Friday, November 23, 2007

The jellyfish “bloom” (yesterday) wasn’t ten miles across – just ten square miles in all, which is a lot less. Still more jellyfish than one would care to find in one’s bathtub. They weren’t even looking for the salmon – they just stung them (at least that’s what the expert said on television) because they were in the way.

So: I finished the ribbing of the cashmere gansey, which involved attaching the second skein of yarn. There is rejoicing in heaven, in this much-stashed house, when a ball of yarn is actually finished. The Earth Stripe stole consumed only two. The rest now form a lovely bag of odd-balls, probably enough to knit a second stole.

So today I will refresh myself on the subject of how to knit attached i-cord, and tackle that job. I don’t know what to do about blocking and shaping this thing, and will postpone the question until it is finished-finished. It has a literal haze, and I don’t entirely like the thought of what water or pressure (if blocked under a damp cloth) might do to it.

Comments

knititch, yes, I got your message about Jannette’s Rare Yarns, and followed it up, and that’s when I decided I’d try to avoid importing yarn and concentrated on Ravelry instead – and wound up importing yarn. I think you might be right, Tricia, about the value of the package being the deciding factor. Fingers crossed for this one. I have often bought single tee-shirts and sweat-shirts from Cafepress without penalty, as I built up my Dolores-based wardrobe: but last year at this time I ordered three at once, for Christmas presents, and I got clobbered.

I am horrified to hear that you have to pay duty on imported books, in Denmark. There is none here. And I thought that sort of thing would be standardised all over the EC.

And, everybody, follow the link above to Knititch’s blog to read the Danish poem about November – for once, I think it probably loses but little in translation. But we should all remember (to play Goody-Two-Shoes for a moment) that these dreadful days are the annual price we must pay for May: and May has thirty-one days.

The Curmudgeon mentioned MWPhillips yesterday, too: and a book of hers called “Creative Knitting” which I don’t know and don’t have. (It’s great to sit here and look up my library on LibraryThing and establish for sure that it’s not there, instead of wandering disconsolately up and down the shelves.) Temptation plucks at the sleeve.

Fishwife, you have all my sympathy, as you knit an uncongenial object. I don’t know Elle Plume and don’t think I want to. I hope, at least, that it knits up fast.

4 comments:

  1. 10 square miles is still a 3.16 mile square or a circle of 3.5 miles diameter, which is quite a lot of jellyfish to get tangled up with. They can do a bit of directed motion, but they are, by and large, at the mercy of the currents. Not that that's any consolation to the captive salmon who were in their path.

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  2. Anonymous2:39 PM

    I just finished a "hazy" sweater. Pinning out dry and spritzing with water worked well on it.
    How sad for the salmon farm. Business is tough enough without a disaster like that.

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  3. oh how funny knitters are about november. thanks for the link.

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  4. Anonymous5:43 AM

    I have that book - Creative Knitting A New Art Form, by M.W. Phillips. It's interesting, though I admit my main attraction to it is that it contains the only color photos I've seen of two of the 16th-17th century knitted silk jackets in the NY Metropolitan Museum costume collection.

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