Considerably more cheerful.

I bought Interweave’s 2011 “Knitting Traditions” yesterday to cheer myself up, knowing I wouldn’t like it much, but at least with the iPad I’m not left with a great expensive can’t-throw-it-away-but-don’t-really-want-it to add to all the knitting stuff here.

What I discovered in it is MOCO yarns, meaning Musk Ox Company, meaning qivuit, from Caryll Designs. If qivuit could be said to have a fault, it’s colour. The fibre starts pretty dark, when still attached to the musk ox, and never gets lighter. But it looks, even so, as if there are better colours than there were during my qivuit phase many years ago.

There’s no room for temptation (quite apart from the prohibitive cost) because of my new rule – I mustn’t buy it until I can knit it. And that won’t be for a while, with the Japanese shirt stretching ahead in Strathardle and Thomas-the-Elder’s electric red sweater soon to be cast on here.

I once bought a couple of skeins of cashmere Koigu from String in NY. Do they still do it? I had it delivered to one of you who was about to come to Edinburgh, and I shall never forget my first peer into that package as we sat over coffee. Cashmere, yes. Koigu, yes. But the colour was dull, compared to the Koigu I knew and loved. I learned something about fibres and colours that day (not much, but something).

Silk, wool, cotton – you can’t beat ‘em.

Mourning Shawl

I’ve reached row 133. No new problems yesterday. At this clip, I’ll reach the row (161) where I plan to start the final panel of lettering, our niece’s initials, in two or three days. I’d better start charting.

Knitting Oddities

Hinke Osinga at the University of Bristol crocheted (what would wind up as) a Christmas decoration based on the “Lorenz manifold”. It’s something to do with chaos theory.

And then how about this: