Jabot

Real progress. It looks rather small, but edging added to the fourth side will widen it, and blocking will make a difference. Once it’s been blocked out and gathered in, I’ll know whether I’ve got another test square or an actual tier. I am very hopeful. At the worst – if it proves to be a test square – it should provide all the data I need to proceed. It seems to me to strike just the right note, fruitiness-wise.

Soul-warmer

Dawn, I’m sure you’re right that when the pattern says “length”, it is referring to the length from cuff to cuff. Once I had grasped that, I thought that Tamar’s previous comment – that there was no increasing to be done for the body part – was certainly right. Her comment yesterday, which came in after I had thought that thought, underlines the point.

I agree that a steek should actually be cast on. It would continue, wouldn’t it? the false underarm seam of the sleeve?

If you’re really thinking of knitting one, Tamar, get hold of the book (Sundbo’s “Knitting in Art”) and look at the picture. It’s a full page, near the end. You don’t need to buy the book, because you’ve already got the pattern except for a little chart showing decreasing into the cuff. I’m sure you could wing it, for that.

I’ll have to leave it on the HALFPINT list until my year’s yarn fast is over in November – despite re-setting the slider, I regard it as still in progress. And what I lack, in all that stash, is solid colours (or near-solid; that’s what I really love) in sufficient quantity to knit anything.

Koigu jacket

The Socklady came up with a gem of a pattern for me yesterday – her most recent blog entry says that she was looking for one for herself. It’s another sideways cardigan (Ravelry link), this one incorporating the very short-row wedges to add swing which I had been thinking of trying to introduce into the Kaleidoscope cardigan. (another Ravelry link).

I’ve bought it and printed it. Once jabot-making is out of the way, I think I’m ready to roll.

Non-knit: the Budget

Two things.

It is traditional for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on Budget Day, to carry a battered old red dispatch box which used, I believe, to belong to Mr Gladstone. When our current Prime Minister occupied that office, he had a horrible new box made for himself – no doubt, at considerable expense to the taxpayer, and no doubt part of the New Labour programme to sweep away fuddy-duddy-ism. The current incumbent, I am glad to note, has reverted to the old one. We are lucky Brown didn’t put it out with the rubbish.

There is to be a heavy new tax on cider, which the Chancellor has probably never tasted in his life. I am sure he thinks all cider-drinkers are low-life, as many of us indeed are. There’s something called “White Heat” much favoured by the derelict. But there are also serious cider-makers – mostly in Herefordshire -- like my friend Mr Weston, not part of any huge consortium, and I fear for their future. This is a picture of one of the bottles I hope to consume on Easter Sunday.