My husband has rather suddenly become seriously deaf, adding another layer of stress to lives (his and mine) which already had plenty. He’ll have his ears syringed on Monday.

But knitting went well. I knit a whole 17-round border from the Museum Sweater into my swatch-scarf, and I like the result a lot. It’s rather subdued, but I am adding what I am sure would be called a pop of colour in the peerie pattern. Just as the original does, although a different colour. I’ve charted another lozenge (chosen at random), again with difficulty. I mean to press on and knit it over the weekend, offset and with the order of the colours reversed, as in the original.

And then I’ll show it to you.

The lozenges are all exactly the same shape, so the “X” part of the design is identical every time. It is just the internal pattern in the lozenges that changes. I found knitting much easier than charting, as I thought it might be. Hazel Tindall said that charting is a good way to get to know a pattern before you start – that could be why the knitting seemed easier when I got to it.

Another thing she said, which I don’t think I’ve mentioned, is that she carries floats across five stitches (or, of course, fewer) and only thinks of weaving-in for six or more. I always used to weave even, I think, for three. But it is not much use paying for a class with Hazel Tindall if you are not going to pay attention to what she says, so I am now letting the floats float. I am pleased and rather surprised to find that my hands remember the slightly complicated moves for weaving in the right-hand yarn when there is a run of too many consecutive stitches from the left hand. The other way around, of course, is easy peasy.

Mary Lou, Ravelry presented me with “Guy’s Vest” under “Friends’ Activity” without my having to make any effort. It’s beautiful. And I see you’ve edged neck and sleeve openings with a peerie pattern. Is that hard? I wonder if I’ve got WG 54.

But I keep having to make a certain amount of effort to get to the other Raveller, besides Maureen, who has knit the Museum Sweater (to look at his pictures again). He’s a man, and his user-name is an utterly unmemorable combination of letters and numbers. I go to Maureen’s project page, always a pleasure, find the Museum Sweater, go to its page, click on “In 2 projects”.

I didn’t know, in my previous Fair Isle Phase several decades ago, all this business about a dominant colour when you are carrying a yarn in each hand. I always used to look at the pattern before I started each round, and use my right hand for whichever colour, pattern or background, had the most work to do. Now I’m doing it the proper way, and it does help a bit to keep confusion at bay to know that the pattern colour is always in the left hand.

Southern Gal (comment Wednesday), your explanation of how to get things into Evernote seemed perfectly comprehensible even without a desk for you to write it at. Thank you. It really is enormously useful, and I must use it more.

No trouble from the inplant. No pain-killers today.

And it was a good day’s knitting, too. I’ve finished the third skein of Tannehill, wound the fourth and attached it, knit an inch and a half or so with the new skein. I’m now well more than halfway from underarm to shoulder on the back.

I think that entitles me to pick up the swatch-scarf tomorrow. I’ve finished charting the Museum Sweater (using the lozenge pattern which is illustrated most clearly on Ravelry) and have had some trouble trying to colour it in with pencils. Something to do with the way colours change roles, from background to pattern.

I think I’ll plunge in and see if I can knit it anyway.

Tannehill is going so well that I found myself idly thinking Next Project today. I won’t do anything about it until Tannehill is finished, or very nearly so, but it’s fun to think. Mary Lou’s Polliwog Popover, from “Drop Dead Easy Knits”, is in the lead at the moment, what with all these babies about and it would be nice to do something quick and, well, drop-dead easy AND I bought the yarn for it at the EYF.

But I also contemplated this one, the crazy stripes tee, for which I’ve had the yarn rather a while.

What possessed me? I can’t imagine any of us wearing it – well, just possibly one of James’ and Cathy’s daughters. And I think I would prefer it with positive ease and shorter sleeves, so that it could be worn over a shirt. I felt a sudden rush of sympathy for Loes Veenstra, the Dutch woman who knit over 500 sweaters and put them all carefully away, unworn.

In this case I think I started with buying a set of gradient skeins from Kathy’s Knits, feeling I ought to buy something because I had been taking up space on her sofa day after day. And then one day going to visit the Ginger Twist Studio and feeling I ought to buy something, full stop, as I would feel in a small, independent book store.

But a whole sweater?

The gradient skeins and the Ginger Twist yarn are both very nice, and go beautifully together. But the gradient skeins don't add up to enough yardage to replace the contrast colour in the crazy stripes pattern, and the maker, easyknits.co.uk, isn’t offering them in my colours at the moment. I could go back to Kathy and see if she still has them. Probably not.

