Here's what happened with the Sous Sous, deduced after much anxious thought:

When I laid it aside last time, I was at the point where the shoulder shaping begins. When I resumed last week, I didn't start shaping the shoulders. Instead, I repeated the last instruction: “Work rows 1-14 again”.

With the results a) that I inserted almost a whole extra repeat; and b) that the first “work rows 1-14 again” left me with an incomplete cable crossing. The pattern is 16 lines long, and the final two finish off the cabling.

So after much thinking and consulting of Ravelry and deciding to frog back somewhat and then knit the smaller size as far as repeats were concerned and worrying about the side seams if I shortened the back and couldn't figure out how to shorten the front – after all that, I actually looked and saw the extra repeat and all became clear.

“Look at your knitting”, EZ said.

So I have frogged, and am proceeding with the pattern as written. It will be very slightly longer than specified. I am now happily decreasing for the shoulders, four stitches at the beginning of every row – the effect should very soon make itself felt. Here's a link to the Ravelry page if you've forgotten what it looks like. You'll understand my anxiety about the front when you see it.

I'm getting on fine with Flipboard, at least more or less fine, as a substitute for Zite. They're very fond of the Harlot, so I'm reading her regularly. She had a piece recently about the great pleasure to be had, reserved for knitters, when you unravel something and knit it up again and reach the point where you are knitting with new yarn instead of unravelled yarn. She expresses it better than that. Anyway, I haven't got there yet.

But I hope to this evening. I am sure the only thing to do at this point is to finish the back before I go on to anything else.

Science

Darwin himself, I gather, wondered about speciation, although the word hadn't been invented yet and he didn't even have a word for genes. He wondered why, if his theory was right, we never seemed to find species in the process of transition, either in nature or in fossils. All of us seem to be happily settled in the species we were born into.

I've read a bit more Dawkins but he gets more and more irritating. At the moment he is explaining to me about carbon dating – apparently creationists don't believe in it. Increasingly I feel that an Oxford professor ought to have more pressing demands on his time than constructing elaborate arguments against the patently absurd. I am reading “The Greatest Show on Earth”.

He promises to demolish “intelligent design” while he's at it, and I will struggle on far enough to find out what he means by that.

Wedding

This week is it. If they send my husband home, I'll have to bite the bullet and welcome him. By this time next week, I think I could reasonably say, Can't he stay here over the weekend so that I can go to the wedding?

You win some, you lose some.

The Sous Sous is going to be too long. I didn't swatch – the pattern comes from Loop and is written for tosh DK. But now it turns out, the old story, that my stitch tension is very slightly too tight (that's good – it's awfully wide anyway) and row tension errs in the other direction. It's already as long as the finished measurement should be, and there's still a whole pattern repeat and more to go as the shoulders are gently sloped.

I've got to frog back and remove a pattern repeat, that's what I've got to do. I've already frogged once, when a cable proved to be wrongly crossed. I can do it.

I wound a second skein of Whiskey Barrel, so that each project would have its own. I still haven't cast on my husband's vest, and was still worried about size yesterday. Then I reflected that, as well as the original swatch for my husband's lost vest, I have Archie's swatch and the book (“Knits Men Want”) with my pencilled circlings of the numbers that applied to me. There's much to be said for always knitting with tosh DK.

It was soon revealed that Archie's sweater was knit on a calculation of 5 sts to the inch. Measuring my husband's old swatch, I had thought 5.5 and was calculating accordingly, and concluding that I needed to cast on more than I did the last time. I measured again, and now agree with myself that 5 is more accurate. It's actually about 10.25 sts to 4” on both swatches. That means my husband's original tally is going to be right again. All I've got to do is cast on.

Science

Thank you for your help. I had forgotten Gould.

My problem is speciation. How do species split off from each other and become unable to interbreed? I read an essay once by T.H. Huxley himself, a contemporary and stout champion of Darwin, worrying about this problem. Dawkins goes on and on and ON about adaptations within species. I suspect his answer to the bigger question would be that it obviously happened – we all are ultimately descended from the first single cell, giraffes and cucumbers equally -- so the answer must be that all it takes is time.

This sounds to me a bit like that old chestnut about providing a hundred monkeys with a hundred typewriters and waiting until they wrote the works of Shakespeare. It wouldn't happen. You'd be lucky to get “Who keeps the gate here, ho!” no matter how long you waited.

Now that biology has got down to the knitty-gritty, DNA and the genome, I'd like to know – explained in language an old lady can understand – what the current hypotheses are about how speciation comes about.

Other

Our niece phoned last night – the woman who'll drive us to the wedding, if I get to go. She said that when she met me in the hospital on a visit to my husband a couple of weeks ago, I was looking remarkably well. She put it down to my abstemious, cider-free life. I'm pretty sure that if it's true – a big if – the explanation is rather freedom from responsibility for my husband, and plenty of sleep. A disquieting thought. These conditions are soon to end.

Little to report.

I measured my husband. I think it would indeed be a good idea to make the new vest a couple of inches bigger than the old. I wound a skein of Whiskey Barrel. I knit peacefully on the Sous Sous for awhile and am now only a (long) row or two short of the exciting point where the neck shaping begins – and then the Sous Sous, as well, demanded a new skein. That's where I am.

I got to John Lewis and bought some net curtaining. I wonder if I can find a Woman to do the sewing, once I have unpicked the border lace from the old curtain and washed it and pinned it on and done the other necessary measuring and pinning. So much to do, even if I can find a Woman.

The hollandaise was a success, but its richness was too much for my now elderly tastes.

I finished reading “Life's Greatest Secret”, not without relief. It would be better read on paper so that one could keep referring to the glossary. What is a nucleotide? What, come to that, is a protein?

Where next? Ridley, as planned? I was grateful for your pointer, Cat, to his book about nature and nurture, a fascinating subject. I'll get to that in time. Dawkins is very readable in one sense, and too shrill in another. He is forever haranguing his imagined opponents rather than expounding his subject, as if he were standing in the foothills of Mount Olympus handing out leaflets claiming to prove that there are no gods up there.

A good idea makes its own way. At the beginning of the events reported in “Life's Greatest Secret” it was generally believed that proteins were the medium by which inheritance was passed on. When it was proved that the medium was, in fact, DNA, the opponents didn't all just wither away at once. Some went on stoutly maintaining that the experiments were faulty; there must have been some protein mixed with the DNA.

The position of evolution is somewhat different, because of its attraction for ignorant extremists. Nobody goes around doubting that e equals mc squared.

What about Darwin himself? Is he readable? He's free on Kindle. I'm sure he's not shrill.

I'd better get on with my day.

Odds and Ends

The sauce was good. I am thinking of casting caution to the winds, vis a vis my arteries, and venturing on hollandaise.

The net curtain that Perdita shredded is irredeemable. The material just drifts apart when touched by a needle. It’s got about eight inches of solid cotton lace at the bottom, which could be re-attached to a new net curtain. Maybe I’ll get up to John Lewis this morning to explore the possibilities. I am still not feeling very strong — John Lewis plus a bit of Waitrose plus the hospital visit is a daunting prospect.

I’ve had an interesting message from Carol this morning with pictures of a Tokyo Shawl being blocked. Undoubtedly, the bias remains. Carol has one of those blocking boards with little squares on it which allows the subject to be pinned out to perfection.

And she suggests, in the accompanying message, that I wear the Fantoosh to the wedding, if I get there. I hadn’t thought of that. It’s a brilliant idea. The shawl is destined for my sister, but that’s no reason I couldn’t wear it that once. I must try it with the dress I plan to wear, which is the same dress I wore to Last Year’s Wedding. It’s a Paisley pattern and the Fantoosh would look better with something monochrome, but it’s worth a try.

We are now near enough to the date (Sept 19) that everybody except him is beginning to hope my poor husband might still be in hospital then. I must at least make an appt to have my hair done.

Carol says, rightly, that I should be there to see the pocket squares in action. There’s also the little matter of the Unst Bridal Shawl which Hellie will be wearing. Not as grand as the Princess, but not inconsiderable, either.

As I feared, my husband thought Roast Hatch Chillis too bright for his new sleeveless vest. The roast part is fine, but about 1/3rd of each skein is plain green Hatch Chilli. (I had never heard of them but have looked them up.) So Whiskey Barrel stretches before me. I spent yesterday peacefully knitting forward with the Sous Sous — which is also, of course, Whiskey Barrel. My current instruction is to knit a part-repeat of the cable pattern and then begin the neck shaping.

I’ll measure my husband’s chest today. The old, lost sweater fit fine and my notes, although not entirely comprehensible, do specify how many stitches to cast on. It doesn’t seem enough — my excuse for not having started the sweater last night.

When Greek Helen and her family were here, much energy was devoted to their flat on Windsor Street. One of the things they had to do was clear out a walk-in cupboard into which both of them had stuffed Interesting Things from Past Lives which they didn’t want to carry with them to Bahrain, Thessaloniki or Athens (not to mention Mt Pelion). Much of interest emerged, including this sweet photograph:

That’s Thomas, last year’s bridegroom, on the right, and Hellie, this year’s bride, in the middle. Their mother Rachel is wearing a sweater I designed and knit, but I think both children are wearing hand-me-downs from elsewhere.

Finished. He is the 6th FO of 2015 — that doesn’t seem very many. There’s still time for a couple more major ones, and once my husband gets home we’ll watch television again and that means knitting.

I spent the rest of yesterday’s knitting time, swatching for Franklin. Not Portuguese-fashion, either, just peacefully swatching. I’m doing the one where all the colours are from one chroma, which means, from one wedge of the colour-wheel pie. I like the effect.

The Roasted Hatch Chillies are here. Yesterday was, indeed, rather a good day for arrivals — the saucier is also here, and I think it’s probably wonderful. It’s certainly gloriously heavy. I hope to hansel it today with Nigel Slater’s “A Simple, Useful Sauce” from his book “Appetite”, over a piece of fish. It’s a sauce I often make and I am sure the new pan will take it to new levels. And Amazon contributed Diana Henry’s “A Change of Appetite” and Lovick’s “Exploring Shawl Shapes”.

Here’s the saucier:

I suspect the Roasted Hatch Chillies are too bright for my husband’s vest. I’ll take a skein to him in hospital today to see what he thinks. It’s all right in dull light, but slightly alarming in natural light. 

I’m not sure about “A Change of Appetite”. It’s more approachable than Jamie’s equivalent book all right, but it’s hard for me at the moment to concentrate on anything except the diet of soups and slush which will stretch to the horizon when my husband gets home.

“Exploring Shawl Shapes” is a lot of fun — and useful, too, for an overview of possible shawl shapes and some very sound preliminary advice about knitting them. I don’t think the Fantoosh gimmick is mentioned, but I may not have studied the book carefully enough — namely a bottom-up triangle with increases not only at the edges, but on either side of the central spine as well.

(And that reminds me — I trust we’re all following Kate Davies’ brilliant account of the making of the yarn she is about to launch. I don’t know how to pronounce it, either, but I can see that stash-enhancement looms.)

Non-knit

Beth, I was grateful for your comment about what fun it must be to be a scientist. Matthew Cobb in “Life’s Greatest Secret” is clearly rather cross at President Clinton for mentioning God in his speech at the ceremony celebrating the unravelling of the human genome, when the point of the ceremony, Cobb feels, was to honour human ingenuity.

I think Cobb is wrong here. I will transcribe for you a paragraph from a lecture by A.E. Housman, who was a great classical scholar as well as a poet:

“It is the glory of God, says Solomon, to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. Kings have long abdicated that province; and we students are come into their inheritance: it is our honour to search out the things which God has concealed. In Germany at Easter time they hide coloured eggs about the house and garden that the children may amuse themselves in hunting after them and finding them. It is to some such game of hide-and-seek that we are invited by that power which planted in us the desire to find out what is concealed, and stored the universe with hidden things that we might delight ourselves in discovering them. And the pleasure of discovery differs from other pleasures in this, that it is shadowed by no fear of satiety on the one hand or of frustration on the other. Other desires perish in their gratification, but the desire of knowledge never….The sum of things to be known is inexhaustible, and however long we read we shall never come to the end of our story-book.”

The dog isn’t looking too bad:

It still needs its other ear — the ears seem too big to me, and I don’t know which way is meant to be up — and a nose and eyes. The latter features need black wool and are applied by means of satin stitch, on the one hand, and French knots, on the other. How on earth was life managed before YouTube? I’m not absolutely sure I’ve got any black yarn, either. Everything I pull out of stash turns out, in natural light, to be very dark brown or very dark blue. I’ve found something, but it might be charcoal grey.

Our friend says that all she requires of a knitted dog is that it stand up. That I seem to have achieved. The back legs tend to splay, but he’ll stay upright if you arrange him carefully and then tiptoe away.  

I can’t venture out to the LYS because I am expecting both the copper saucier and the yarn from Jimmy Bean today.

The really bad news, on the needlework front, is a hideous rent in one of the net curtains in the front of the house. The curtain was old and frail and no great loss. The hole was clearly made by a furry person who shall be nameless, who wanted to sit there and look at Drummond Place. But it must look dreadfully slummy from the outside. From the inside it is concealed by a real curtain which is normally kept drawn to protect works of art from direct sunlight, thus forming a nice little concealed space for kittens. (Direct sunlight is very bad for almost everything.) I will have to devote quite a bit of needlework-time today to attempting a clumsy repair.

Miscellaneous

Knitty is appealing for sponsors. Advertising revenue has apparently fallen off sadly of late. I think I’ll probably chip in. I had a nice time this morning tracking down the patterns the Editor/Publisher mentions by name in her appeal — the Clapotis I have actually knit. I wonder what became of it? The Dunfallendy blanket is an interesting thought, if great-grandchildren ever appear. The Dunfallendy Stone from which it derives is a Perthshire landmark.

The Skew socks are terrific, although I am sort of scared of anything that begins with Judy’s Magic Cast-On. I mastered it, more or less, when I was having a big Sock Session a few years ago. But I’m still scared.

Non-Knit

I’m getting on nicely, if uncomprehendingly, with “Life’s Greatest Secret”. It’s sort of fun replaying my own life at the back of my mind while reading. The double helix was discovered while I was at Oberlin, unbeknownst to me. Everything happened pretty fast after that. The book has now reached the mid-sixties (all four of my children have been born) and the genetic code has been cracked.

I am surprised to see that I am only about 1/3rd of the way through the text but have concluded, thankfully, that much space must be occupied by appendices and indexes. (I’m reading on my Kindle.) There are four more chapters bringing us up to date — the human genome, I presume, and I hope a discussion of evolution. Then I am going to re-read “The Genome” by Matt Ridley which I remember as much more ignoramus-friendly.

I'm not entirely happy:

I wanted this to be the perfect dog, for our friend. I think it may be only the third stuffed toy I've ever knit. The first was a mermaid, for Hellie when she was a little girl. She loved it, eventually to death. Then Sam the Ram – and look what happened to him! (He now lives on Loch Fyne, in good condition.) But this dog seems clumsily knit. I fear the stuffing will show through.

Perhaps he'll improve after another session.

