So it turns out that Annie M. hasn’t been paid for Knit Camp. As I’ve said here before, I haven’t been paying much attention since my own failure to turn up, but I feel sure that I read somewhere that matters had been somehow taken out of the organizer’s hands, and tutors had been paid. Clearly not so.

Annie’s blog post has a link to Lucy Neatby’s, which we knew about, and Deb Robson’s, which is new to me.

This is a very sad affair for British knitting in general. Several Ravellers said that during the height of the crisis. How right they were. How fortunate that Franklin pulled out in time. I don’t suppose there are many knitting experts who are so rich that they can afford to swan over to Stirling and do a week’s work for nothing.

I’m sorry I didn’t go, so that I could say that I Was There, like Dunkirk. Except that, comparatively speaking, Dunkirk was pretty well organized.

Knitting

I am bounding ahead with the Amedro shawl, now starting the third pattern repeat of the main section. There are ten repeats in all, plus a few rows – but by the end, there will only be five stitches in each of the wing sections, not enough for a complete pattern width-wise.

The wings consist of columns of two alternating patterns – roundels, easy even for me; and “diamond chain stitch” – the one Helen somehow thinks represents both Scotland and Greece. I’m struggling a bit with that one, although it’s very simple, because not all of its rows are symmetrical as lace usually is.

This is my fourth time through this pattern, as far as the shape and the edgings are concerned. But for Nos 2 and 3, I substituted other lace patterns for the main parts. So I haven’t done Diamond Chain Stitch since the first time, Rachel’s 40th birthday shawl which can be precisely dated to 1998. I don’t remember having trouble with it then.

I’ve now charted it, which helps.

On the other hand, I’m beginning to get a mental grip of the central pattern. It’s a most inappropriate choice for this shawl, being completely lace-y while in the wings those two columns of patterns float in quite a lot of st st, as you see, which speeds things along no end.

Books

Thank you, Cat. I’ll give “Brave New Knits” a miss, at least for now. There isn’t much space left on the knitting shelves, anyway. Our home-library system is much like yours: sections for categories, and on the whole we can find what we want. Yesterday’s poster is hanging in my husband’s study, where all the books are either Art or Reference, and where they’re probably tidier than in the rest of the house.

And there’s a mystery. We cannot find Geoffrey Dutton’s book “Some Branch Against the Sky”, his account of “marginal gardening” very near us in Strathardle. We bought it earlier this year, attentive readers will remember, and took it north, I am sure. That is the appropriate place, and that is where the gardening books are. Now that children and grandchildren have temporarily withdrawn, it’s time to read it. Where is it? That house is small, and I searched it fairly comprehensively on a rainy day last week without result.