Veenstra knit with what she had, and what people gave her, and improvised her patterns. 

The implant wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. In fact, the worst bit was probably the preliminary night’s anxiety. I took things easy today – ready-meal for supper, lots more Tannehill. I’ve left off the pain-killers already, although I may take one at bedtime.

Tomorrow I am to start a week’s course of a precautionary antibiotic. I am not meant to consume alcohol while taking it, so it is rather a good thing that this is happening in Lent.

I divided the Tannehill front and back, and have finished the underarm decreases for the back. I should finish the current (third) skein tomorrow with ease. I didn’t do anything further about charting the Museum Sweater, however, which leaves me with little or nothing to say to you.

AnnP, the Tech Knitter is brilliant on corrugated ribbing. Many thanks for that. I’ve tucked it away in Evernote, a program I haven’t visited in quite a while and should make more use of.

Alexander came over today. We won’t see him again until after Easter – he is the stay-at-home parent, and his sons’ school holiday is about to begin. And Greek Helen is going, with most of her family, to Thessaloniki tomorrow, likewise not to be seen until after Easter.  (Archie is lingering here for a couple of days and will come to lunch with us on Friday.)  I feel somewhat bereft.

Another fairly fraught day. It started with a dental appt, and tomorrow will start with another, this time for an implant, a new experience for me and surely far too expensive at my time of life. Greek Helen covered/will cover home base on both occasions.

Then I had an email from Microsoft about renewing my subscription to Office. I did that a couple of days ago – it turned out I had to log on again and install the damn thing. You’d think it could all have been packed into one process. All the money, time and trouble have wrought no noticeable change in the program I use daily.

We went out to lunch at a Japanese place, seriously good, near the Kings Theatre – Helen and I and her three boys (for Mungo is safely home from Beirut) and a dear friend. That wasn’t fraught, it was fun.

After I wrote to you yesterday, I got another picture from another dear person, this time with no embargo attached about showing it to you, so here it is, Hellie and our unborn great-grandchild. It’s due in early June, I believe. Getting plumper and more viable by the day:

Tannehill is coming on nicely. I should divide it at the underarms tomorrow if dentistry doesn’t flatten me. And this week’s skein looks seriously diminished.

I have successfully charted the Museum Sweater, and made a small start at a colour scheme, with pencils. The colour arrangement is rather interesting, and very un-Fair Isle.

There are three pairs of colours, and they stay faithful to each other throughout: Pair A and Pair B for the lozenges, and Pair C for the peeries. But there’s more:

1       Pair A and Pair B keep changing places with each other. If one row of lozenges is striped A.B,A,B,A the next one will be B,A,B,A,B.

2       And furthermore, the “X”’s have the light colours of each pair as the pattern colour, while the lozenges, beside them in the same row, have the dark colours as pattern.

I look forward, as I’ve said, to seeing how all this will work with my colours.

It occurred to me last night that I can attempt some corrugated ribbing one day soon for my weekend stint on the swatch-sweater. Since it’s not meant to pull in, it won’t interrupt the flow of things. The point of the experiment in that case will be to see whether I can stand knitting it.

Back to Tannehill. My ambition is a skein a week.

Here’s where the swatch-scarf stands. I don’t know why the sheet it’s lying on has turned blue – that doesn’t augur well for the other colours. Quite apart from the patterns, I like the way it looks as an object, just lying about. I think I mean that the colours seem to be working well together.

I look forward to trying the Museum Sweater pattern next. I made a (false) start on charting it today – I thought there were 15 rows in the borders; there are 17, plus a single-colour row between border and peerie. It turns out that the other Raveller who knit this sweater, other than Maureen, that is, has posted lots of pictures, one of which is a close up of a single repeat of the patterns from which charting will be easy. I’ll resume tomorrow.

There are five colours in the sweater – six, if I use two new colours for the peeries instead of repeating one from the border. It will be interesting to see how my colours work with this pattern. Once I have charted it in black and white, I’ll try another colour chart, using the computer this time.

If you peer, you can see that I have lined up the centre stitch of an “O” in my first border pattern with the centre stitch of an “X” in the second. The effort is entirely wasted because the two patterns have different stitch counts. It will be fun to stagger the lozenges properly in the Museum Sweater.

Non-knit

Two dear people have sent me entirely different but equally amusing photographs of themselves this evening – both with a warning attached that I am not to include them here. I will sadly obey.

