, but the trousers are seriously too small around the middle. A totally unknown seamstress is coming to collect them this morning, with the promise of having them back by the weekend. There isn’t enough fabric in the generous seam to accommodate his current girth – she’s got a job on her hands.

I’ll take my camera along on Monday. I won’t guarantee to use it.

From memory, Emily Dickinson:

The bustle in the house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth.

The sweeping out the heart
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.

Knitting

I had some pictures taken of Round-the-Bend while the house was full on Saturday. It’s really quite a success, although I wonder if I’ll wear it much.

And the shawl edging goes forward. This is going to be another watching-paint-dry episode in the history of blogging, but if we got through the Princess we ought to be able to manage this one.

The big knitting news is in some danger of getting lost in the sadness of the last few days – namely Helen C.K.S.’s pointer, in her comment on Saturday’s post, to Fleegle’s solution to the (considerable) problem of how to knit garter stitch in the round. Helen has no peer when it comes to knowledge of the resources of the Internet, nor Fleegle when it comes to knitterly cleverness.

I’ve bookmarked it but haven’t thought it all the way through yet. Goodness! will I even have to make a little swatch? But it’s clearly the Way to Go.

C. died late yesterday afternoon.

We kept the vigil with the others through the day. The deterioration from the day before was obvious when we got there, and we could see her sinking during the day. Unlike Sunday, when everything stayed level. Our last visit to the bedside was from 3 to 4, roughly. I read “Johnny Town Mouse” to her, eschewing the highbrow. We then left, to get home to insulin and carbohydrate before the rush hour. I said on departure that I didn’t think we’d spend tomorrow (=today) in the same way.

She died almost at once. Our niece tried to call us back, but we were threading our way through Edinburgh without a mobile phone. Her three daughters and little C. were all with her. They didn’t summon a nurse.

Death could so easily, in a situation like that, have made His move while we were all six having a picnic lunch in the garden on Marks and Spencer sandwiches, or while one or the other had gone for a walk. Given that none of us is exempt, and that the process is not likely to be entirely pleasant, it qualifies beyond doubt as a good death.

We don’t know what the arrangements will be. It is a vast relief not to be involved in them. Our first job is to ensure that my husband has something decent to wear. Something that fits and is clean and isn't riddled with moth holes. That done, if there is any delay, I hope we will go to K*rkmichael for a few days. My husband does not like the idea of his sister being refrigerated – he put it in those words, last night – but that’s what might happen.

Joe’s first sock is very near the heel flap. His great-aunt’s death has been knit into the fabric of those socks. I tried to get back to the shawl edging last night, but had trouble with it. There’s a mess in the 9th scallop that I nearly took out, then I thought, no, I can fix it with a needle afterwards. But this morning I thought no, again: I’ll leave it, and one day I’ll show it to my niece and tell her that that’s where I was the weekend her mother died.

We’re still where we were.

My husband and I spent yesterday at the hospice, sometimes sitting with C., sometimes in the “relatives’ room” – which will soon have to be re-dedicated as the “Miles room” – with our niece, our other niece (F.), C’s third daughter (A.) whom I have not previously mentioned, and Little C.

We came home for late-afternoon insulin and carbohydrate, expecting at any moment the phone call which would summon us back. Our niece phoned at 8:30 to say, no change, and that the four of them were going home. I told her, feeling (a) very very tired and (b) guilty, not to phone in the night. I had had a bad night the one before, and would have lain awake listening to the phone not ringing. I discussed that decision at some length with my husband, who could have overruled me, and he agreed.

In the event, it was the right decision. The four women just named found, when it came to the event, that they couldn’t leave their mother/grandmother. Our niece remembered her mother saying, at a much earlier stage of illness, “I don’t need you right beside me, but I need to know you’re there.” So they went home and had half a glass of wine each, and went back and spent the night at the hospice. Our niece phoned here at 6:30 with this news, and we will join them as soon as we can. It won’t be instantly. My husband needs time in the morning.

What C. is going through is meaning 3 (now rare) of “agony” in the OED – “the throes or pangs of death”. It seems to be the essential meaning of “agonia” in Italian.

Thank you, more than I can say, for all your messages. But, Elizabeth, “beloved C.” won’t quite do – it is appropriate for the other players here in Act V, Scene V of her life, but not for me. I went galumphing in, nearly 53 years ago now, on the assumption that when you married someone you got to be a member of their family. C.’s reception of me was polite but cool, certainly not sisterly. It was a shock to me then. I understand a lot more now.

But so it has remained. She is by now, of course, part of the necessary furniture of my world. It won’t be worth my doing anything any more, without her to disapprove.

