Where to start? – ah, with ChinaDoll’s question. We had a spectacularly wonderful week, as sometimes happens, blue skies, sunshine all day, both of us outdoors all day. No cloud of ash overhead, no smell of sulphur, no smarting eyes, no spectacular sunsets, even. It is hard not to veer towards the conclusion that the Snark is a Boojum. My sister and her husband were meant to fly from Boston to Nice on Sunday evening for a meeting connected with their recent work in Africa, to be followed by some long-awaited family visiting.

At the moment, they are still in CT, re-booked to fly from Boston to Paris tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

There had been a great storm in Strathardle in our absence. We lost a venerable and beloved tree. It was a gean, prunus avium, and we will replace it this fall. It comes under the heading of native woodland, and my husband is anxious not to get something from a garden centre, grown in Holland. I think that won’t be difficult.

From our west lawn -- it fell rather neatly outwards:

From outside. Everything beyond that gate is our neighbours' land:



After scrambling through the tree, looking back towards our bit:


I got a lot of preparatory work done for the ’10 vegetables. The ground was very workable, but it was still cool to the touch, and there is no sign yet of this year’s seedling weeds. Both of these symptoms mean not to press ahead too fast with one’s own seeds, but I put in some radishes and spring onions and spinach and beetroot, just because the sun was shining. And a few potatoes. Plenty of seed left to re-do it all next month.

When we were there in February and March, you will remember, the ground was literally frozen solid. For the February visit, I had taken along some newly-purchased sea kale thongs and also some luscious-looking Jerusalem artichokes given me by the Fishwife. (And if you want to see what a vegetable plot should look like in April, just go have a look at hers.)

All I could do was collect earth from the many molehills – for some reason, not frozen – and store the things in two big flowerpots. The sea kale, last week, turned out to have turned to mush – a rather expensive failure with which to kick off the vegetable-growing year. I’ll put peas in the spot prepared last autumn for sea kale. But the artichokes, in their pot, were happy as Larry, perhaps happier, with roots and sprouts. So I planted them.

Yesterday morning, we woke up to this.


Knitting

As for knitting, I pressed on, but not very hard, with the Araucania sweater. I’m now an inch and a half short of the shoulder in the back.


And last night, I started casting on for the VK Chevron Scarf, 411 stitches. Most of the experience of knitting it – if I persevere; no guarantees at this stage -- is going to consist of casting on and binding off, so I might as well try to enjoy it.

I got a look at this year’s Games Programme while we were in Strathardle. The knitting classes are “knitted toy” and “article for a premature baby, to be donated”. I won a Knitted Toy class with Sam the Ram in ’07 – it’s far too soon to have that again, and there’s no point in my entering. The thing for the baby is worth doing, and will be quick, and do-able from stash. So I’ll do that. My husband’s sister, who had the bad luck to be present in Sam’s year, thinks I am fiercely competitive. I think I am entering because the Games are more fun if one participates, and so that I can set the grandchildren an example of grace in defeat. Who is right?

C’e lo fatta! as I think we say in Italian:

Slow and steady. I put gathering threads in each tier, and drew parallel lines on the backing before I started, in the interests of achieving straightness. Now I need a ziplock bag and some of that acid-free tissue paper I got for the Princess, if I can find it. What one doesn’t want now is a moth.

Jamie Oliver’s tray-baked salmon was absolutely right for lunch yesterday. So that’s that done. And I’m glad we postponed Strathardle until it was behind us. The weather is less spectacularly vernal this morning, but still along the right lines. I have high hopes of actually getting started on things. When we get back, it’ll be time to start growing beans on the windowsill. That’s always fun.

I even got some Oliver’ing done on Ketki’s second sock yesterday evening. A good day all round.

Next I’ll attempt that VK scarf (see sidebar) in Koigu. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. And then probably go on to the KF jacket.

The further I proceed with this yarn fast, the more depressed I get at the absolutely unchanged aspect of the stash cupboard.

Back next Tuesday or so, insh’Allah.

Little to report.

We had a nice day with the Loch Fyne Mileses. Alexander agrees that the tree-climbing stunt was just that, pointing out that such a tree is of substantial diameter at the base, so that a plumb line dropped from the top, can’t hang straight.

The fish pie was nice -- here’s the recipe, Holly -- but the little boys didn’t like it. (Alexander: “They don’t eat food.”) Ketki had some emergency supplies.

I often wonder how cats fared during the war

and the same question might be asked about young children. Both groups survived.

As for knitting, not much. I was kicked-by-horse tired in the evening, and made do with rounding the heel of Ketki’s second sock. I’m just at the point where the Oliver shaping starts. That’s great fun, so firmness and self-discipline will be required this evening if I am to start assembling the jabot.

I’d better get on with today’s lunch party. The weather is suddenly, gloriously spring and I have high hopes for some energetic vegetable gardening in Strathardle, starting tomorrow. Alexander has got his radishes in.

“Ducks in a row” – that’s it, of course. Thanks, Moorecat. I love the one your husband heard, too.

Here’s Tier Five, finished.

Here’s the complete jabot, pinned together. I had a while yesterday, after doing the pinning, when I wondered if I hadn’t gone Over the Top with a fifth tier. It looks better this morning.