Thanks for comments. I should have thought of knitting-back-backwards. Cam, (comment yesterday) your discovery of it at the age of seven is indeed impressive, as I am glad to hear your aunts acknowledged. I have never progressed very far with it.

I’ve had a jolly Laetare Sunday, but, perhaps predictably, not a very productive one. And there’s a long way to go.

I hope I’ll be back in the saddle tomorrow.

Non-knit

We watched the 1950’s film of The Importance of Being Ernest at midday before sinking into a post-prandial stupor. It’s really rather good. It reminded me of how much I adored Joan Greenwood – Whiskey Galore/Tight Little Island, Kind Hearts and Coronets, and much else. In 1953-4, she appeared on the stage in NY in TS Eliot’s “Confidential Clerk” which I had seen during its first few days, in the Edinburgh Festival of 1953,  not many months before.

I went to see it again, that winter, with DB, who, as far as I know, is still alive. I remember that during the interval/intermission, the women were grumbling: “I can’t understand a word she says”. And the men didn’t seem to  mind that and were full of enthusiasm. 

It was a rather fraught day. Fair Isle knitting does not consort well with constant interruption. Still, I got another border pattern done. I don’t care for it much. You’ll see, soon.

All this talk of the J&S-Shetland-Museum sweater – the one you knit, MaureeninFargo, although I hadn’t grasped that until today – has made me wonder whether I should try to see what can be made of that, using my colours. I’m pretty sure it would be easy to chart it, using the illustration in Mucklestone’s book and the ones posted by Maureen and the one other Raveller who has attempted it.

I think maybe that will be the next experiment for my swatch-scarf. Only one lozenge-pattern per row, of course, and perhaps even a different peerie.

There’s a passage in Meg’s introduction to her Fair Isle cardigan in “Knitting” which baffles me. Maybe you can help. She is writing about the problem of what to do with a Fair Isle, knit bottom-up, when you get to the armholes. Work back and forth, which will involve purling? Or steek, and go on knitting in the round? Both solutions are found on Shetland, she says.

Then this: “Designers Lizbeth Upitis and Joyce Williams knit forwards and backwards from the underarm up – no steeks, no cutting, no purling back in pattern.”

What does that mean? The only Third Way I can think of is to cut the yarn at the end of every row and push everything back to the other end of the needle. That is indeed possible, but I wouldn’t describe it as “knitting forwards and backwards”.

Here’s my husband’s Tannehill, dark line and all:

In my wanderings last night, I wound up on Jimmy Bean’s madtosh DK page. I haven’t been there for quite a while. A great many of the colours were unfamiliar, and goodness! how wonderful! No wonder Tannehill went under, if they bring out new colours at that rate. It occurred to me to wonder whether the pattern for my leftovers, perhaps supplemented by one or two skeins of new-and-wonderful colours, might be this, which you’ve seen before:

It is written for 4-ply (sport weight, that would be, I think, more or less) in one size only.  But it might not even have to be converted, as that one size is distinctly petite. Maybe in DK, it would come out about right. If conversion is necessary, I don’t think it would be too difficult.

Now I must go and put the clocks forward, and put some cider on ice for tomorrow….

I had to go down to Tesco today for this and that. I bought my cider to drink on Sunday – the mid-Lent break. It’s perhaps a bit dangerous to have it in the house untouchable for a whole day and a half, but I think I’m up to it. I was there in the car, and it’s heavy. I often stop at Tesco on the way back from Mass – but they have been known to run out of Weston’s Vintage on a Sunday, and I drink no other.

So it’s here.

I had another good day with Tannehill. The third skein has been joined in. I think I have earned my weekend of Fair Isle.

I didn’t take a picture. I kept putting it off because I was going to knit a few more rounds, and then, of course, the light was gone. But tomorrow I won’t knit it at all, and the light promises to be good, so there we are. And on Sunday the clocks go forward and we’ll have even more light.

Madtosh is notorious for having skeins of different values. This third skein of Tannehill is very dark, and has produced the sharpest colour-change line I’ve ever had. You’ll see. I’m not going to worry about it. My husband doesn’t go out and about. What he wants is a cosy DK sweater asap.

MaureeninFargo has written to me to say that she didn’t adapt Meg’s video-vest to make her own cardigan (as I said yesterday) – Meg did it herself. It’s the cover picture, indeed, of her book “Knitting”. In view of recent events, you may be surprised to hear that I found that book exactly where it belonged, with EZ and Meg’s other books. It sounds from what she says there as if vest and cardigan evolved simultaneously.

