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.

 

 

 

Easter Plus One

...and not much accomplished. I haven't raised the question of eyes again with my husband, and I haven't re-attempted to get in to Typepad. We're going to the country today (so no Blog for a while) -- probably until the end of the week. The weather is very grey, but vernal, and the forecast is wet.

I've nearly finished decreasing to the end of the gusset of the right sleeve of the Fair Isle jacket. I keep checking anxiously, at every colour change -- and there are lots of them -- to make sure that I'm marching in sequence with the other sleeve. It's probably time to relax a bit and trust the balls of yarn to be in order. A mistake or two would be of no great consequence, either.

The striped Koigu waiting for me in Perthshire will be, as ever, a pleasant change. Will the potatoes have started sprouting? Watch this space...

I've started the right arm 

Easter Sunday

Who would have thought they'd change the clocks today? It's a subject I'm usually pretty alert to, clock-changing, but I missed it entirely yesterday, if it was advertised -- didn't catch a mention on the evening television news, for instance, if there was one. Finally got it on the radio this morning. A great greyness has settled over the climate, so morning, noon, and night look much alike.

Above, of course, is the Fair Isle jacket, with its right sleeve started. I took this picture yesterday. The right sleeve is a couple of inches longer this morning, the gusset nearly decreased away. The totality is definately shorter than I would wish -- the whole jacket, I mean, not the sleeve. Rachel is the shortest of our four children, it'll be all right, but I'm cross at myself.

VK surprised me by turning up yesterday. Not without interest, at first glance. I hoped there might be a farewell Venishnick, but I can't find one. Every other designer I've ever heard of is there.

Blogging

I am sufficiently weary of the picture-and-text problem here that I am considering a move, perhaps to Typepad which Mary Morrison uses. It's a pay service (Blogger is free), but I could afford five bucks a month if it would let me weave text around pictures. But I went to their website just now and tried to sign up for a trial and it kept rejecting my efforts with the message that I hadn't filled in all the required fields. I had certainly filled in every field I could see. I tried three or four times and then gave up. Maybe they're taking the holiday weekend off.

Eyes

Our GP is all for Thessaloniki for my cataract operation, but my sister is not, for what sound like cogent reasons. My husband had a row with our optician a while ago, and now goes to someone else himself. He has embraced the idea of Greece with great gusto -- I think that's partly why. It would be a relief to me to stay here. No reason we shouldn't go to Greece another time.

The Drake boys, again 

Good Friday

We got here.

I've just spent a few minutes wandering around the Blogger website, trying yet again to figure out how to incorporate photographs into text -- instead of having them each as a separate post -- and, having achieved that, how to incorporate more than one at a time. No luck. Perhaps the answer will be to put them on my own website, with HTML code here referring to them there. Meanwhile Blogger has withdrawn the facility to incorporate even one -- I post it, and visit the Blog to ensure that it's there; I go to Blogger and click edit, and it's gone -- just its caption and a useless button.

Today's picture is another from the happy envelope that arrived from Greece this week: Mungo, Archie, and Fergus on their mother's birthday in January, although there don't seem to be enough candles on the cake. Mungo is still (or again) wearing his striped Koigu, although you can't see much of it.

Fair Isle Jacket

I did about an inch last night -- the colour sequence and the decreases and the pattern itself all more or less successfully re-established. Picture soon.

Sweater needed

My winter standby has long been a fisherman's rib number in two shades -- one variegated, one solid -- of Colinette DK. Friendly and cosy. But it pilled dreadfully, and my husband got tired of picking up pills all over the house, and has relegated it to the country. So I need another sweater. I still have an eye on Candace Strick's Merging Colours. (www.strickwear.com) She's toiling away at the dyepots these days. Even if I were willing to risk the pills again, Colinette has long since given up producing anything in knittable weights like DK -- presumably super-bulky brings in more bucks. Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport might be the answer -- machine-washable, too. I like the look and feel of two-colour brioche stitch (see yesterday's swatch), but it might be too warm.

Eyes

I'm going to see our GP today to discuss the entire problem, including the possibility of going to Greece in October for the operation itself. There is a super duper hospital in Thessaloniki.  Fergus was born there. It even made a pitch a couple of years ago to have NHS patients referred to it for, precisely, routine operations such as hip- and eye-replacements.

Brioche revisited 

Today's delay was Blogger's fault.

I've finished the scarf, blocked it, and picked up stitches around the armhole for the second sleeve of the Fair Isle jacket -- it feels good to be back in the saddle. The scarf is only the second thing I've finished this year -- the other being the ribwarmer. Not much to show for a year already 25% gone.