The only way to go from here, is on. Unpin everything, tidy the loose ends, and start attaching, layer by layer. I could have embarked on the process last night, but I was frazzled by a day which ended up with only one duck in position – Delia Smith’s Luxury Fish Pie is made and refrigerated. I’ll leave it out to get to room temperature while we’re at Mass, and put it in the oven while we drink Prosecco afterwards with our friends, as we did last week.

Last night, I retreated to Ketki's KF socks, and reached the heel flap of the second one. Thank God for socks.

This morning, I must cut up things for a salad, and arrange the dining room. Two more ducks.

Something completely different…

I don’t know how long the BBC will keep this one up, but for the moment here is a clip about the measuring of a tree in Argyll which has been pronounced the tallest in Scotland, or is it GB? We saw the item on the news on Friday evening, with additional material which doesn’t appear here, and lacking the scene for which I include it, namely Alexander and his sons, standing under the tree, peering upwards like the men of Galilee on the first Ascension Day. Their bit lasts less than a second, I would say, but they are perfectly obvious, in the foreground, the boys wearing red. It’s right at the beginning – you don’t have to stay around for the tree-climbing.

(The tree is in the arboretum on the Ardkinglas estate, and that’s where the Loch Fyne Mileses live.)

In the item as shewn on the news, the men came down from the tree and stretched out their rope on the ground and measured it. I will ask Alexander about this when he gets here today. Surely trigonometry – available since the Enlightenment if not since Archimedes -- would provide a quicker, easier and probably more accurate measurement.

Thanks for the help with pdf files. Live and learn. I tried the Help section of my daily word processor – Word – and found that I could buy a pdf attachment. (My system is pretty old and creaky.) But then, I thought – I’ve got another word processor, Word Perfect, which I use to get my husband’s Word Perfect files, created on the DOS machine he uses daily, believe it or not, into a format usable by the world.

Word Perfect will load his files and convert them into modern Word Perfect, thence to Word, and Word presents them, when necessary, to the world. When I bought this computer those little square not-floppy floppy disks were just on the cusp, and I was surprised when the machine was delivered without a drive for them. If I’d thought that was a possibility, I’d have asked the nice man at Dell to put one in.

I don’t like to boast – well, I do. I installed one with my own hands.

Anyway, just now I loaded Word Perfect and asked it about pdf’s. It is perfectly happy to produce them without additional payment. So that’s that problem solved.

The discovery of Google Document, thanks to FiberQat, is another plus. I don’t know how I’d ever use it, but I’m very glad to know it’s there.

Knitting

Tier Five of the jabot is nearly finished – a repeat and a half of the Doris edging pattern to go. A busy day looms: Alexander and Ketki and their sons are coming tomorrow for their delayed Easter visit, and Monday is the lunch guest who’ll get Jamie’s tray-baked salmon, and Tuesday, insh’Allah, is designated for Strathardle at last, to get started on the ’10 garden. (Spring is suddenly, definitely here. Only a fortnight ago an Intercity train in the Highlands got stuck overnight in the snow.) Today I need to get the birdies lined up, or whatever the phrase is.

But I’ll try hard to get Five finished and blocked, so that assembly can begin tomorrow.

To change the subject –

I was glad to see that the Twist Collective spring-summer collection is with us at last. There’s nothing there for me, I don’t think. It’s all a bit form-fitting, no swing jackets. But I followed up the ad for Sweetgeorgia yarn. Wow! I found the website a bit hard to navigate – what look like links, don’t seem to link to anything. But click on the changing picture of yarn at the top, and you’re in. Anything you want, I gather, will be custom-dyed.

So that’s a good one for my Dream List. I continue to follow Posh Yarns closely, too.

Tier Five progresses well. The Leaf Lace pattern looks fancier than Razor Shell, and goes particularly well with the Doris edging. That’s what it is, Stacey – Heirloom Knitting p. 74, chosen for narrowness. I agree, it’s doing the job well.

FiberQat, I’d love to put the jabot instructions on Ravelry. I hesitate a) because it wouldn’t quite be a pattern, like Joanie’s. I’d refer to Heirloom Knitting and the criteria for choosing patterns from the book and the rough size each tier should be, and the yarn and stitch numbers and needle size I used, but that’s not quite the same; and b) because I don’t know how to create a .pdf file. Maybe I should find out.

Or would I need one?

When I was cruising around recently looking at Koigu jacket patterns, I found an entrelac one. I don’t really think I want it – the effect is too Michelin Man. But I clicked on download-free-pattern, only to be told that the designer was currently stuck on figuring out how to do a .pdf file.

(As the clumsy among you must know, if you type in “Ravlery” by mistake you arrive at a site at least somewhat knit-related; I’ve been there often but never really explored it. What a good idea! And what a compliment to the original!)

Postal services

The ear-flap hat still hasn’t reached its addressee in Beijing. The Chinese are funny about packages. I’m glad I’ll be able to hand over the jabot in person.

Here in Edinburgh, I’ve been waiting too long for packages from two of my seed suppliers, and for a sweat shirt from CafePress. I’d worry if only one thing were missing, but with that many, they must be somewhere in the system. I’ve got plenty of seeds, anyway.

Viruses

My friend’s viral message turned up on schedule this morning; the deluge related to 13/11/9 seems for the moment to have subsided.

Comments are instructed to turn up in my email in-box, as well as being appended to the blog itself. Most of them come in with your internet identities as Sender, but some are Anonymous. The bad ones are always Anonymous, so I click on that word with a certain sinking of the heart. It is particularly gratifying when, as yesterday, it turns out to be you, Ron.