Kate Davies has posted an interesting blog entry called Patients and Doctors. No knitting in it at all. It sounds as if she is writing a book about her stroke.

Kristie (comment yesterday), my hesitation about knitting the museum-quality sweater for which Jamieson&Smith offer a “temporarily unavailable” kit, would not be the knitting of a whole Fair Isle sweater in fingering weight. That’s fun. It would be the fiddliness of knitting all those different lozenges, and of knitting the peerie pattern as the v-neck edging.

Meg says, in the introduction to the cardigan pattern in “Knitting”:

“Those who have experienced the excitement and contentment of knitting a true Fair Isle pattern need not be told of the pure pleasure involved. Elizabeth once described Fair Isle knitting as ‘painting with a different color in each hand and never having to rinse the brushes.’ For me it is like going into a trance.”

Just so. All those different lozenges might spoil it.

Another good day with Tannehill. I should join in the third skein tomorrow, and I’m not a million miles from the point where I separate back and front at the underarm. I think a picture would be a good idea, although I don’t trust it to do justice to the beautiful colour. Tomorrow.

I spent some time wandering around the internet last night, while waiting for the nurse to come. I discovered that Jamieson & Smith offer a kit based on a particular sweater in the Shetland Museum which is illustrated in Mucklestone’s book and which I mentioned only a couple of days ago – the one in which the pattern in every lozenge is different.

The J&S text says that in the original sweater, the different-ness extends to the back, but that they have simplified things by making the back and front identical, lozenge-wise. They phrase it more elegantly.

The odd thing is that this kit is “currently unavailable”. Why on earth? They must have the pattern, and it uses nothing but shades of their own Shetland Heritage yarn.

I haven’t advanced either with colouring-in the squares in Excel or downloading the allegedly free copy of Stitch and Motif Maker. The idea is to spend a happy weekend knitting the next 15-row border pattern, and another peerie, onto the swatch-scarf. The border has already been planned, and coloured however clumsily with pen and pencil. Then when it is finished, I hope it will itself prompt the next experiment and that’s when I can try colouring by computer.

Ravelry suggested the other day looking at your friends’ projects if you find yourself drained of inspiration. That’s how I found MaureeninFargo’s Fair Isle sweaters – her husband is wearing the vest Meg designed for Knitter’s magazine and also published with accompanying video. Then Maureen must have transformed the pattern into a cardigan for herself. The result is rather impressive.

Another anxious evening, waiting for a nurse to come and see to my husband’s catheter. I think the last time this happened was on the eve of the EYF – not long ago – and I was afraid I wouldn’t get there. He has been weak and droopy of late.

I steadily knit Tannehill in the intervals of my nursing duties. Today, I must confess with some embarrassment, I weighed the ball of yarn several times, until finally I got it down under 50 grams, therefore half way through, therefore entitled to half of the 12% I have assigned to each skein, for sidebar purposes, on the strength of Sweater Wizard’s estimate of how much yarn is needed in all.

(There are 46 days in Lent, so, for that one, each day earns 2%, with a bonus 1% every Tuesday when another week is completed.)

Thank you, Southern Gal, for suggesting Excel for my Fair Isle charting. I don’t think I even knew it offered colour. I use Excel extensively for the Income Tax, and for a Christmas list now spanning many years, but nothing else.

And I also seem to have discovered that Stitch and Motif Maker is available as a free download. I haven’t done it yet, because I discovered that on the iPad and thought I wanted the program here on the laptop. But I’m not sure that’s true, now that I write that sentence down. We’ll see, tomorrow. I want to be able to print my little designs and keep them together in some sort of portfolio.

But I can print from the iPad.

Shandy, I’m sure you’re right about the importance of having an overall colour. I’ve gone for that dark green you mention, and will need to order more of it rather soon.

It’s a stormy night. Poor nurses.

Lent

Three weeks done – nearly half-way. Thursday is in fact the half-way point. Rachel and I agreed on the phone last week that this is where Lent gets a bit dreary. One skips through the first few days, sustained by a virtuous glow. But now it just seems a long, long way to the end. Laetare Sunday, however, looms: the mid-Lent day off. It will be very welcome.

Other non-knit

Mungo sent Helen, and she sent me, this enchanting mosaic he saw in a Beirut museum, of the infant Alexander the Great having a bath.

Knitting

Tannehill progresses. There’s much to be said for boring & DK, if you’re keen to get something done.

