Miscellany

No more travel news, for the moment. Thank you for the KLM ad, Joan. Greek Helen says she has set herself the goal of dressing for the wedding for £15 with the help of eBay. My guess is that she will succeed, and be the best-dressed woman there.

And speaking of eBay…

My collection of British Vogue Knitting Books is complete, in a sense. I have a bound volume of all the ones from the 1930’s which includes three that I don’t own in any other form. The binder has left out the covers – those early ones are rather interesting – and the pages of pure advertising, which are often fascinating. So I keep looking on eBay for those three, as well as to replace the coverless and excessively tatty ones in the main collection.

Well, one of the missing three is coming up tomorrow. It’s been a long wait. Plus (same seller) a wartime one which I have in coverless form. The one on offer is in poor shape, and the cover is detached – but it’s there. I won’t bid high, but I’ll try. Plus a “Hand Knits for Service Men” which I think I can forgo. So there’s hope that she – the seller – has some more of auntie’s treasures up her sleeve.

As for knitting, I finished the 13th repeat of the Princess centre, and rushed straight on, not pausing for counting and calculating and photographing. The first pattern row is plain knit – Advance to Go – and I’ve done that. The first rank of lettering is now complete, but I think it’ll look better with a wee bit of plain knitting on top, so I’ll show you tomorrow. I wish I had planned on more plain rows of knitting between the ranks of letters – I’ve allowed only three – but it’s too late to do anything about that.

There’s a interesting discussion going on in the Heirloom Knitting Group about how to manage the centre stitches as you knit the top edging on. These are all knitters, I am sure, who bought the pattern when it was re-released. Mine is one of the original, signed limited edition, and I am probably among the last of the original purchasers to be tottering towards the end. I feel there ought to be a website somewhere with Princess-finishers listed in a roll of honour. Perhaps I’ll propose the idea. I feel they are set apart from the rest of humanity, like those who have done the Haj or climbed all the munros in Scotland.

Oddly, the correspondents keep referring to “+- 800 stitches” in the centre. That was the border, ladies. The centre should have +- 647. That’s bad enough. I will count when I finish, just to see. I’m sure I’ll be substantially off the count.