I have never held much with “love” as a word or as a feeling. All that matters is the doing.

As for knitting, the Mourning Shawl edging got a bit complicated as the day got more stressful. That’s what socks are for. The first of Joe’s 21st Birthday Socks has now left its dreaded 50 rounds of ribbing behind and is speeding on towards the heel. Today is likely to advance it further

Our niece just phoned to say that the hospice thinks death is near. We're about to head out there, instead of going to Mass. I'll take my knitting.

Greek Helen left at 4 this morning, Rachel and Ed at a more dignified hour to drive south. It was a good visit all round, on many fronts.

The hospice reports “no change” this morning, so Rachel and Ed should be in time. They are on their way, and I have discovered thanks to the miracle of mobile telephony that they have no address for the Hospice, and no map. Sort of thing James might do. It is easy to find if they come in to Edinburgh on the Biggar Rd., which is in itself easy to do – it would be silly to come here to Drummond Place in the north of the city and then toil all the way back again. My husband and Greek Helen will visit this afternoon.

I’ve made a good start on the Electric Shawl – thank you for the words of comfort about the colour. I remain happy with it. I should master the pattern soon and be able to close the book for the time being. It’s lace knitting (or knitted lace, as the case may be) – action in every row, which keeps one on one’s toes, but the pattern itself is straightforward. It took me something like 50 repeats before I had memorised the Princess edging.

Natural light photography on the doorstep has come out absurdly pink. The colour is not like that at all.

Few discoveries have been more startling for me, in recent years, than to learn from Sharon Miller that the direction of a decrease (/ or \) doesn’t matter when you’re knitting fine yarns in garter stitch. Margaret Stove (author of the present pattern) acknowledges this somewhere in the text, but still produces a rather complicated set of symbols, not only \ and / but a variation of each when they appear on a wrong-side row. I am sailing along as I have done with Sharon’s patterns using whichever decrease is easiest at the moment.

I am looking forward to the construction of this shawl, which will be new for me. I like what I think of as the Amedro system, starting with the entire edging and then knitting inwards. The difficulty is that “inwards”, in the round, produces st st. Amedro doesn’t worry, and there’s something to be said for that approach.

Purling is absolutely out. Once I used what I think is Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer’s idea of wrapping and turning after each round to create garter stitch. That works pretty well. The wraps-and-turns make a visible line, but less conspicuous than a sewn seam would be.

This time, the four borders are to be knit separately, inwards from the edging. You can then seam the edges if you like. I don’t. But Stove says that what she did was “knit the last stitch of every other row with one stitch picked up from the corresponding row of the adjacent border”. It’ll be fun to see if I’m capable of that. Or will it go squint as things do when I try to make a hem by knitting a live stitch together with one from the cast-on?

Round the Bend is blocked. I’ll see if I can get one of these people to take a picture of me wearing it. It’s a beautiful day for photography, or dying.

Brief touching of base –

Greek Helen is here. We went in to see C. early this morning. She is now past speech, but awake and, we are sure, aware of the people around her. Helen read T.S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” to her. Somewhere in the family archives is a photograph of C. as a small child on Eliot’s shoulders. Long story.

It looks like being six to supper here this evening -- our niece, our other niece, Little C., Helen, plus the incumbents. So I must spend the rest of the day fussing about.

The red shawl is just the thing. The yarn is delicious on the fingers, the pattern just difficult enough. I’ve written to Loop about Madeleine Tosh sock yarn – they promise to phone when they get their next order, in a couple of weeks. At the moment, they don't have enough for a jacket of any of the colourways that stir me, including "lichen".

C. lost a lot of ground between Monday and yesterday. She was still conscious and coherent, but only just. My husband sat with her and held her hand and they talked. I stood back. Clearly, from his manner as he said goodbye and the way he looked back as we left, he believed it was the last time he would see her. (He put his hand on her forehead and said, “See you later” and she replied faintly “Alligator”.) I tried to say goodbye but she hadn’t realised I was there and only said, “I don’t understand”.

The issue last night and this morning was whether to bring forward the arrival of Little C., the beloved granddaughter, currently scheduled to drive up with Rachel and Ed on Saturday. Rachel herself is very anxious to get here while her aunt is still alive – she’s not too bothered about coherent conversation.

Our niece phoned the hospice early this morning. They reported a peaceful night, and also said, “I’ll tell your mother you phoned”. So for the moment, arrangements are being left as they stand. That could change during the day.

And tonight Greek Helen will be here!

