All went well with my second attempt at shoulder-attaching. I should finish today and get on to grafting and perhaps even i-cord. I suspect I’ll have to graft with the other colour this time, in step with the general inside-outness of the second half. Time for another look at the DVD.


Back view:

Front view:

The cheerful spring sunshine has revealed a difference in colour between the skeins. Both halves are sort of paler towards the bottom. We won't think about it.

The only hint I can think of for the second shoulder is in line with your suggestion, Gretchen. Spread both halves out on floor or table, depending on your agility, and take a good look at them. At that point, some of the top back edge has already been knit, filling in the neck space which is not cut out in the back as it is in front. Ask yourself where that edge is going next, and what it has to be attached to, starting from where. Look at your knitting, in fact, as EZ so excellently reminds us to do.

Angel, thank you for that wonderful link to Jared’s Tomten. I have bookmarked it. I think his ideas wouldn’t seem quite so daunting if one took them calmly, needles in hand, one problem at a time. I’m sort of anti-hood – they never seem to stay up – but it can be done with a collar. Is sock yarn too fine? I’ll have a better idea of the answer to that when I actually try RtB on: soon, now.

I made some progress yesterday with KnitNation, too. It’s scheduled for a mid-July weekend, and comparing dates with Rachel I discovered that she and her husband are likely to be in Toulouse that weekend, visiting his sister who keeps pestering them to come. Rachel works hard and doesn’t have many breaks – weekending in Toulouse is certainly not a common feature of her life.

Her first instinct was to cancel, but that would be ridiculous – there are too many imponderables at this end, including C.’s perilous health. We’d be likely to wind up with no Toulouse for her and no KnitNation for me. So she’s going to go, and various grandchildren such as Thomas-the-Elder and his sister Hellie have expressed a willingness to do a day’s exhibition-going with my husband. He has never liked going about alone, and is now sufficiently doddery that I wouldn’t be happy to think of him on the streets of London without a companion.

And this kind of detailed thinking, so early, means it might actually happen.


Non-knit

(Meg, I don’t have a Kindle – I thought a lot about getting one when I went to Theo’s wedding in CT 18 months ago. That’s as far as it went. James did get one on that occasion, but he has now moved on to an iPad and says he doesn’t use the Kindle. I presume you can get books for an iPad? It’s a bit bigger and heavier, but not much, and so wonderful that it is now my dream gadget. But for the time being, I am sticking to paper. It has its uses.)

We'll probably go to Strathardle tomorrow, despite forecasts of snow. That will mean "watching" the Calcutta Cup on the radio.