Hard to get started, this morning, and now time’s nearly up.

Here is Tier Four of the jabot, being blocked:

It looks very like Tier Three.

Here is the jabot with four tiers pinned in place – that’s really enough, but for Chinese superstition.

I am well embarked on Tier Five. It is slightly larger than Three and Four, and uses a different lace for the central rectangle. The rectangle won’t show at all – it’s just to amuse me. And I’ve chosen one, Leaf Lace, HK p. 65, which is chock-a-block with K3tog’s, and slo-o-o-ow. Still, it makes a change.

And when it comes time for sewing, as it will soon, I will repeat your comment as a mantra, Mel, with every breath I draw: slow and steady. If I need gathering threads and/or basting threads, I will put them in. The ball isn’t until November. There’s no hurry.

I have discovered that Blogger allows me ten fixed pages – I mean to write out the procedure for jabot-knitting and have it permanently available. Or as permanently as this transitory medium allows. I think maybe I should do a page for Lizzie’s First Holy Communion veil, which was repeated and improved for Rachel and Kirsty in Beijing. That page already exists, as part of the detritus from my abandoned website. It’s just a matter of bestirring myself.

The point being, of course, that I don’t think there are patterns for either “out there” – except, now, Joannie’s jabot pattern on Ravelry.

Non-knit

What else? – I’m having a nice time with Steig Larssen. Never mind the danger that I might let slip a spoiler – he completely gives away Volume 1 in Volume 2, and even more so, 2 in 3. You’ve got to read them in order, or you might as well not bother. And it’s not entirely easy, now that all three are in paperback and the titles absolutely indistinguishable. I don’t remember any other thriller author doing that – little teasers to induce you read the earlier books, yes. This is different.

I didn’t hear from my friend’s virus yesterday, and rather missed it – but one has turned up this morning, so that’s OK. Comments continue to pile in for Friday the 13th of November last year. I’ve never had a deluge quite like this. I remind myself – slow and steady – that I don’t need to rush off and delete them in Blogger every time one pops up in my inbox. They haven’t been published. They can wait until I get around to zapping them.

And – it’s spring. It really is, this week at last. Next week, we hope for Strathardle. Maybe I can get started on this year’s garden at last.

My husband fully appreciates the resources of the internet, but I am the one who is sent to draw from the well. I have just spent the better part of an hour trying to find out what Lady Salisbury meant when she said, of an artist I won’t name, that he had the manners of Brancas. I think I’ve got it – not only who Brancas was and what his manners were (that was fairly easy), but how Lady Salisbury might have known about him.

It took time that might better have been spent blogging.

Tier Four of the jabot is finished. I hope to block it this morning. It will dry quickly, and I ought to be able to pin it in place in time for this evening’s Knitting Session, so that I can make a final decision about the dimensions of Tier Five. I’ve already made a good start on its lower edging.

The day is rapidly approaching – this week may even contain it – when I’ve got to take needle and thread in hand and sew this puppy together. I’m nervous of that moment. I am no seamstress.

This and That

Moorecat, thank you for the kind remark about our green room. It was scary, I remember. The painter himself thought we’d gone a bit too far, and we weren’t sure until the work was pretty far advanced that we’d got it right. And, yes, a squirrel swift.

I hate shopping except in LYS’s and bookstores – well, food-shopping isn’t too bad as long as my husband stays home. But he likes antiques and hardware and, in general, the pursuit of anything he has determined to find. Currently, an umbrella stand for Strathardle.

We saw the swift in an antique shop and it was only after we got home that I realised I wanted it, and phoned them. This must have been in my Knitlist days: I didn’t even know that it was a “squirrel swift” until people there told me.

It’s been very useful, not least because a job can be suspended in mid-operation. The current one has been in that state far too long. It was, I think, part of the original plan for Ketki’s Calcutta Cup sweater of 2008, discarded after swatching. The plan was discarded; the yarn is still with me. I must finish winding it, because Koigu-winding looms, and after that the KF jacket.

Donna Druchunas has a link on her blog to an appeal for funds for the Musk Ox Farm. I’d like to know more about what has gone wrong, and what the business plan is. But it is dreadful to think of it coming to an end.

I’ve started Steig Larssen #3. No spoilers, I promise. Reading Wallander, one is much impressed with how early everybody gets up in the morning. In Larssen, it’s how much coffee they drink.

Do I have anything at all to say about knitting today? Well, I am putting the side edges on Tier Four of the jabot, which should therefore be finished today. That’s something.

Viruses

Billi-Jean, I think you’ve cracked it. I was stuck in a five-year-old time warp, assuming the virus had to live in my friend’s computer. But his address list is out there with msn (just as mine resides with Google), and that must be where the fence is down. I did get another one yesterday, but there is nothing so far this morning.

When I had KLEZ.H its finest effort was to send me a message from “James Miles” inviting me to click on a website to get rid of itself. What would have happened had I done it? Things could hardly have been worse at that point. But I didn’t -- there was something about the prose style of the message which suggested that it had not been written by any “James Miles” I had ever met, let alone the one I brought up. I should have saved it.

Food

I am a bit embarrassed to be reminded that I have mentioned Jamie’s tray-baked salmon before. It was Greek Helen who pointed it out to me. I had the book, but hadn’t spotted it. How well you put it, Gerri – “impressive enough that a guest feels a guest”.

