A little more Outdoors, after all, before we get back to knitting.

Beverly, that’s a brilliant idea, to prune only half of the autumn raspberries. I will certainly do that next year. I am a bit disappointed with them, in that I had hoped they would fruit at the end of August when everybody comes up for the Games and when the season’s real raspberries are about finished. But they’re later than that. This way, there will at least be something earlier.

Last Friday we went to Alyth so that my husband could get his hair cut. He insists on Mr Mitchell of Alyth. While there, he met a (rather grand) friend, Paul Ramsay of Bamff, who shares his taste in barbers.

Paul has introduced beavers to his estate and is regarded with unease by local landowners because beavers cut down trees to make their dams. He writes a blog called beaversatbamff. He also sells wild boar – to eat, not as pets.

Knitting, at last

When we went up a week ago, my idea was to take the languishing Araucania project back to the armpits – it had been knit circularly that far – and proceed as in the October chapter of the Knitter’s Almanac, with EZ’s open-collared pullover.

It turned out – a pleasant surprise – that I was further along than I remembered. The back was completely finished, and the front not far short of the neck opening. Too much to take back, but still time to put in EZ’s garter-stitch neck placket and collar with intrinsic i-cord.

I am absolutely delighted with the result, and am sure I now have enough enthusiasm to carry me through the sleeves. I have cast on the first one. Ron in Mexico, I owe it all to you.


There were problems, though. Intrinsic i-cord, as given by EZ, means ending every row yf, slip 3 stitches as if to purl, and beginning the next row, k3. I started with the wearer’s left side, and found after a few rows that I had a nice i-cord on the inside, the k3 side, and something not as nice – certainly different – on the outside. I took it back and reversed the instructions and it was fine.

AND I remembered in the nick of time that the collar was going to fold itself outwards so that inside became outside. I switched the i-cord over at the crucial moment.

There was no such problem with the i-cord bind-off around the outer edge of the collar.

Do I conclude that, in the master’s hands, intrinsic i-cord looks the same on both sides? Or that the instructions for the sweater were already so complicated that she didn’t want to venture on explaining a further difficulty? She says that the project was sidetracked for 15 years anyway “as being too complicated for comprehensible directions”.

There’s a bit of a pucker where the loose end of placket border was tacked down. That is because the garter stitch border is a bit shorter than the st st it is attached to, because of the nature of garter stitch. It would have been a good idea to introduce a few short rows, if EZ or I had thought of it. I hope blocking will subdue the pucker.

I cast this thing on three years ago, in March ’08.