The picture was the real thing – a slight work, portrait of a two-year-old child, very sweet. Not in its original frame, alas – my husband is very interested in frames – but in the hands of the people MHA gave it to, 200 years ago. That’s something.

Comments

Thanks for the identification of the Golden Compass, and the news that knitters are talking about it. I miss some things by no longer reading the Knitlist or anything of that ilk. I should spend more time in Ravelry, perhaps.

(Misstea, I do so agree about those voices in one’s head. I remember as-if-it-were-yesterday when I went to see “My Friend Flicka” at the age of maybe 10. I was so excited: I thought I was going to see the people and the pictures in my head. I can still see and hear them, but I have mercifully forgotten the movie.)

LizzieK8, I don’t know where the Sonoran Desert is, but was delighted to find that it’s still yesterday there, when I had a look at your blog just now. Thank you very much for the link to the darning video. (Scroll down.) I watched it with interest, and see where my technique could be improved, most notably by darning more generously around the edges of the hole.

Ron, I’m glad you’re knitting socks. There’s something very satisfying about it. I haven’t knit socks at home for ages, if ever before, and am greatly enjoying it. Quite apart from the knowledge that the project will be quickly finished, will fit, well be welcomed and worn. I got to the heel flap of the first KF “Fog” sock yesterday.

(Today, however, I will revert to my occasional Sunday knitting of the Stacked Wedges scarf from Lynne Barr’s “Knitting New Scarves” in Noro Silk Blend. My sister suggested, in a comment long ago, that I knit scarves for Senator Obama’s daughters, to be presented at the forthcoming photography session. That’s more than I could fit into this year’s tight schedule, but I still might finish this one and send it to Denver for Mrs Obama.)

MaryJoO – and I think this might be of interest to you, too, LizzieK8 – multiple WIPpery used to be a problem to me, in youth. Partial reform came from a sharp remark from my daughter Helen, 30 years or so ago: “What’s that going to be – if you finish it?” I started keeping a manila folder labelled “Knitting Actually Completed” with pattern leaflets, notes, dates, finished sizes, photographs, yarn samples. An unexpected consequence was a sharp falling-off in the total number of current projects.

Nowadays photography is digital and that file is less thorough, but still maintained. Every so often the original manila folder has to be emptied into a box file and re-started. I record FO’s in an electronic Filofax as well – a copy of Lotus Organizer. And now there’s Ravelry.

I practice what someone once brilliantly called “locational WIPs”. One for Strathardle, one for here, socks for waiting rooms and travel. Things are expanding a bit at the moment, with the Sunday scarf just mentioned, and the poor Princess whom I continue to regard as a WIP rather than a UFO – but she’s been idle for a long time.

It was my cyber friend Judy Sumner, whom some will remember from the Knitlist, who hit upon the notion of assigning different projects to different days of the week, when things got really bad.