The official Oliver website doesn’t give it – I looked just now -- although a similar one is there, from “Jamie’s Dinners”. That’s the volume, out of all of his, which I have duplicated for the very short cookery-book shelf in Strathardle.

Sunday

Our niece Clare has just indulged herself in a digital camera. She sent me these pictures from Sunday’s gathering.

Brother and sister:

In the foreground you can see the composed salad, the quails eggs concealed under layers of potatoes and avocados. I wouldn’t say the flavour is distinctly different from hen’s eggs. It’s the size that’s fun. Notice the flagon of cider in the background.

Knitting Ketki’s sock:

Trying to get the rabbit to work:

That’s the green suede jacket I bought at East at Christmas time. As sometimes happens with absurd extravagance, it’s utterly wonderful, rarely worn, and I love every moment I spend inside it. And a year of blameless living has reduced me to a size which makes it no longer acutely painful to look at pictures of myself. That’s a plus.

We had a good Easter, even without the Loch Fyne Mileses. The lunch worked. Room temperature turned out to be a perfectly satisfactory way to eat a freshly-roasted chicken, and it was a good chicken. The composed salad was much appreciated, quails’ eggs and all. Guests sat on through the afternoon and I advanced Ketki’s second sock.

(I hadn't noticed until I laid them out for photography just now, how close they are to being identical. Close, but not.)

I had a word with the fishmonger, following Shandy’s lead. He says he gets his salmon fresh every morning, and I’ll be fine buying it on Saturday for Monday. I trust him. So next Monday the National Gallery man will have Jamie Oliver’s tray-baked salmon with olives, green beans, anchovies and tomatoes (from “The Naked Chef”) for his lunch, with some French bread and frozen fruit salad, unfrozen, to follow. I’ve made it often before. It’s easy and involves no last-minute stress. That’s that settled.

No message from my friend’s virus this morning. I rather miss it. I heard from the man himself who said, rather oddly I thought, that he had scanned his computer and found nothing wrong. Assuming his protection was up-to-date, can a virus hide? When I had KLEZ.H it disabled my virus protection first thing; I wouldn’t have been able to run a scan. (I was using McAfee at the time, and it was a whole month out of date.) At least it was open about it.

I’m about half-way, maybe a bit more, through Tier Four of the jabot.

When my Yarn Fast is over, I’m going for some Posh Yarn. Everybody else has known for ages, but it’s a recent discovery for me. Towards the end of the week, she posts a preview. Then on Sunday at 7pm it goes on sale, and everybody grabs. People can snatch yarn out of other people’s shopping baskets – it’s not yours until you pay for it. It all sounds great fun. Best of all, from my point of view, she’s just strengthened her DK yarn selection. Previously, she skipped a bit too rapidly from sock-weight to Aran.

Comments

Angel, take good care of yourself. How fragile are all our little plans! I like your Lady Sweater a lot. That was a relatively recent abandoned idea of mine. I’ve got the yarn, and fear it may be too acid and alarming a red. You may have inspired me to get it out and reconsider.

Jeanfromcornwall, yes, indeedy. I pre-ordered Steig Larssen no. 3 in paperback from Amazon, and I presume that is what is in the unopened package which has been lying here over the weekend, while I finished a Warrender. My first – “The Fifth Woman”. It’s good, very inventive, but it doesn’t pick me up and take me to Sweden and make me want to know what the characters are doing this morning, as Larssen does.

Alexander didn’t wait for the paperback, and he says no. 3 is the best of the lot. He is a bit dubious about the whole Larssen phenomenon, however.

Today’s message from my friend’s virus is captioned “Anne Blondel”.

Here are tiers Two and Three of the jabot being blocked.



And here’s a pinned-together pic of the jabot to date. I am terribly pleased with it. One more tier would probably do the trick, but that would make four – so two more we will have. The more, the fruitier. I am well along with the bottom edging of Tier Four. I just emailed this picture to Beijing.


And here is a close-up of my pins. I think I bought some of these wheels last summer, when I found I didn’t have enough dressmaker’s pins to block the Princess. They're German. Apart from being fun to look at, they have the great advantage that I now know for sure at the end of a job whether I have found and gathered in every single pin.

Non-knit, catering dep’t

Tomorrow’s lunch party is sort of falling apart. Alexander phoned yesterday to say that Ketki and both boys have colds. Over the last two years my husband’s sister has had repeated chest infections. One of them involved a hospital admission and they each have reduced her to weeks of weakness and misery. She’s OK at the moment, and we simply can’t risk being held responsible for the next relapse.

So if they don’t come, the rest of us will have to take lunch away in doggy bags. The organic chicken I have ordered is big, and the first course is to be a sort of salad, hot-smoked salmon, quails’ eggs, watercress, avocado, you name it – all purchased already, all unfreeze-able.

Tomorrow’s difficulty is the need to go to Mass, right in the middle of the morning. I have decided to roast the chicken early and eat it at room temperature.

The menu I am worrying about, if you want to be helpful, is a week later, when the Director of the National Gallery is coming to lunch. We don’t know him. I need something reliably easy to cook, not demanding too much in the way of last-minute, and easy to eat.