I used never to block. My first serious adventure in that field was nine years ago when I knit a lace-weight shawl for daughter Helen's second baby (who turned out to be Archie). I was pulling out all the stops on that one, as her first child had died at 6 1/2 weeks the year before. And of course it turns out that blocking is great fun, and that it entirely transforms lace.

I think it's in "Knitting" that Meg describes the process for sweaters, and adds, "I love this stage". If she had added, instead, a stern warning about how important it was always to block, I'd have paid no attention. But now I always do it, and I love it too.

Brioche stitch

One evening recently, bored of the scarf and humiliated by my previous failure with two-colour brioche stitch, I got some waste yarn out, and retrieved IK. And I did it. See above. But it's not entirely easy.

Italian Chain Ribbing 

The picture is a close-up of the scarf stitch, Italian chain ribbing from Walker I, page 47. I think I'll declare the scarf finished today at five feet plus and get back to the second sleeve of the Fair Isle jacket. I'll be happier when that is successfully under way.

Barbara Venishnick

Marian Poller steered me to her obituary in the Hartford Courant. There is a facility for leaving messages with the obituary -- rather like comments on a blog -- so I added mine. This idea is new to me, and it seems an excellent use of electronics. I am sure her family will discover thereby how highly the knitting world regarded her. She is survived by her mother, as well by members of the generations one expects to see represented.

If you want to attempt it, I must warn you that the Courant is intolerant of the slightest mis-spelling (I think I've got it right, above). Good old Google is prepared to give you a certain amount of latitude.

On-Line Knitting

My server, demon.co.uk, had a hissy fit the other day and started blocking all my Yahoo groups. I straightened things out soon enough, but the interval was oddly peaceful. So yesterday I took the ultimate step of unsubscribing from some of my knitting groups, and setting all the others to Nomail. I still maintain a couple of groups on non-knit subjects, and indeed contributed a note to one of them yesterday on the subject of potato-chitting.

There's plenty to read out there on the blogs, and it has been a long time since I learned much of anything from a posting to a knitting list. But it's the end of an era, all right (if I keep it up), and one that has made a tremendous difference to my life as well as to my knitting.

Knitting With a Smile

The third and last book in last week's box of treasure. (I have another book-order in mind, however.)

This one is Swedish in origin and sub-titled "A Knitting Sketchbook". I expected charts of Swedish stitch patterns, but it's more than that. It's a pattern book, and a good one. The disappointment is that although many of the patterns recommend the author's own yarn, "Gunga Din", her website doesn't seem to provide the specifications and colour charts I had hoped for. Just kits. Maybe I didn;t persevere long enough. Maybe the site is new and will expand. Maybe I should try a general Google on "Gunga Din yarn". The author is Inger Fredholm, and her website is www.fredholmknitting.com.

Mungo in his Striped Koigu 

I got some beautiful pictures from Greece yesterday, grandchildren and scenery, sometimes combined. This one (above) was the only one with knitting in it, so I'll start here -- Mungo in his striped Koigu, with his brother Fergus. The sleeves look slightly long, otherwise pretty good. It's pure EPS.

The Opinionated Knitter

Which brings me to the second book in the splendid boxful which awaited me when we got back from the country last week -- the posthumous collection of EZ's writing. It's simply wonderful. I don't think there's anything in it that could quite be called a whole new pattern -- but one sees some of the greats, the EPS and the Baby Surprise, for instance, evolving under one's eyes. And one "hears" that inimitable voice again. It's full of tips, from both EZ and Meg (including, ironically, for me in my present situation, two-colour brioche stitch), and wonderful old photographs, and beautiful new ones -- Meg turns out to be a genius photographer, as well as so much else.

No EZ fan will want to be without this one -- I guess that means, no knitter.

I was also excited to note that one of the EZ videos is being re-mastered (is that the right word?) on DVD. I have never been able to see the videos, because British and American video tapes travel at different speeds. But I can buy a DVD, I think, and play it on my computer.

Barbara Vinishnick

I read on Marian Poller's blog yesterday (http://Marianknits.blogspot.com) that Barbara Vinishnick, the knitwear designer, had died suddenly, in her 50's. Google has yielded nothing -- just page after page of references to her designs. I've written to Marian for more news, if there is any. Barbara V. has long been a great favourite of mine -- there's no book that I know of, just lots of patterns in VK and elsewhere. I met her very briefly in the Stitches Market at Stitches East in 2002 and told her I was a t'riffic fan.

Apology

Yesterday's silence wasn't Blogger's fault, for once -- a friend stayed overnight, which meant I lost the early-morning computer session which I devote to banking and blogging. The picture, of course, shows the scarf-in-progress stretched out next to my shape-it.