(Again, I was unable to post the picture from the Windows 10 computer, and have had to rush over here to the Mac. Odd.)

I have sewn the legs and tail and muzzle, and am now struggling to attach the tummy strip (remembering to start sewing at the nose-end). The instructions said to stuff the tail with yarn-ends but I couldn't get them right down to the tip, so I stuffed it with stuffing. Similarly, the instructions say to leave a slit in the tummy-strip-attachment process through which to insert the rest of the stuffing. I think it might be better to stuff the legs now, before proceeding further. Then there's the question of the pipe cleaners.

I am afraid I failed with mattress stitch, although I am still looking forward to doing it with some nice flat knitting, preferably with a selvedge. The Sous Sous should be perfect. I tried to mattress-stitch the first leg. I gave up at that point, and retreated to a nice YouTube video about whip stitch.

Non-knit

I am anxious about the way the press is anticipating the day, now less, I think, than a fortnight hence, when the Queen will become the longest-reigning monarch in British history, counting back to William the Conqueror, and beyond if you like. The current holder is Victoria. Our Queen has already won the title on points – she was several years older than Victoria when she became Queen, and she has reigned energetically ever since. Victoria withdrew from the world for years after Albert died, and again in old age.

But God has a wicked sense of humour, and it doesn't do to count chickens. The Queen doesn't want a fuss to be made, but has agreed to break her annual holiday at Balmoral to open a branch railway or something of the sort, so as to be seen in public that day. There are big plans for her ninetieth birthday next summer, but that's another matter.

My husband continues as before, keen to get home. I didn't mention the anniversary to him yesterday, but thank you for your good wishes. Now that we're in September, I can begin to wonder whether he will still be incarcerated on the 19^th. If so, I can go to the wedding. 

I've booked myself a tentative place in our niece's car. My sister and her husband will be staying in the b&b carved out of the Laird's house, Ardkinglas itself. (Alexander and Ketki's house, where the wedding party will be, is on the Ardkinglas estate.)  And, for some reason, they will have an empty bedroom. Their son Theo is staying in Inverary across the loch.

We shall see.

Isn’t that nice?

It’s Fergus, dressed for the beginning-of-year service at school yesterday. His housemaster’s wife took the picture and sent it to his absent parents. (It doesn't rain on bank holiday weekends in Edinburgh, notice.)

And I finished the Tokyo shawl stint I had assigned myself. So today I must briskly revise mattress stitch and get to work on the dog.

I’ve been indulging in a bit of retail therapy this morning — Diana Henry’s new book, and a copper saucier. I saw a similar pan in John Lewis recently but it was one of those jam-yesterday-and-jam-tomorrow situations where I could only look at it, they wouldn’t sell it to me because it was on display.

The thing about cookery books is that no matter how complicated the recipe that tempts one, it’s not going to take as much time as even the simplest of knitting patterns. Jamie’s new book, however, doesn’t tempt me much. The food sounds as delicious as ever, but he has thrown caution to the winds when it comes to preparation-time (endless chopping of those healthy vegetables) and multiple-saucepan-use.

While I was with Amazon ordering Diana Henry, I accidentally discovered that Liz Lovick has been producing books hand over fist while I wasn’t looking. I’ve got her “Magic of Shetland Lace Knitting” — and now I have ordered “Magical Shetland Lace Shawls to Knit” and “Exploring Shawl Shapes”. Retail therapy, indeed.

The last-named is rather a good idea: she has collected and reproduced all the miniature shawls she uses to teach. I expect I’ll find that these books overlap each other quite a bit, and I know already that LL is no substitute for Sharon Miller. (The Heirloom Knitting site is still closed because of Mike’s illness. It sounds as if the Millers may be having an even worse year than the Mileses.)

The house is strangely empty with all those people gone. Helen phoned from Athens yesterday to confirm safe arrival.

Today is our 58th wedding anniversary. We have never observed the event, and I don’t think I’ll trouble my husband by mentioning it today. God did splendidly by us on Games Day 2007 (=eight years ago) with the Glenisla Shield for me and the Mandy Duncan cup for James’ and Cathy’s daughter Rachel (she was on the front page of the Blairgowrie Advertiser for that) and a huge family turn-out. Our children gave us a golden Scots pine which was later eaten by a neighbour’s horse.

All well. They should be taxi-ing out for take-off any moment now.

David and Helen went out to Merchiston yesterday to spend the afternoon with Fergus, since they couldn't be at the beginning-of-year service for boys and parents this morning. They came back to say he is now happy as Larry, beginning to make friends, full of talk about what he has been doing and is about to do. He will make his first public appearance in a kilt at the service today, and wants to get to Marks and Spencer to buy a polo shirt to wear with it at a forthcoming ceilidh.

(Archie went to a ceilidh early in his Merchiston career, tripped and fell during a reel, and hasn't been to another, nor worn a kilt happily since.)

So that's good.

I got a customs charge bill yesterday, surely for the yarn from Jimmy Bean. That was quick. I've paid, but it won't be delivered until Wednesday perhaps because tomorrow is an English bank holiday. That gives me time, I hope, to finish the dog and give my husband's new sweater, whether it turns out to be Whiskey Barrel or Roasted Hatch Chillis, the dog's place in the rota.