I like your salmon fillet idea very much, Shandy. The difficulty is that we’re talking about Monday the 12th, and Monday isn’t a good day for fish. Traditionally, that was because the boats didn’t go out on the sabbath so there was nothing in the market on Monday morning. I think that state of affairs has probably been swept away by progress, but the fishmonger is still closed on Monday.

I like the idea so much, however, that I’ll have a word with him this morning. Could I buy the salmon on Saturday the 10th?

It would be prudent to skip blogging tomorrow. See you on Monday, insh'Allah, and Happy Easter to anyone who's interested.

I didn’t mean to frighten you off – if anyone really left a comment on an old blog entry, I would recognize it and welcome it and pass it. They are individually scrutinized, albeit through glazed eyes.

I was interested, Rebecca, in your “nonsense” comment that turned out to come from St Nicholas

a) because that sort of nonsense comment is the oddest of all. Often they don’t contain a link. What is the point? And then there are their first cousins, the slightly illiterate ones that say that your blog entry was a great help with their college assignment. Junk comments like that tend to be attached to current blog entries, whereas the multiple-link ones go for the archives.

b) because I grew up reading bound volumes of St Nicholas, presumably ones my mother or father had brought along from childhood. I’ve never “met” anyone else who had heard of it. I don’t remember asking my parents about those volumes, just enjoying them. There was a serial story about a little boy who was keen on a little girl who was referred to as his “affinity”. It was a new word to me at the time and from my current perspective, I think it an excellent one.

I was also interested to hear of your Oberlin connection. I was there from ’50 to ’54 – would I recognize your parents’ name? “Angel”, who comments here often, was on the Oberlin faculty in a junior post until recently, but is now in Texas.

I have had another crazy – i.e., surely virus-sent – message from my Oberlin friend, this time with the subject-line “Jacques Bourglan”. (M. Bourglan has a Facebook page, and looks rather sweet.) This time I didn’t click on the link. I did do “Reply All” to look at the list. It’s not very long, eight or ten addresses, and is clearly the “g-to-j” section of someone’s address book. I would be especially interested to hear from anyone who has heard of a virus which sends Viagra ads in messages captioned with the names of non-famous Frenchmen.

But we’re supposed to be talking about knitting.

I have finished tiers Two and Three, but haven’t blocked them. I’ve even cast on Four, and will try to get a minimum lower-edge done even before I pin Two and Three into place and decide on sizes for Four and Five.

I find that knitting the Doris edging is a case of four steps forward and three steps back – progress, in other words, but slow.

I have already mentioned my tendency to let my thoughts wander and find that I have forgotten which row I just knit. Also – this has happened three times – if I falter at the point where I need a slip 1, k1, psso at the end of a return row, to join the edging to the main body, and a stitch escapes, there is no recovering it. I pick it up, easily enough – but suddenly there is another one below, and another, and…

and the whole thing comes unzipped, and there is nothing to do but to rip all the way back and start again. Fortunately the edges are short. Mercifully that never happened when I was edging the top of the Princess, yards and yards of it. I haven’t figured out the mechanics of this phenomenon, being too cross when it happens to pay attention.

Not much knitting to report today. Tier Three still needs its side edgings, and religion (Maundy Thursday) will cut into knitting time. I’ll try to grab an hour from the rest of the day to get it finished.

I’m having a lot of trouble these days with Spam Comments – Blogger is now set to submit them for moderation if they are attached to an entry more than two weeks old. I don’t think I’ve ever had a genuine one come in under that rule.

At the moment, I’m getting them every three or four hours, night and day, for Friday, November 13, ’09. Was that one picked because it was Friday the 13th? Or because in it I complained of bum comments? And, what’s the point? Maybe there is no point. Maybe somebody has a virus, and the virus is sending comments to my blog.

Yesterday I got an email (nothing to do with the blog) purportedly from an old Oberlin friend with whom I correspond very infrequently. The subject line was “Antoine Cerezo” and the text consisted in its entirety of a link on which I injudiciously clicked. It was a webpage advertising Viagra.

I ordered a full system scan at once, and Norton found nothing wrong. Once, long ago, when I really did have a virus (KLEZ.H, for the record), the first thing it did was disable my then virus protection. So it was a comfort to find that Norton still appeared to be functioning.

I wrote to the Oberlin friend to tell him I thought he might have a virus. No reply, as yet. I don’t think any other address book in the universe (well, maybe Oberlin College’s) would have both his address and mine, so it’s got to be one or the other of us, doesn’t it?

I’d welcome advice from anyone who knows about these things – or about Antoine Cerezo, who has what I think my sister calls a “big Google”. And, of course, if anyone who has corresponded with me at the address in the sidebar gets a funny message “from” me – let me know. KLEZ.H took hold of the address book and sent messages far and wide.

Easter weekend

Catdownunder, it’s not just rain we have too much of around here. It’s snow. Pretty ridiculous.

Alexander and Ketki and their sons, and my husband’s sister and her (obviously, grown-up, indeed middle-aged) daughter are coming to lunch on Sunday. I used to cook for six every day of the world, twice a day at weekends. But by now, it has become an Event, and something of an anxiety. Alexander is a brilliant cook, and everything I try to do for any group in which he is included can be guaranteed to turn out a disaster.

Still, there’ll be plenty to drink.

Today’s need for haste is because I have an early appt with the hairdresser, to look nice for Easter.