I continue to think about Fair Isle. Here are the yarns chosen for next weekend’s experiment:

And here they are in tonal form. I think I’m getting the idea.

Thank you very much, Theresa and Karen, for your comments yesterday about my first attempt. At the moment, I am far too impatient to try again with something completely different, to take your advice. But you have persuaded me that it would be a good idea, when I have more or less decided on the motifs and the arrangement I want to go forward with, to knit them together and consider the total effect, as Mucklestone has done for the admirable “Mix and Match” swatches towards the end of her book.

I’m in no hurry – maybe that’s the secret of happy swatching. And the longer the better, as far as the scarf is concerned. Maybe I’d better go ahead and knit this vest before I’m too old to pull it off.

I’ve bought myself sets of coloured pens and pencils (such as everybody needs for their colouring books these days – a most unexpected enthusiasm) and I have been trying to chart the pattern I have chosen in the colours I’m going to use. But the colours of the pens and pencils are pretty remote from the colours of the yarns and it doesn’t work very well. I wish I could find Stitch and Motif Maker.

I finished the motif and added a peerie and returned with some reluctance to Tannehill:

I am fully swept up in Mucklestone’s enthusiasm for swatching Fair Isle. I like this first result better than I thought I would when I was half-way through, except I don’t entirely like that yellow in the middle. Next time I’ll try a pattern with the dark colours in the background and the pattern in light. Kate Davies in her Macrihanish pattern alternates two such patterns, light and dark, with peeries in between. She uses only six colours altogether. Maybe I’m trying to squeeze in too many:

I’m not going to “design” the scarf, beyond centering the motifs and separating border patterns with peeries. I think the colours will hold it together. I might as well try different peeries each time, too. I think I had vaguely hoped that the stitch repeats in 15-row border patterns would all be the same, so that each repeat could be different (as I read somewhere that traditional Fair Isles are) and still line up. But they’re not.

I bought Mucklestone’s book, “200 Fair Isle Designs”. It arrived today. It offers a good deal more than the title promises – general instructions on all aspects of Fair Isle knitting, to begin with. The patterns are photographed life-size, with an accompanying chart and another chart offering an alternative colour-way. In some cases the pattern is also photographed with another pattern from elsewhere in the book, showing how they might be combined. In others, a chart shows how a border pattern can become an all-over.

She illustrates a stunning sweater from the Shetland Museum which seems to have a different pattern in every lozenge – that is, the “O’s” of the famous OXO – even within a row. And the peerie pattern in between reappears as the neck edging. Genius.

And speaking of books, thank you, Chloe (comment yesterday) for suggesting that good old Ravelry will show me the patterns in Sally Melville’s “Styles”. I am mystified by the absence of that book. I haven’t looked at it for a long time, so it is unlikely to have been left lying around somewhere (although that is possible). I will keep looking where it belongs, with the Melville’s on the “design” shelf or with the outsize knitting books elsewhere. Maybe it will re-materialise the way Gaughan’s cable book did recently.

The Tannehill sweater is coming along nicely. It can’t help being boring, and the yarn is beautiful.

I decided that I might as well start the swatch scarf, so I did.

It was an interesting experience. The 12” circular needle is somewhat awkward, but not excruciatingly so. I didn’t have much trouble with the pattern, as I did in Hazel Tindall’s class, but my left hand didn’t behave as well as it might, and the first half of the 15-row OXO motif I launched into was productive of a good deal of tension across the shoulders. The second half went better.

I’m within two rows of finishing the motif. I’ll try to show it to you tomorrow. I don’t think I’m entirely satisfied with the way the colours are working together. I can see how this might get to be a lot of fun.

When this motif is finished, and maybe a peerie to round it off, I’ll wind another skein of Tannehill and revert to that.

Thank you very much for your help with my madtosh leftovers, and apologies, Tamar, for not giving you credit for the suggestion that I look at Kaffe. And I can see myself getting swept away by the temptation to buy a few more skeins to go with the leftovers I’ve already got. Something has got to be a main colour. I’ll pay close attention to how many skeins are consumed by my husband’s sweater. Composition Book Grey and Roast Hatch Chillies are the two I’ve got the most of.

Non-knit

Helen’s middle son Mungo is going to Beirut tomorrow. We’re all a bit nervous (except for Mungo). He is doing Arabic at Oxford, and his college has given him a travel grant to spend a week in a place where it is spoken. As far as I can understand it, however, he is learning classical Arabic which won’t get him very far with the spoken language.