I also got “Free Spirit Shawls” yesterday. It's good, although I really don't need another shawl book. There are a number of interesting designs, many of them neckerchief-type. Gunderson's “Heath”, for which I bought the book, is a particularly happy use of Noro Taiyo sock yarn. I need more time, and must start making better use of the time I've got.

I moved the Tokyo shawl onwards yesterday, at least somewhat. Today's target is to finish the 22^nd band (of 29) –  which will be the end of the current Tokyo session.

I have been thinking of extending it, as a couple of Ravellers suggest. The pattern consists of a series of bands, alternating st st and reversed st st (so that the finished shawl will be reversible). Two broad bands followed by a narrow one.

I think this means that it takes six bands for the pattern to come back to its beginning: st st broad, reversed st st broad, st st narrow, reversed st st broad, st st broad, reversed st st narrow. So if I extend it, I should be prepared to do that much, and should ensure that I have enough yarn to do it, so that the ends of the shawl will match each other. Maybe that's too fussy, but I think it's necessary.

Non-knit

All the food writers seem to have discovered health simultaneously this season. I bought Jamie's “Everyday Superfood” this week, on sale cheap at the supermarket. Some good stuff, but largely too crunchy for my toothless husband. I think I'll get Diana Henry's “A Change of Appetite”. Nigel and Nigella are waiting in the wings.

It's all go, today.

It's the final day here, for Helen and her family. She and her husband are leaving for Athens tomorrow on the absurdly early Sunday-morning flight that C. and I took at the end of March. How are Perdita and I to manage without them? Archie is back at school, and his youngest brother Fergus has, by now, spent nearly 48 hours there as a New Boy. He's not entirely happy.

The on-going sagas which have occupied the summer remain a) my husband's condition and b) the flat on Windsor Street which Helen has altered radically to prepare for their own occupancy in a year's time. It will be let again in the interval. Getting it ready to show to the letting agent yesterday has, needless to say, involved a series of major and minor crises which have left us all prostrate.

I hope to see it myself this morning, before Helen and I go to visit my husband, before she and her husband go to visit Fergus in the afternoon.

Before all this starts, I must go up the hill and buy some scallops for David and Helen's final summer-of-'15 supper this evening. It is, incidentally, the last day our dear fishmonger will be at work. I need to say goodbye and thank you. His nephew is taking over the business, the fifth generation of the family to be so occupied.

As for knitting, I moved forward with the Tokyo. I'll stop – for the moment – when I finish the current band, and move on to dog-assembly-and-stuffing.

I tried a couple of rows of Portuguese knitting yesterday, on Franklin's swatch. It went a good deal better than my attempts earlier this year at continental knitting. Yarn-around-the-neck is a bit uncomfortable. It might be worth getting, or confecting, a pin. And continuing to try a couple of rows a day. This is where the Craftsy system really scores – I can go back and back and watch the movements of the teacher's hands.

But the good old slow-and-clumsy system is what one needs for comfort.

And that's about it. Perdita's limp is gone.

Technology, this morning. (Perdita continues to improve.)

I have “migrated” Zite to Flipboard, successfully I think. I have bought Albers’ “Interaction of Color” (the app). I should have said something about that yesterday, after you sent the link, Kristen. It looks extremely interesting. The Apple App Shop is always stressful for me — why isn’t everybody as easy as the hated Amazon? Today they said that my (husband’s) credit card was about to expire and I had to update it.

Apple has forced me to use his. Everybody else on the internet is happy with mine. I knew he had been sent a new card, and that I must have put it somewhere safe since he wasn’t likely to use it. It turned out, after an anxious search, that I was carrying it. Sensible.

Then everything went haywire. After a series of increasingly odd error messages and requests to sign in to my own blog, I deduced that maybe it was time to turn the wi-fi booster off and on again. This is sometimes necessary, but the affected computers always pretend that the signal is strong and the trouble, somewhere else.

So I’ve done that, with the result that the booster doesn’t seem to work at all — none of the little lights came back on. We’re limping along with the main hub, and I won’t be able to watch Craftsy in bed unless I can fix it.

But at least the crazy error messages have stopped. That’s enough technology for just now.

The booster is in the sitting room. In my distress, running from computer to computer to iPad and to the booster and back, I left the door open. Perdita dashed in and with her unerring eye seized the ball of mohair which is carried along with every other colour in the Tokyo shawl, and dashed out of the room with it.

I took it away from her in the kitchen and, am happy to report, was able to restore it to its place unbroken. Well done, mohair.

I reached the 22nd band of the Tokyo yesterday, as hoped. I’m spending less time knitting, these days, than I used to when my husband was at home — because of not watching much television, and still not comfortable with knitting during the day, and going straight to bed after an early supper. I must press forward.

I went back over the crucial lessons in Portuguese knitting yesterday (in bed), namely tensioning and the actual movements for knitting and purling. Franklin’s swatches will be the perfect medium for practising, but I think today had better be devoted to that 22nd band.