Meg, I will act on what you say, and have five tiers for the jabot. The more, the fruitier. It is interesting what you say about floor-numbering in Hong Kong, Janet. I disapprove of superstition, and try to rise above it, but I can’t risk jinxing James. My father and his third wife used to live on a 13th floor in NY, so numbered. The things that happened there were bad enough that it could well be argued that the number was unlucky, if you were so inclined.

And, Tamar, of course. These tiers are quick enough to knit that I can try Number Five with a different centre pattern, and ditch it if need be. I am coming along well with Number Three. I will block it together with Two, perhaps as soon as tomorrow, and gather them in and pin in position and then we will see where we are.

My current thinking on the Koigu Problem continues to incline towards a sleeved Ribwarmer. I could gather the sleeves in to the wrist in the way I admire in that Sundbo soul-warmer, and try to edge the whole thing with her folded st st edging. The body – but not the sleeves – would have to be done in garter stitch, but you can’t have everything.

The weather here is appalling. We might have gone to Strathardle this week, had it not been Holy Week, and much good it would have done us. We hope for next week. Surely it will be spring by then.

Not much to say, not much time to say it in.

Lindsey, thank you for the pointer to the Posh Knitters thread on Ravelry. Most interesting. (I had never even heard of Posh Yarns – so much for me.) If Dee posts those beautiful yarns on her website on Sunday and is sold out by Tuesday morning, I don’t see why she should bother to go to KnitCamp or anywhere else. But her unexplained change-of-mind remains intriguing.

It does sound as if the organiser of KnitCamp is over-stretched -- running a new LYS and doing the camp in her spare time. Wait and watch. I was surprised to learn that there had been one last year. I remember the Ravelry weekend in Coventry, but not a camp. It couldn’t have been on the scale of this one.

Jabot

I finished Tier Two, but haven’t blocked it. Tier Three, slightly larger, is well underway. I am toying with the idea of having a different lace pattern in the central rectangle of Tier Four. It will be the largest of all. The idea of change is to amuse myself – the current pattern, although I think effective for the purpose, is pretty boring. A change would violate the very first principle of design: Keep it Simple, Stupid. On the other hand, the central pattern doesn’t really show at all – expect perhaps on the lowest tier – so no one would notice.

The Doris edging does show, and must remain unchanged. The only trouble with it is, it’s so easy. I keep finding that I have fallen asleep at the wheel and don’t remember what row I have just knit, and therefore what comes next.

Here are some pictures to cheer us up on a cold, wet morning – James and Cathy on their wedding day, he in an antique jabot he had borrowed, demonstrating that there’s no one right way to do it.


And Thomas-the-Elder – just plain Thomas, in those days – wore the kilt as well. But without a jabot.



This all happened on the First of August, 1992. It was the 2000th First of August – there is a passage in Cassius Dio which allows us to date the decree of the Roman senate changing the name of the month Sextilis to honour the emperor Augustus. (The next emperor, Tiberius, was offered September but turned it down – what if there are more than 12 emperors? he said. You’ve got to love him for it.)

Comments

Tamar, Sundbo’s discussion of soul-warmers strongly suggests that you are right, that they originated as bed jackets.

Jean, I very much like your idea of testing a pattern by asking yourself whether you could do the washing-up in it. I will remember that.

Mary Lou, I love the idea of not wanting to look like a tourist on the Beijing subway. We missed out on public transport when we were there – usually a major pleasure of travelling – because the SARS scare was at its height. On the other hand, we had the Great Wall entirely to ourselves

The second tier of jabot lace is finished but for one edging repeat. A friend is coming to lunch today – what to feed him? – which will delay blocking slightly: the dining room is the normal locus for that operation.

And it’s more fun than anything, blocking something so small. I enjoy the operation in general, but crawling around from one edge of a shawl to the opposite point can be athletic. With a jabot tier – a doyley would be the same, but I’m not going to start knitting those – the whole job can be done from one position.

James wrote from Beijing yesterday: “Frothy and fruity! This will be a true test of nerves. I did see one person wearing a jabot at the last ball, but I think he was a foreigner.” What exactly constitutes a “foreigner” at a St Andrew’s Night ball in Beijing is left unspecified.

Koigu

I’m cooling off on the shrug idea. Shandy’s remark about how they tend to slip off the shoulders meshed with something I had vaguely felt as I was posting that picture yesterday. I’ll have a look at everybody’s shrugs on Ravelry one day soon, though.

What about a sleeved Ribwarmer? Woolgathering #58. For that one, EZ seems to have abandoned her fine talk of “your gauge” and “K” and just written it at 4 sts to the inch – which will hardly do for Koigu. But that much thinking I think I can manage, especially because I have knit a ribwarmer and can work from the actual object.

And the Socklady has found some promising free sock-yarn sweater and jacket patterns at the Garnstudio.

My current thought – no doubt there will be something different here tomorrow – is to knit that VK scarf I mentioned yesterday in Koigu when the jabot is finished, and then put the whole question aside while ideas, we might hope, jell. I’ve got plenty of Koigu – there will still be a couple of jackets’-worth when the scarf is subtracted.

I might turn next to Kaffe’s “Green Granite Blocks” from “California Patches”. A dear friend gave me the kit years and years ago. I think it may have ripened sufficiently. I got it out last night. It looked good. It is an emotional necessity for me to have the Next Big Thing lined up in advance of the completion of this one.