My husband has now been four months home from hospital.

Today was a better day – than last Saturday, I mean. Scotland beat Italy by a tidy score, without letting them score anything at all. AND IRELAND BEAT ENGLAND! That one was on a knife-edge until the concluding seconds. England had been pretty well taking it for granted that they would win, and thereby win the Grand Slam, so-called, which would have meant they had beaten every other nation in the tournament. Pride goeth before a fall, not infrequently.

The tournament is now over for this year. We came fourth.

The Tannehill sweater was perfect for rugby knitting, round and round in st st. I got a fair amount done, and am nearly finished with the first skein. It’s lovely stuff. Why did they give it up?

I thought a bit about what to do with all my madetosh leftovers. And you’re quite right, Beverly, about “Tart” – I had forgotten that single skein of red I got to make facings for Archie’s sweater. I’ve found it (I hope – it’s unlabelled) and added it to the pile. I’ve always rather fancied this, from a VK of about 50 years ago:

It’s written for a 4-ply yarn, but I think could be converted to DK without too much difficulty. And I think there would be enough “Tart” for the smallest stripe. On the reverse of this image, that is, on the preceding page of the magazine, is a sleeveless Fair Isle cardigan-vest by Kaffe, his first published pattern, I believe. 

And he is a good idea too, Beverly, as a source of inspiration, except that he so often uses far more colours than I have to hand.  I wanted to have a look at Sally Melville’s “Styles” but I can’t find it. I haven’t looked at it for years, have never knit from it, but that’s no excuse for its not being where it ought to be, on the “design” shelf with the other Melville’s.

Beverly, you’re right, too, about recording FO’s in Ravelry. My practice is to date the pattern leaflet and put it, or my notes, or at any rate something, in a manilla folder. When it gets too full for comfort, I transfer the contents into a box file and start again. I have been doing this since sometime in the ‘70’s. But it’s a bit messy and sometimes incomplete. Ravelry would be much more secure.

I took a guess and looked today in the box file that runs from the late 70’s through the early 80’s, and found several things from my Fair Isle Phase. The notes for two of them had, as a notation of the needles used, “9 and 11”. That takes you back. 9=3.75mm so I’ll try both that and 4mm. I’ve got short circulars for both those sizes. Are they so short that my hands will hurt?

So I’m ready to attempt the Feral Knitter’s swatch-scarf. She suggests 128 stitches on a 16” circular. Any day now.

American holidays which afford shopkeepers means of making money, are insinuating themselves more and more into the British calendar – Mother’s Day, Halloween. Even Easter seems to me to have suffered a new and excessive accession of chocolate rabbits in recent years. And Christmas, which was scarcely noticed in Scotland when I came in the 50’s, has become unspeakable.

(All the holidays I mention were observed in Britain before they became commercialized. But they were observed without all that stuff which now fills the shops for weeks in advance.)

But today is one we are spared. Each nation celebrates its own patron saint – Andrew, David, George. Although the English are not all that interested in George. Patrick is a bigger deal than any of them – but only in Ireland. Today was a bank holiday there, and everybody in Dublin is drunk, but the rest of us can go quietly and thankfully about our business with no need to drink green beer. (Rachel’s younger son Joe is in Dublin for the match tomorrow, so I have information about conditions there at first hand.)

Knitting

Kathleen and Mary Lou are right about the Knitter’s Almanac (comments yesterday). I knew you were right as soon as I read your comment, Kathleen. The sweater in question is EZ’s “open-collared pullover”, October’s offering. I think I followed her instructions all the way through, and the result is highly satisfactory.

I got on nicely with Tannehill today. The ribbing is finished, the increase row done, the body commenced.

I am soon going to have quite a lot of left-over madtosh DK: Composition-Book Grey, from Archie’s sweater; Whiskey Barrel; Roast Hatch Chillies; and, soon, Tannehill – if the Sweater Wizard’s estimate of how much I will use in this sweater is accurate. How to combine them all?

I have gone on thinking about Fair Isle. The swatch-scarf can serve several useful purposes. Colour, of course, and the provision of an accurate gauge swatch -- one must calculate the length with care so that the pattern does something sensible when back and front meet at the shoulder. And in addition, I have forgotten what needle size I use. I know that I knit tightly when I am stranding two colours, and therefore use a larger needle than I otherwise would for Shetland Jumper Weight. But how large?