…The trouble with the wi-fi booster turned out to be that its little On-Off button had been switched off. All is well. Full connectivity is restored. I couldn’t live without technology, but oh, dear.

All went well. The vet agreed with my husband — he is rarely wrong, and of course, in this case, his opinion coincided with some expressed here. There is nothing much wrong with Perdita, nothing is broken, nothing dislocated. It is just a sprain, with some swelling and warmth. She will get better by herself. As indeed she is doing. She cantered down the passage ahead of me this morning at Pussy Cat’s Breakfast Time (5:45), instead of hobbling.

Here she is in her push chair, awaiting her turn at the surgery. She hissed at that dog.

Knitting

I have nearly finished the 20th band (of 29) on the Tokyo shawl. The 21st is one of the little ones, so today’s target is to reach 22.

Thank you for your help with the future blocking. I’ve had a look on Ravelry. It appears to be pretty rectangular on the actual project page. Play it by ear. More than one knitter has extended the length and I suspect that’s a good idea. There’ll clearly be yarn available.

While I was there (on Ravelry) I had a look at Gunderson’s All Colors Sweater, the one we’ve been talking about. Never mind negative ease — I am alarmed to discover that it uses all the colours of Universal Yarn Deluxe Worsted — “about” 137 of them! There are no ends to weave in because one spit-splices, it says: a technique I have never mastered. It’s a magnificent production but for the moment I will stand at a respectful distance.

The side-bar led me in a couple of easy stages to “Free-Spirit Shawls” to which Gunderson has contributed a nice little shoulder shawl where the colour-changes of a Noro yarn do all the work. I’m tempted.

Non-knit

I’m getting on nicely with “Life’s Greatest Secret”, understanding perhaps 1/8th of it. It is odd to think of all these momentous things happening while I was at Oberlin, 1950-54, and all of us unaware of any of it. I think maybe I had heard of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, but if so only because I had a friend who lived on Long Island, not because I had the faintest notion of what was going on there.

On the other hand, when Michael Ventris translated Linear B — and proved that it was Greek: I remember that, vividly.

Perdita’s appt with her new medical advisor is fairly early this morning. She’s not going to like it. I am going down with a friend who has provided a push-chair for cats. Perdita prefers to travel in the vegetable-carrier underneath. 

I knit peacefully on with the Tokyo yesterday. You’re right, Wanda, it’s beautiful. Was the one you saw in Copenhagen blocked into an ordinary, right-angle rectangle, or did the blocking respect the bias? If that question makes any sense. There’s lots of knitting involved and it’s worth keeping at it. I’ll do a few days more before I finish off that dog.

I haven’t yet attempted the new swatches for Franklin, but I’ve chosen the yarns. The temperature swatch is going to be Warm, and the chroma, as I said yesterday, blue. A “chroma” is a slice-of-pie-shaped wedge from the colour wheel. Interestingly, the spell-checker knows the word, although I didn’t.

Wednesday, that’s a stunning sweater (comment, yesterday), and you’re right, I’ve got granddaughters who could wear it. The colour pattern is one that makes one itch to get the needles out. I worry about whether it would be comfortable to wear wool so tight. Would the sweater mind being knit with a bit of positive ease to allow for a shirt underneath? That style, buttoned at the top for a bit and then hanging open, seems to be everywhere at the moment.

And, Fitz14, that is wonderful news that Arne and Carlos are going to be at McAree Bros soon. That’s very near here, a due passi, and I will certainly go along. I don’t know with quite what purpose. I could take a book and have them sign it. I could stand there and bask in their charm. I went to hear them speak at a Knitting Day at the National Museum a while ago. They are professional charmers.

Now it’s time for me to get dressed and put the cat in her push-chair.

Perdita is no better, although still perfectly cheerful. Our cleaning woman, who last saw her on Saturday morning in perfect health, has voted for the vet. Helen's husband David thinks so, too – if it's something to do with the bone, as it would appear, delay can make it worse. So that's the current decision, tomorrow or Thursday.

Knitting

I watched Franklin's Lesson Three. Most interesting. I found myself, just as if I were watching the clock back at Asbury Park High School, looking at the progress of the little line under the video screen and thinking, There's no time left. He can't be going to assign any homework.

I underestimated the man. This time, we are to knit a swatch with colours all of the same temperature, and another with colours all from the same chroma. The latter will have to be blue, in my case, rather to my surprise.

This is an excellent class which Franklin has (no surprise) prepared meticulously. It's worth swatching.

As for actual knitting, I progressed a bit with the Tokyo shawl.

And I went on thinking a bit about an odds-and-ends tosh DK. I think you're right, Mary Lou, that the thing to do is to line up the HALFPINT list and consider how stripes or blocks of colour might appear. I can't find Sally Melville's Stash book. It's not in the Melville section. It's not in the flat pile of Great Big Knitting Books. I certainly wouldn't have relegated it when I was thinning the shelves recently. I'm baffled, for the moment.

Non-knit

My sentence to rat poison is for six months. (There is a possibility, which I won't think about, that it might be for life.) I've now done the first month, and much of the second. At the beginning, I counted the days and decided that they amounted to four Lents, taking Lent at the severest reckoning, from Ash Wednesday to the Saturday in Holy Week inclusive, no remission for Sundays, 46 days.