KnitCamp

Janet did meet Franklin in Seattle, and says that he is looking forward to the camp in Stirling – so maybe I can stop worrying. I can see that not sending anything in the post saves them a very considerable amount of time and money, but I do feel that the occasional “Dear Camper” email would provide a helpful sense that someone is in charge and that plans are moving forward.

Soul-warmer

Having got this far, I might as well show you the picture, hoping I’m not treading on any copyright toes.

It was the less-than-youthful model that caught the eye. Those full sleeves, gathered in to the wrist, make it look awfully comfortable and comforting. Many/most shrugs are sort of skimpy.

Shandy, what do you think? Do your observations about the shape still apply? [Everybody should now go look at Shandy’s Celtic throw. It’s absolutely amazing.]

Maybe you’re right, Tamar, and I ought to go back to the drawing board and start working out a jacket for myself. Grannypurple, thank you for the observation that the Sock Yarn sweater uses a heavier sock yarn than I was thinking of – meaning that I can’t just plug in Koigu. I should have noticed that.

The swing jacket in VK – Winter 2007-8, No. 19 – does have a schematic. At least that’s something to start from. It’s knit side-to-side, with swing produced by short-row wedges inserted both in the body and the sleeves. The yarn is worsted, 4 sts to the inch, totally non-Koigu. One would have to start from scratch, and think. I do hate thinking.

But, as I said yesterday, there’s time. I’ve started the second tier of lace for the jabot, and after a couple of false starts which slowed things down a bit, am getting on nicely.

The new VK, amongst a number of nice things, has got a scarf, no. 24, which would be splendid in Koigu and which makes me want to fling everything aside and cast on. It’s been a while since any pattern in any magazine made me feel like that.

They’ve also got a nice plug for KnitCamp, which goes some way – but not all the way – towards reassuring me. They say that 30% of the classes filled up right away, when registration opened in January. That doesn’t surprise me. But what has happened since? I did the sum this morning – if all the Ravelry members of the KnitCamp group go to a class at every session, everything’s fine. But they won’t. Many, indeed, will only go to the Ravelry Day on the Saturday, which can be expected to be a huge success like last year’s one.

It sort of sounds as if one woman is organising the whole thing – bigger by a good deal than a Knitter’s magazine summer camp.

I can but worry and watch. I need to know whether I am going to be able to park – parking is apparently limited on the Stirling campus. Trivial, but the sort of detail that needs to be covered. Maybe they should call in Theo, whose speciality is organising and whose attention to detail is second-to-none.

VK also has a nice plug for Judy Sumner’s Japanese-pattern sock book. I feel as pleased as if I had written it myself.

Jabot

I think I’ve got it. Current plan is to add three more tiers – I’ll cast on one of them tonight, insh’Allah. Last night, I polished off the Mystery Project.

Dawn, Joannie Newsome did it your way, gathering the tiers by decreasing violently at the end. But what about blocking? I could put the stitches on hold and block before the final decreases, but I think that is more tedious than gathering by hand. You’re right, successive tiers won’t need edging at the top. That’ll make them appreciably quicker.

I spent an interesting half-hour last summer at Kinloch Anderson in Leith, kilt-makers to the royals, looking at jabots. I talked to a very kind, very grand man – surely Mr Kinloch or Mr Anderson. He said that when he wore a jabot, he didn’t include the lace cuffs because they tended to drag in the soup. For this year, anyway, I’ll skip them.

Maybe I can go back there with James in the summer and get him kitted out with a Montrose jacket.

Looking at the distinctly fruity jabots in both those links, I think I’ll go for four tiers on mine, and make the rest of them a wee bit wider. Could the bottom one be longer? Total length needs to be 10 or 11 inches, I would judge. The whole thing is ridiculous. I have said before that there is no country in Europe in which a man can do himself so well without joining the army.

The Koigu problem

It’s not as straightforward as I hoped yesterday.

The Kaleidoscope pattern, written for Koigu, is in garter stitch. I couldn’t face that, so soon after the ASJ. The Sock Yarn Sideways is written at 5 sts to the inch on no 5 needles, a bit more relaxed than I would like. Neither provides a schematic, making adaptation difficult. (Ravelry links to both in yesterday’s post.)

This morning I thought, what about a Koigu soul-warmer? No lice, of course. I have enough that I could do the whole thing in variations of a single colour, red (probably) or green. And I have a couple of skeins each of near-solid charcoal and of off-white, either of which could serve as the binding.

I’ll keep that on a mental back burner while I go on knitting the jabot.

Tamar, what I meant about the “false underarm seam” was the line where one round becomes the next one, not obtrusive but visible when you’re knitting lice as I discovered on the Grandson Sweater. However, the current notion does away with steeks as well as lice. The soul-warmer could be opened for the body part at any point on the sleeve. Couldn't it?

The new VK turned up yesterday and is, I think, very good. They’re definitely back at the top of the heap, design-wise. More about that tomorrow. For now, a final remark about

Cider.

Thank you for your comment, Fizz. I am glad not to have disappointed. I am sure you are right – the awful stuff is called “Diamond White”. As well as the tax increase due tomorrow, we are vaguely promised another one, later in the year, on very strong cider. Yesterday’s comment applies, in spades: he’s thinking of bums on street corners and Diamond White. But many of the honest, traditional ciders are strong (including my beloved Weston’s Vintage) and they will suffer.