Here it is:

It is in many respects carelessly and rather sloppily done. I am lucky that it has turned out so well. It’s awfully cosy, despite being only half a brioche. Perhaps I can wear it the next time I go for a Serious Walk.

I had a feeling, as I was doing the plackets and collar, that EZ has such a neckline treatment somewhere. I couldn’t find it in the indices of her books. I knit a sweater once in fairly light-weight yarn on which I’ve done it, and my dim memory is that EZ was guiding my steps. I got it out today, to help me judge whether I had knit enough collar on the new one – and find that the collar and plackets are edged with i-cord. It looks very neat, and points again to EZ.

I had time for a bit more ribbing. Sweater Wizard would have me knit this sweater – a bog-standard DK long-sleeved v-necked pullover – in four pieces. And I know that lots of designers maintain that seams provide stability. But I am knitting this one in the round until the sleeve-holes start, then back and forth, like it or not. The ribbing looks very nice, but progress is slow. Sweater Wizard wants 22 rows of it. 22 rounds, in my case.

My tentative plan is to plod on like this until I finish the ribbing, and then maybe allow myself two evenings a week for frivolity – such as a Fair Isle swatch-scarf.

The bit of Meg’s video that I watched last night was a bit dispiriting. She was explaining the best cast-on for corrugated rib. The long-tail cast on, as I’m sure you know, can either be done by knitting into a loop around one’s left thumb (that’s how I do it) or by means of a cat’s-cradle construction into which the needle dips. That’s how Real Knitters like Meg and Franklin do it.

For corrugated rib, one doesn’t employ the long-tail cast on but a variant which will only have made sense to those who use the cat’s-cradle method. I could learn, I suppose. And anyway, corrugated rib isn’t essential.

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Dreadful as are the events unfolding in the US of A, I am afraid I still feel even sorrier for Scotland. You’ve got the hope that there will still be free elections in four years’ time. Less than that, now – three years and eight months. But if Ms Sturgeon succeeds in wresting apart the United Kingdom, undoing more than 300 years of history (since the Act of Union), there will be no hope at all of putting things right, ever.

That was a more productive day on the knitting front. I have finished sewing the half-brioche sweater together and knitting the plackets. I am maybe half-way through the collar. There are a good many loose ends to tidy away when that is done. Even so, I might finish tomorrow.

Which reminds me of another tidbit from Hazel Tindall. When you knit Fair Isle, you wind up with a fringe of ends up one side seam (on the inside) where you have attached a new colour every couple of rows. She said that it is all right to tidy and secure the loose ends by knotting. That’s what I’ve always done and would have continued doing, whatever she said, but I am enormously gratified to have her approval.

She didn’t press her way of knitting on us, although she was happy to demonstrate. She did say at the beginning, though, when we were all casting on our mug haps, that it is easier to join the work without twisting if, at that point, the stitches are on only two needles. Quite true, it turns out. I have always changed direction after casting on a sock, and ribbed one or even two rows back and forth before joining, but perhaps henceforth I’ll do it her way.

I enjoyed the beginning of Meg’s Fair Isle video, and hope to watch some more this evening. I left her about to tell me how to cast on in a way that would stop corrugated rib from flaring outwards.

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Alexander came to see us, as often on a Wednesday. He is as depressed as I am at the prospect of another independence referendum – two more years of anxiety and bad temper, and then ---

He thinks that so profound a change should require a bit more than a simple majority, like constitutional amendments in the US. I’m inclined to agree.

He and his family will be here for the match against Italy on Saturday, the last day of the Six Nations tournament. But he and I are both almost more interested in Ireland-England at the end of the afternoon. Can Ireland stop the juggernaut? 

That’s a fortnight of Lent disposed of – nearly 1/3. And Laetare Sunday is less than a fortnight distant. That’s when we relax for a day.

C. and I had a good walk, around Bonaly Reservoir this morning. The weather was bright and fairly vernal, but with a terrific wind, We walked for an hour, and covered perhaps 2 ½ miles. Not much, but there were two steep ascents involved. I feel much the better for it.

But I was in no state for much knitting when I got back. I’ve done some more ribbing, and must take care that the half-brioche sweater, so nearly finished, doesn’t slip away.

I watched some of Hazel Tindall’s video last night – it’s a two-disk set, but I can’t find the second disk or the box. Tonight I hope to watch a bit of Meg’s Fair Isle Vest video.  I was right: Hazel knits around with three needles, rather than four or five.

