Saturday, September 04, 2010

One of the routines of Games Day is the group picture taken at the end of the afternoon, back at the house. Alexander, the photographer, has now sent me this year’s version. It’s a particularly good one, with most of us looking unwontedly cheerful. Alexander himself is in the back row, framed by Rachel and Ed in the row in front, with the tense, anxious look which invariably identifies the person who has just set the delayed shutter action and run around to join the group.

Two of our guests are missing – my husband’s great-niece (his sister’s granddaughter, putting it another way) and her boyfriend. They had sloped off somewhere. I don’t think the group picture has ever been incomplete before, and it distresses me. The great-niece/granddaughter has been with us before, and appears in the appropriate photograph(s). She should have known.

They turned up again much later in the evening. Perhaps it was all just too boring…


(That picture could only have been taken at the Braemar Games, not all that far from us.)

Before I leave the subject of the Games, Helen’s sweater deserves mention. Here it is on the Games field.


I knit each of my daughters and daughters-in-law a Wedding Sweater when they married. Helen’s, here, was far and away the best – but the marriage failed. She decided this summer that 15 years was long enough, and got it out again. Mercifully, it seems to have escaped the attention of the moths.

All the colours are natural. It dates from my lichen phase. The pinks and almost-reds derive from ochrolechia tartarea which I found somewhere above the Croft of Cultalonie. When I Google’d just now, to check the spelling, I found a reference to my own blog of January 27 this year – and that blog entry includes a picture of the left-over yarns from stash.

I think the rich brown may have been logwood, bought in. The other variations in colour were contributed by sheep. The motifs refer to various things in both the families involved. Helen’s dear horse Milligan (long dead, even then) appears at the top of the sleeve. All the wedding sweaters have the Crown of Glory on the shoulder, meant to be the reward of a life well lived.

Knitting

Little to report. I’m half-way through the 6th scallop (of 29) of Helen’s Amedro shawl. As you can see from yesterday’s pic, it is lace knitting of the most simple. The problem is to stay awake and remember where you are. The scallops are of different sizes, with a fish-tailed double one in the centre. That helps a bit, I think.

I read Woolgathering through to the end, and discover that Meg is going to teach at Vogue Knitting Live in Manhattan in January. Has she ever done such a thing before? I had already had an email from Vogue about it. Franklin will be there. I can dream.

5 comments:

  1. Maureen in Fargo4:12 PM

    Regarding Meg's teaching in New York at the Vogue Knitting thing, she's been doing this the last year and she always teaches with Amy Detjen, her right hand woman at Knitting Camp and her best friend, I think. They first taught at Sock Summit in Portland last year and they were at Yarnover in Minneapolis this Spring. I believe they've done a couple of other things but I'm not sure what they were.

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  2. Theresa I4:25 PM

    They were at Yarnover in Minneapolis in 2008 also I believe. I took her class. I still refer to the handouts. for me it was well worth it to see the sweaters knit by EZ.

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  3. =Tamar11:44 PM

    It's a lovely sweater, and 15 years is nothing to sneeze at.

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  4. it's thrilling that the 15-year-old wedding sweater still looks terrific, and that the recipient still wants to wear it.
    What else can a knitter ask for?

    That seems really a very odd photo of the Queen and Prince Philip, or do you think that is her normal mien?
    By the way the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is showing a 3D documentary on the Queen of Canada.
    I have no idea why, but I saw free 3D glasses at the post office today to entice one to watch the thing.
    http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/doczone/QE3D/

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  5. just stumbled across your blog - and admired the mcdougal jacket! wow, super - did you design this yourself?
    happy knitting
    Bettina from ireland

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