Knitting, miscellaneous

Jeanfromcornwall, the cache-coeur pattern sounds a bit hard to get. It’s in Issue 19, 2007, of “The Wheel” – “Only available through the Ashford Club at http://ashfordclub.co.nz/”.

Thank you for the reminders about p/hop, Christine and Hat. I investigated them once before, and they had slipped my mind. I’ll rev myself and get back there.

If anyone has been wondering about that cowl, permanently stuck at 99% in the side bar, the reason was that it was still pinned to the dining room floor, in blocking position. Yesterday I unpinned it and sewed the side seam and tidied it. It’s great.

I also finished Round the Bend. I hope I’ll get it blocked this morning. Pins won’t be involved, so it shouldn’t take too long.

I also knit most of a Shetland jumper-weight swatch for the Japanese shirt. I didn’t entirely enjoy it. There’s something slightly itchy about Shetland yarn. Normally I use it only for Fair Isle, where I don’t seem to mind how it feels. But do I want to embark on this whole prolonged project with a yarn that doesn’t entirely please the fingers?

Then I remembered Jenny’s mention of Loop. They’ve got Madeleine Tosh sock yarn in a good range of colours, including the wonderful “lichen” which I admired in pure silk lace. Maybe this is the moment to buy some yarn. There’s nothing here, other than Shetland – and that would have to be striped – of which there’s enough for a whole garment.

And I also cast on Granny Cheyne’s Shetland shawl and knit half of the first edging repeat. Only 83 ½ repeats to go, a mere bagatelle for one who has knit the Princess. It is a good back-in-the-saddle feeling to be doing lace again.

My husband was horrified when he saw it. He called the colour “electric red”.

I’ve lost a follower! I didn’t know such things happened until yesterday, when the same misfortune came to kristieinbc. I never expected all those people to go on reading, but I thought the defectors would just tiptoe away leaving the total apparently unchanged.

We’ll go to see C. today. Our niece thinks more ground was lost yesterday, and that we should keep things brief. All visitors are to be kept away tomorrow, in hopes of rallying some strength for the weekend when Greek Helen will be here (Friday) and then on Saturday Rachel and her husband Ed and Little C., C.’s beloved namesake granddaughter. Little C. is in her final weeks at Bristol university. She will go to London and join Rachel and Ed for the drive north.

Alexander drove over from Argyll yesterday to see his aunty. He had a good visit, tearful on both sides at the end. That’s a turn of the screw I hope we might be spared – as long as she’s there, we’ll obviously keep going back. Maybe we won’t have to know which is the final goodbye until afterwards.

Knitting

Anonymous, with the red Chinese “cashmere” I’m going to knit “Granny Cheyne’s Shetland Shawl” for our niece, from Margaret Stove’s new book “Wrapped in Lace”. In shape, it’s a bog-standard square Shetland, perhaps a bit awkward to wear formally – although it looks nice on the model in the book. But with square, I figure, you can drape it over a piece of furniture like a small afghan, or cosy up in it when watching television. And our niece should cut a dash in it at my funeral, when I want as many as possible to wear something I knit.

I have re-done the i-cord on Round-the-Bend, making loop buttonholes instead of Meg’s elegant figure-of-eights. This morning during my osteoporosis-pill-half-hour (no coffee allowed, nor going back to bed) I sewed the buttons on. I’m clumsy with buttons – worse with zips – and hate doing them, but I think the result will pass muster.

So today I should be able to finish tidying, and probably start the Japanese shirt swatch. Blocking tomorrow. My main problem with the Japanese shirt is to choose the existing garment to take the measurements from. I think the sleeve seams should be at the shoulder and not somewhere else.

Tamar, I couldn’t bear the fuss of selling yarn. What I need is a Deserving Cause on which I can dump some lace-weight. I figure the charity knitters in Alyth (who have received a fair amount of my general stash) wouldn’t want lace because they knit stout little garments for babies.

Speaking of which, a friend sent me this yesterday, for using up sock yarn. Isn’t it a sweetie? Patricia Arrotin’s cache Coeur (Ravelry link). Now all I need is a great-grandchild.

When our niece phoned on Sunday, she feared her mother was sinking. She didn’t seem to be able to hold a thought long enough to finish a sentence. She – our niece – took yesterday off work, and phoned us from the hospice in the morning, bless her! to say that her mother had had a good night and was much brighter – so that we wouldn’t worry all day.

We found this to be true when we finally got there in the afternoon. My husband insisted on going by bus and it proved an epic journey. C. is very weak, very frail, but clear-headed and thoroughly herself. A dr told her yesterday that she has a “week or a fortnight” to go, for some of which she will be comatose.