Well, last Friday I finished the first of the four Lents. I've lost just over half a stone. I could say, “nearly 10 pounds” but I think the first formulation is more accurate. I'm sure the rate of decline will slow down.

I wonder if Blogger’s difficulty with pics yesterday was another Windows-10-interaction. They seem to have solved the initial difficulty, where all composing had to be done in raw HTML. I’ve reverted to the Mac for this morning, and we’ll see.

Thank you for the advice about Perdita. I was enormously cheered by your comment, Anne, that kittens can hurt themselves as they throw their wee selves so energetically about. It’s not a phenomenon I had ever met, but it makes good sense as an explanation.

She is perhaps slightly better. She continues to eat and wash herself normally, and is obviously not in pain, not even when one touches the affected hip. She has incorporated disability into the daily life of a Naughty Kitten with some style. She can still jump, although it takes a bit more thought than usual. So I am going to wait at least another day before seeking medical attention. She would hate it so.

That was my husband’s advice yesterday, to stay away from the vet for now. It is distressing to see any animal in difficulty with its hindquarters, especially when it is an animal one loves.

Knitting

I have finished my homework for Franklin’s second lesson, and am free to go on to lesson three.

(Bear in mind that the two swatches are not meant to be related to each other. I am doing them continuously to save a bit of trouble, and in the hopes of having a Franklin Scarf for my pains at the end.) (Picture-uploading went perfectly smoothly. I'll now go back and illustrate yesterday's post.)

And I have resumed knitting the Tokyo.

And I continue to give some thought to the using-up of all my delicious tosh DK left-overs. I’ve started through the HALFPINT folder of purchased, down-loaded and printed-out patterns. There are some very nice things there. I had wondered if Fettig’s “Effortless” would lend itself to diagonal-seeming stripes, but apparently not. It is not really asymmetrical — it’s a wrap-around cardigan which looks asymmetrical when worn unfastened and hanging open.

I haven’t tried Melville’s stash book yet. Today I will.

Non-knit

In my husband’s absence, I have been reading an awful lot of crime fiction, without finding anything I could wholeheartedly recommend to you. 

Worrying about the cat, however, is a whole different matter. One needs something one can mentally chew on. I have now embarked on “Life’s Greatest Secret” by Matthew Cobb. It is about the discovery of DNA — not the double helix, although that will no doubt figure, but the way genetic information is encoded. It is fascinating. 

It is particularly interesting, in the early chapters, to learn how much significant work on the subject was done during the war, in the US and England and France, although it was without military usefulness. Deoxyribonucleic acid was known, and known to be a component of chromosomes, but the majority opinion in those days was that information about heredity was passed on by proteins.

Brief, this morning. No knitting yesterday.

Something is wrong with one of Perdita's back legs or hips. She is reasonably cheerful and alert, eating reasonably. I am undecided about whether to take her to an emergency vet or wait until normal working hours tomorrow. She was perfectly all right yesterday morning.

Archie took these pictures of the Glenisla Shield yesterday, I think the best we've got, even though it takes two to convey the idea. I won it for Sam the Ram in the year of our Golden Wedding.

And Helen dug the potatoes which our gardener had put in. My poor garden! But at least that much of it has been redeemed.

But this is what Games Day boiled down to:

And on top of all my other troubles, Blogger is having trouble with pics. I'll try to add the essential illustrations later in the day. Perdita is well enough to try to help with Blogger. I think the vet can wait until tomorrow.

Games Day

And here we are, Perdita and I, in Edinburgh.

It's a good day, here at least, but with that nip in the air that the Games always bring: September is waiting in the wings, with worse to follow.

Helen and her family are there and I hope will return (tomorrow) with some worth-while gossip. The knitting categories this year are a) a cardigan for a premature baby, to be donated, pattern supplied; and b) a tea cosy. I don't feel terribly sorry at having missed out on either of those. Maybe Helen will take some pictures, but her main target for photography is the trees we have planted down the commonty. Every year at Games Weekend I photograph each tree with appropriate grandchildren. Each tree commemorates, one way or another, one of our four children and the associated family. This year Helen's sons will have to stand in for all their cousins.

There is also a tree, now, for my husband's sister, and one in the paddock for our 50^th wedding anniversary. Lots of photography required on Games day.

When my time comes, I have asked for a Wellingtonia (=California redwood).

I went on with swatching yesterday, and would have finished the second swatch but for the return of All Those People from their afternoon activities. Today, I hope,I will actually finish, and then on to the Tokyo. The actual watching of Franklin's third lesson will have to wait a day or two so that I don't start feeling guilty right away about not having done the next homework.

My other knit-related task is to mend a small hole in the back of Archie's new sweater. A snag is a more likely cause than a moth. It won't take a minute – except that I can't find the odd ball (there must have been one) and was therefore reduced to winding a whole skein. The Tempter suggested taking just the yard or so that the task requires – but that's an easy way to reduce a skein of precious madelinetosh DK to a tangled mess, so I resisted, and have wound the whole ball.