I had a nice time just now reading about what a wonderful time everybody had at the EYF, and looking at pictures of their hauls. My own acquisitions look positively restrained in comparison with many.

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Jen, and Isabella (comments yesterday): my very happy weekend in Shetland happened not long before the (first) independence referendum. There was a substantial movement – posters in the airport, etc – in favour of the idea that if Scotland as a whole voted for independence, and the northern islands voted for union, they would be allowed to remain in the UK. They are not quite Scotland, up there; they have an interesting separate history.

But you can imagine how far they got with that idea, in the Scottish parliament.

The situation now seems to me rather parallel. We were promised last time that there wouldn’t be another referendum for a generation. 

Today wasn’t as productive. There are still a few inches to sew together on the final stretch of the half-brioche side-and-sleeve seam. I fetched Vogue Knitting from its place on the shelf in preparation for possibly adding a collar – I think it’s the best book I have for such details. I discovered in it, accidentally, that if you are adding a placket or collar of a different colour, you should pick up the stitches in the original colour and then switch. In this case, the Roast Hatch Chillies are there in the background all along, but the Whiskey Barrel predominates so strongly that I had probably better take Vogue’s advice.

I did some more ribbing on my husband’s sweater. He is of respectable circumference, and the Sweater Wizard wants 22 rounds of rib, so it’ll take a while.

And I read Alice Starmore’s Fair Isle book. It is extremely thorough, extremely Starmore. She, too, is keen on swatching and warns of the unexpected results that can arise when colours are combined.

On securing steeks: Peggy, you must bear in mind what Mary Lou wisely pointed out – that leaving a steek unsecured depends on your having used Shetland yarn, which is very “sticky”. Starmore cuts cheerfully into an unsecured steek, but insists that you hem it firmly down later. Mucklestone, towards the end of her lesson on securing steeks, does mention the possibility of doing nothing. Nor does she hem the facing later.

I'd better find out what Meg recommends, in that video I've got, before I decide.

Non-knit

I am going on a walk tomorrow with our niece, while the cleaner is here. I used to walk with her quite often, five miles or so. I wonder how much I can manage now – it’s been a long time.

I am greatly distressed to learn that there is to be another referendum on Scottish independence. 

Today was quite productive on the knitting front. I finished the first of the long seams on the half-brioche sweater, enabling me to try it on, after a fashion. I think it’s going to fit rather well. I have embarked on the second seam. It’s slow work. I’m doing something between mattress stitch and a simple overcast.

I got a bit anxious about not having any actual knitting to hand – unusually, I don’t even have a pair of socks on the go. My Tannehill swatch has emerged from the wash, so I took gauge from it again (virtually unchanged) and then ran the figures through the Sweater Wizard and printed out a pattern for my husband’s plain-vanilla v-neck sweater. And cast it on. The SW is an excellent program – it’s a pity nobody has picked it up and run with it. It’s a pity computers keep changing all the time and rendering good programs obsolete. Like the British Quicken.

It is a great pleasure, knitting with madtosh DK.  I showed my husband the swatch, and he thoroughly approves of “Tannehill”. And I’ve got plenty. It’s been discontinued, so that’s an important fact. (The Sweater Wizard estimates how much you’ll need.) So we’re set fair.  

I’ve gone on thinking about Fair Isle. I can’t knit Alexander his vest without the Calcutta Cup, but I can knit a swatch-scarf and at the moment, fully intend to do so. I might even make it long enough to give to him, thus using up all the yarn. I’ll keep the ball bands carefully. Here is my yarn:

And here it is with the iPad’s “tonal” mask applied. I still don’t know what that achieves:

I think my plan for the immediate future, once the half-brioche is finished, will be to have my husband’s sweater as No. One WIP, with perhaps two days a week for frivolity: either Mary Lou’s baby sweater, or the swatch-scarf.

I wish I had asked Hazel Tindall exactly how she knits. I know that a knitting belt is always involved, and I suspect, from something she said, that she knits on three needles rather than four (or five). So knitting a sock would be exactly the same as knitting a sweater, except that she’d finish a needle and have to switch over much sooner. I’ve got her knitting video but have never watched much of it. Some of the answer may well be there.

I’ve also got Meg’s Fair Isle Vest video and have never even unwrapped it.

I have been surprised, going carefully back through “A Shetlander’s Fair Isle Graph Book”, to see that a great many of the patterns change both colours in the same row. I thought that was never done. Hazel said that she prefers not to.