We had a good visit. Our niece was there (and very kindly drove us home). The situation was thoroughly surreal.

I don’t have much experience of death, close-up. I didn’t know it was possible to get this close with no pain (she now has a low-level morphine drip), no indignity, and no terror. There has been much suffering, and tears we haven’t seen. But also much love, given and received.

We’re not going to London this week. I’ll go up to the station this morning and try to get our money back for the tickets (but I will fail). Rachel and her husband Ed plan to drive up on Saturday to see C. Greek Helen just phoned to say that she will come on Thursday or Friday if flights can be found and boys disposed of.

I got my lace stash out yesterday, with the usual feelings of gloom. Even if I live long enough to master the rest of the stash, there’s at least a lifetime of lace knitting there. And there’s some good stuff – it would be wicked to buy more now.

But. The email from Knit Purl illustrates an utterly irresistible shade of Madeleine Tosh Pure Silk lace called “lichen”. When you click through to the website, there is no “lichen” on offer, although they could presumably get me some. The temptation remains, especially after reading your comment, Beverly, about how tussah might prove possible to knit.

And thank you for the pointer to Loop, Jenny. They do indeed have a good deal of Tosh, but (perhaps fortunately) neither Pure Silk Lace nor the DK quality I would want for the Effortless. Art doesn't often take us to Islington, which is a pity -- it's a place I'd love to visit.

My current thought is to go with this Chinese “cashmere” yarn. It’s the same stuff, a gift from James & Cathy, as I used – in a different colour – to knit the Amedro “cobweb lace wrap” for Greek Helen last year. It’s a good, clear red.

(The state of that radiator grill leaves much to be desired. The camera is merciless.)

And back at the ranch, I’ve done the cuffs of RtB and love them. They are strips of garter st, after which one doubles the stitch count in one row before proceeding to the sleeves. But it is only when one applies i-cord to the last row of garter stitch that the wonderful bloused effect emerges. I am delighted.

Today I’ll rip out half the peripheral i-cord and re-do the buttonholes. Once one faces the fact that the job must be done, it doesn’t seem so bad.

Our niece phoned last night, in distress, to warn us that we would see a further marked decline in her mother when we visit today. The one thing that can be said for the day is that I finished it without cider, despite the disappointment of the match and the sadness of the evening. Lent is truly engaged.

I wonder if we will get to London this week.

Our niece has done so much – fought through the night when C. contracted a lung infection a few days after the operation; been her constant carer through the three months at home, sleeping in her mother’s house, changing stoma bags, trying to tempt appetite. Now she hopes only that death will come quietly and soon.

No Victory sweaters to knit, and perhaps just as well, as the next project must be the shawl or stole for our niece. I’m still swithering. The trouble with the rectangular shape – as I’ve said, I’m sure – is that it gets scrunched up as a scarf instead of spread out over the shoulders like a fabric stole. At the moment I’m inclining towards a traditionally-shaped Shetland shawl in Margaret Stove’s new book (can’t find it this morning; had it yesterday). Some form of triangle is a possibility, too.

I must have a look today at my lace yarn collection. Not black. I am toying with the idea of sending for some Madeleine Tosh Pure Silk lace, and to hell with the VAT. But could I knit it? I tried to knit the Princess in silk. The result was very like Franklin’s attempt to knit with DMC crochet cotton. I failed in a brief attempt just now to find someone on Ravelry with experience of the Tosh yarn. It's "tussah silk". Does that make a difference?

Thanks for help on the droopy sweater problem. Just because Scotland didn’t win the Calcutta Cup in 2011 doesn’t mean I can never knit the Effortless. I bought and printed the pattern. I don’t care for Fettig’s other patterns half as much. I do like the Kiama, Lisa. (Link to the pattern in yesterday’s comment.) And I like your Slouchy, Dawn, except for the idea of alpaca.

I knit a sweater in alpaca once – bliss! in the doing of it – which turned into a mini-dress on the first wearing. That was a long time ago. Maybe alpaca has firmed itself up since then, but I am wary of it. What yarn are you using?

Meanwhile, RtB. I had the expected trouble with the button loops. Even stopping the DVD and stepping Meg through the relevant passage doesn’t help. I thought I had cracked it in the watches of the night, but when I tried to apply my insight this morning, it still didn’t work. I am pretty well resigned to taking out half the periferal i-cord and doing simpler buttonholes.

I moved on to i-cording the cuffs, and that’s going fine.

Calcutta Cup Day (3)

England won, as usual. It was a thriller to the end: we made them sweat for it.

Calcutta Cup Day (2)

Are you there, friends? It's all even at half-time.