Annie, let’s do lunch at Knit Nation Twenty Twelve – depending a bit on our class schedules, of course.

Shandy, I am out of the loop when it comes to projects for giving every Olympic athlete an embroidered postcard. I expect the subject will be covered in the next episode of the documentary I mentioned yesterday.

Devoted link-followers will remember the one my brother-in-law sent me the other day when “tricoter” came up on his French word-a-day feed. The writer was taught the basics in a French LYS, warned that the habit could get expensive, and sent away with needles and yarn. That’s all you need to know, to enjoy this one.

“Knit, Swirl”: having done a couple of successful EZ’s (is there any other sort?) in the last couple of years – the Adult Surprise, and Round-the-Bend – I feel confident about re-jigging a pattern as long as there’s a schematic. I’m wearing Round-the-Bend quite a bit now that summer is here, and like it. That’s relevant, because I knit it in a much finer yarn than the Zimmermanns had in mind. Plural, because it was published as Meg’s pattern.

Having thought that thot last night, I began to wonder, when? and how? did schematics come in? There was no such thing when I was starting to knit in the late 40’s and, after a gap, the mid-50’s. Although designers must have used them.

Could I work it out by looking at certain pivotal books? My off-the-cuff feeling is that first we had Mary Thomas Knitting Book (pre-war), then a spate of Encyclopedias of Knitting and earnest grey books called Family Knitting or a variation thereof, then a gap, then Thompson’s ground-breaking guernsey book in 1969. Then EZ herself – “Knitting Without Tears” was 1971. Then another gap, then Kaffe. No schematics in “Glorious Knitting” (1985), although schematics would be sort of irrelevant to Kaffe.

I could go back through all those piles of magazines which threaten the stability of our bedroom floor. VK vanished in the late 60’s and then reappeared – when exactly? And did the re-born magazine have schematics from the beginning?

Knitting

I’ve reached round 70 of the Mourning Shawl border. I am now settled back into the saddle and more or less resigned to the snail-like progress of lace knitting. I think I worked out at the beginning that I get one percentage point for my sidebar for every two rounds knit. I’m not going to do the arithmetic again, whatever. That seems plausible, and I can take stock when the borders are finished.

The centre should feel much faster, when I finally get there. My ambition for today is to reach the next decrease round, 72.

Non-knit

The Encyclopedia of Edible Plants of North America turned up as hoped, and promises very well, although I haven’t got past the chenopodia. Chenopodium album (it says) is “the best wild species” of this genus, with a “very fine spinach flavour”. Good King Henry is “excellent raw or cooked”. The composition of the leaves is similar to ch. album – does that mean, they taste the same? I feel we have still to get to grips with the bitterness of the plants I grow.