Another new follower! Hugs!

Knit Nation 2011

In other respects, I’m not feeling entirely cheerful.

Several bloggers have already written about Knit Nation, but the first report I saw was my dear Cotton and Cloud – lots of nice pics from the market, each linked through to the vendor’s website. Helen C.K.S., if you’re there – a particularly nice pic of Jeanette, clearly much happier writing and designing than she was running Edinburgh’s best LYS.

My lack of cheerfulness stems from the news, somewhere in that blog, that there probably won’t be a Knit Nation next year because of the bl**dy Olympics.

There is no reason at all why I should be free-er next year than this, to abscond from domestic responsibilities and turn up. But one needs to live in hope – and in fact, I had a plan. In the summer of 2013 I will turn 80 – how on earth did that come about? Older than C. was when she died in March. I may not make it.

I know perfectly well that none of us may make it to next Tuesday. (I’ve been reading Horace lately, hence the question the other day about the gender of “Hadria”.) But I still feel less than cheerful. I was bored by the Olympics in 1948 and have remained unswervingly so ever since, but now I have a real grudge.

Mourning shawl

I’ve reached round 63. Here’s a pic

illustrating both the tedium and Fleegle’s system. No matter how much I snug things up at the turn, there is a difference between this corner and the other three. A line of faggoting, sort of. But a less discordant difference than wrapping-and-turning (I did that for a shawl once) or leaving the corner open and sewing it up later.

The safety pin is to remind me which side I’m doing, and also, I think I remember, to secure a stitch-drop which will have to be attended to later. The pictured colour, needless to say, is absurd. It's not pink, it's electric red.

I spent some time in Sharon Miller’s great book yesterday. I won’t add more rows to the centre pattern; I’ll take in two stitches at a time from the sides, every other pass. Sharon says that three-for-two (which I think is what that will amount to) is a common ratio. The centre is the best bit of this shawl, making up for the tedium of the borders.

I will put C’s initials in the lower right-hand corner of the centre, viewed one way, and our niece’s in the equivalent spot, viewed the other. (Turning lace lettering upside down is not as simple as you might think, but Rorem gives a good exposition of the principles in the original Piecework article and I’ve done it before.) In the middle, “2011”, orientated towards C’s initials. That’s the idea.

Non-knit

Greek Helen rang up yesterday. They are driving home from Athens this year, and have got as far as the south of France where they are staying with Helen’s oldest friend. It was good to hear from her, and we’ll see them next week, insh’Allah.