Jabot

Real progress. It looks rather small, but edging added to the fourth side will widen it, and blocking will make a difference. Once it’s been blocked out and gathered in, I’ll know whether I’ve got another test square or an actual tier. I am very hopeful. At the worst – if it proves to be a test square – it should provide all the data I need to proceed. It seems to me to strike just the right note, fruitiness-wise.

Soul-warmer

Dawn, I’m sure you’re right that when the pattern says “length”, it is referring to the length from cuff to cuff. Once I had grasped that, I thought that Tamar’s previous comment – that there was no increasing to be done for the body part – was certainly right. Her comment yesterday, which came in after I had thought that thought, underlines the point.

I agree that a steek should actually be cast on. It would continue, wouldn’t it? the false underarm seam of the sleeve?

If you’re really thinking of knitting one, Tamar, get hold of the book (Sundbo’s “Knitting in Art”) and look at the picture. It’s a full page, near the end. You don’t need to buy the book, because you’ve already got the pattern except for a little chart showing decreasing into the cuff. I’m sure you could wing it, for that.

I’ll have to leave it on the HALFPINT list until my year’s yarn fast is over in November – despite re-setting the slider, I regard it as still in progress. And what I lack, in all that stash, is solid colours (or near-solid; that’s what I really love) in sufficient quantity to knit anything.

Koigu jacket

The Socklady came up with a gem of a pattern for me yesterday – her most recent blog entry says that she was looking for one for herself. It’s another sideways cardigan (Ravelry link), this one incorporating the very short-row wedges to add swing which I had been thinking of trying to introduce into the Kaleidoscope cardigan. (another Ravelry link).

I’ve bought it and printed it. Once jabot-making is out of the way, I think I’m ready to roll.

Non-knit: the Budget

Two things.

It is traditional for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on Budget Day, to carry a battered old red dispatch box which used, I believe, to belong to Mr Gladstone. When our current Prime Minister occupied that office, he had a horrible new box made for himself – no doubt, at considerable expense to the taxpayer, and no doubt part of the New Labour programme to sweep away fuddy-duddy-ism. The current incumbent, I am glad to note, has reverted to the old one. We are lucky Brown didn’t put it out with the rubbish.

There is to be a heavy new tax on cider, which the Chancellor has probably never tasted in his life. I am sure he thinks all cider-drinkers are low-life, as many of us indeed are. There’s something called “White Heat” much favoured by the derelict. But there are also serious cider-makers – mostly in Herefordshire -- like my friend Mr Weston, not part of any huge consortium, and I fear for their future. This is a picture of one of the bottles I hope to consume on Easter Sunday.

Despite yesterday’s good intentions, I got so depressed with my sloppy attempt at cotton-knitting that I abandoned it. I spent an anxious and unsatisfactory half hour or more cruising around in cyber-space looking for the ideal yarn. Does Lorna’s Laces Helen’s Lace come in a solid white? Can you get Jaggerspun Zephyr over here? What is “Sugar Rush” with which one of the gents on the jabot forum is knitting himself a jabot?

Then I calmed down and tried casting on the Heirloom merino lace I just bought. And I think we’ve got it. I’m not going to move the Progress Bar until I feel a lot more sure – but this could be it.

The clincher, with the cotton, was opacity. You can hardly see it, in some contexts. I can’t imagine it frothing up into the Bonnie Prince Charlie abundance I have in mind.


Plus I was making too many mistakes. It was like riding a horse you know is too much for you. Even if you stay on, even if you avoid making a fool of yourself, you and the horse both know that you’re not in control, and the ride is no fun.

I don’t blame the cotton. I think I guessed wrong about those numbers. Franklin has some nice edging patterns in the new Knitty, translated from 19th century originals. He uses “Coton Perle 12”. I don’t know if that’s relevant. I ordered “80” because it was less than “100” which Sharon Miller sent to swatch the Wedding Ring shawl with.

For a while yesterday I thought of reverting to the idea of knitting a piece of lace “about the size of a computer keyboard” (as another of the gents on that forum puts it) and trying to zigzag-stitch it to the backing. But for now, I’ll stick with tiers and go ahead with my current idea. The pattern in the centre is "Razor Shell", HK p. 59, as easy as a pattern gets.


Soul Warmer

Thank you, FiberQat and Tamar, for your help with the Sundbo shrug. I think I’ve got it. I will print out your comments and keep with the book. I am struck with your idea, Tamar, of not increasing for the body at all, or perhaps only very little – and I think that may be the way it’s meant to be done. I would want to knit the whole thing as a tube, with a steek for the middle, because of the lice. The edging, in the book, looks like fairly fine st st, folded over and hemmed. Very neat.

The pattern says – if “pattern” is the word – “The length of the soul warmer is the sleeve length + ½ the body width x 2.” Since the body width is the sleeve length, that should mean that the overall length is three times the sleeve length, and that is surely preposterous. Maybe that final “x2” should be “/2” which would give a length of ¾ of the sleeve length; not impossible.

The Estonian mitten book is splendid – just page after page of Estonian mittens with charts for the patterns. Two color knitting on four needles is tricky, but it can be done. I like an idea I read about on, I think, the KnitList long ago, of knitting a bunch of single mittens to keep in a basket by the back door so that people could choose non-pairs as they pleased on snowy days.

Shirley Paden’s design book is also very good, but doesn’t add anything to what I already had in the way of Montse Stanley and the Vogue book and a number of others.