England beat France rather decisively in yesterday’s rugby match. There would seem to be no hope at all of Scotland’s retaining the Calcutta Cup next weekend, except that Calcutta Cup matches sometimes don’t go according to script.

Princess etc

I’m somewhere in row 8 of the 13th centre repeat. Row 9 is the slowest one of all, row 13 finishes off the motif and opens the door to the easy bit. I should reach that happy plateau by mid-week.

Here are the current pics. The middle one is included to show what a little, little bit of border still needs to be claimed although a whole quarter of the centre is still to be knit.

If you peer very, very carefully, you can see that the 7th repeat from the bottom is offset. I don't think it matters a bit.

Someone in the Yahoo Heirloom Knitting group is knitting it in black, and worried about the shape. I tried to reassure her. It will look spectacular – but would one need to be a widow, or a Spanish Queen, to wear it?

I read through the instructions for the Unst stole before I put Heirloom Knitting back on the shelf yesterday. That one is done by knitting the centre first and then outwards through the borders, attaching the edging last of all. The technique in the Bestway leaflet that I mentioned a day or two ago, is to start at one end and stop when the centre is finished and start again from the other end, grafting the results together.

The Queen Ring border includes the “sprouting seed” motif which also appears in the Princess. In the latter case, all the sprouts nod inwards towards the centre – that is, the knitter has to change their direction in mid-row. Exciting. In the QR, one would have to think rather seriously about direction, but it seems to me at first glance that it – one’s projected stole – would look fine if the borders were knit identically, and the seeds nodded to the right whichever end of the stole one regarded.

I couldn’t agree more, Maureen, that the prospect of lace grafting is terrifying. But a couple of break rows of garter stitch can easily be included at the crucial point (and at the other end of the centre, to balance). When the Princess is finished (!), the end of the top edging will have to be lace-grafted to the beginning. There’s a picture in the pattern of how it looked when Sharon did it. We shall see.

London

It sounds as if Thursday the 26th is our day. Frustrating: on the 25th we could have Wren and on the 27th, Jenny. Judith and Christine, you had better send me brief notes at the email address in the sidebar, so that I have your email addresses. Comments don’t allow me to reply directly – or if they do, I haven’t figured out how. Telephone numbers would be a good idea, too. I’ll send you Rachel’s number – and I can access Googlemail from her computer in London, for last-minute messaging. I agree that I should phone the shop to let them know we’ll be there: three people! Gosh! (More welcome, of course.)

This page of the I Knit website gives first rate directions for how to get there. This is going to be fun – thank you for your reassuring message, Stash Haus.