I've got quite a lot of MT DK in that bag of leftovers, with Whiskey Barrel and Roasted Hatch Chillies to follow, due to chronic over-ordering. I must get Sally Melville's stash-knitting book out and see if there are any appropriate ideas there.

On a higher note, the Craftsy class on Portuguese knitting (also incomplete, despite being less dedicated to swatching) sent me to Donna Druchunas' “Ethnic Knitting Discovery” for the chapter on knitting in the Andes. They knit in the Portuguese way there, yarn around neck. Druchunas, in turn, sent me to Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' “Knitting in the Old Way”. I had quite forgotten how good that one is.

Druchunas confesses – incredible! – to not having read Zimmerman. But I can see how it might happen, after re-visiting Gibson-Roberts. She provides an abundance of schematics for various garments, with the stitch numbers expressed in percentages where the maximum girth (good old “K”) is 100%. I will keep her “Shaped Vest” pages open when the Roasted Hatch Chillies turn up.

You're right, of course, Victoria (private message). Jimmy Bean has plenty of Roasted Hatch Chillies in madelinetosh DK. In fact, I think the number you found (13) might represent the number they had in the morning minus the eight skeins I ordered.

I'm sure that's too many. The order was based on their own Yarn Calculator, and influenced by the fact that my husband has been grumbling that all the sweaters in his drawer – which I have been taking in to the hospital one by one for him to try – are too tight. I will measure him and calculate K anew when the time comes.

When it came to the pinch, Jimmy B turned out to have one skein less of Woodstock than I wanted (won't say “needed”). Roasted Hatch Chillies is clearly a more active and energetic shade than dear old Georgia O'K, which is a nearly-solid. And a somewhat lighter shade. Still, as I said yesterday of Woodstock, if my husband doesn't like it, I've got Whiskey Barrel to fall back on.

I seem to have ordered more of that than the pattern specifies – why on earth? – and the pattern seems to be consuming less than the specification. I will only just have joined in the third skein when I finish the back, and I will be nearly half-way through, I think. Front is truncated, sleeves are narrow and short. The pattern asks for seven skeins. I bought nine.

Last night I went on with swatching. I have decided that I've done enough of the first swatch, and have finished it off, and started the second, with garter stitch bands. The second swatch is what happens when you start with a colour on the colour wheel, draw a line straight across, and then, instead of using the colour you hit on the opposite edge of the wheel, you use the ones on either side of it.

There's a name for that sort of harmony but I've forgotten what it is. I'll have to re-visit Lesson Two. I sort of gathered that you can do anything you like with the colour wheel as long as you do it symmetrically.

Non-knit

I have decided to give the Games a miss, very sadly.

David and Helen on Wednesday were tired and cross and anxious about the state of their flat. Yesterday, they came home radiant: the builders have finished, and have made a brilliant job of cleaning up after themselves, and it all looks wonderful.

My INR was perfection — 2.5, if the new system is to be believed. I must have achieved harmony between Waitrose Low Alcohol Cider and hummus. I don’t have to go back for a month.

Strathardle is up in the air. My husband is not happy about my going, understandably, and I am reluctant to waltz off and leave him in this mess. David and Helen continue to have problems about their flat on Windsor Street. Appointments with architects and plumbers and carpet-layers had to be rejigged yesterday with the result, as far as the Games are concerned, that we wouldn’t be able to leave here until late tomorrow. I had been looking forward to a Strathardle afternoon of doing all the things that haven’t been done this summer.

I have decided that the solution to my madelinetosh problem — if only all of life’s problems  revolved around madelinetosh! — is to order a vest’s-worth of Woodstock. (Jimmy Bean doesn’t seem to have Roasted Hatch Chillies in DK anyway.) If my husband doesn’t like it when it arrives, I’ll start his vest in the Whiskey Barrel I have here for the Sous Sous. I’m sure I’ve got too much, and since they keep saying that there are no dye lots I can start with what I’ve got, and order more.

I am sure I can find another use for a vest’s-worth of madelinetosh DK in Woodstock, if push comes to shove.

I did spend yesterday evening swatching for Franklin, and was horrified at how long it’s taking me. The two-colour patterns he provides as course material have a 22-stitch repeat so I thought I’d cast on 44, plus 4 for a 2-stitch garter st selvedge on each side, thinking ahead to my Franklin Scarf

That’s an awful lot of knitting, it turns out. On the other hand, I am finding the result rather interesting. Franklin’s Lesson Three will just have to wait, for now.

I’ve also realised that there’s not much point in having browns and greys in the Chaos Basket, because they don’t figure in the colour wheel. I have decided to open the bag in which I keep the precious J&S yarn for that Fair Isle vest. I’ll surely have to order some more of something, anyway, when I finally start that vest. So, browns and greys out; Fair Isle colours in.

Here’s the swatch, so far. Not colours I would wear, but I think the result is rather interesting. (These colours are meant to be complementary — directly across the colour wheel from each other.) 

Lizzie is coming to the hospital with us this morning. She is here in Edinburgh for some Festival-ing. She is Rachel’s youngest child, recently graduated from B’ham University. She can tell us all about the horrors of last weekend’s move, and the experience of living in the new, much smaller, house.