Good progress with the Therapy Scarf – I finished a skein of yarn yesterday, the first time I’ve done that in a while. Here’s another pic.



The colours are in fact darker and richer than that.

Tamar, that’s an interesting question, about whether the increases I’m doing are being done a row below the current row.. Thinking about it makes me slightly dizzy. It doesn’t matter, because I’m getting the undulations I want, but it remains interesting to wonder about.

I hope Stitches East was all you expected. Since the fall Knitter’s has only just made it to Drummond Place, I was aware that East was happening last weekend. I hope you got there for Kaffe’s talk, and if so, I hope he was as inspirational as he is capable of being. I think he’s probably said what he has to say by now, as far as knitting is concerned – I mean, I doubt if we’re going to have any more world-shaking patterns. But that needn’t stop him being inspirational.

I was at East four years ago -- then, as now, on the eve of mid-term elections. Much more interesting this time.

Miscellaneous

Helen sent me home from Thessaloniki with two little-boy sweaters to mend.



The blue one is my own pattern: its merit is that you sort of swatch as you go along. It seems to be coming apart at the shoulders, and the simplest thing will be to rip out the join and do a 3-needle bind-off all over again. I like doing 3-needle bind off’s a lot, anyway.

The other one is a “Ridged Raglan” from Knitter’s Spring ’99 – back in the days when Nancy Thomas was editor, I think. Certainly pre-Rick. I never did understand why that pattern didn’t become, at least briefly, a world-wide favourite. It is both a pullover and a cardigan, and sized from child through to adult. It's a lot of fun to knit. My one seems to have snagged, and a coarse darn will probably be the only solution I’ll attempt.

I have conceived a new yearning this morning: an EZ bog jacket in Malabrigo. That link takes you a UK source with a good colour range. I’ve got a ready-reckoner that Patternworks sent me once, which will estimate how much yarn I need. But how much more do I need to reckon, for garter stitch? Does anybody know?

It’s a ridiculous idea. Apart from Alexander’s Fair Isle, and my beloved Princess, there’s that Jade Sapphire cashmere waiting to be the Hiawatha stole. I find that yarn-buying resistance is at its annual lowest during these dark weeks at the end of the year.

Non-knit

We had a scorpion one evening, in our bathroom on Mt. Pelion. We all admired it for a while, and then somebody crushed it. I remain faintly surprised at how little concerned I was. Even when I subsequently had to get up in the night to pee in that very bathroom.