I am not quite at my sparkly best this morning. Is it toothache? A stiff neck? Headache? A mild flu? Discomforts flicker and reappear hither and yon.

I had a good time (again) with Brownstone yesterday, and should finish Phase One, the short-rowing, today. An article on making a shawl collar turned up on Zite, my iPad app that surfs the web for me and puts together a knitting magazine. The collar was done separately and sewn on.

That sent me to my reference books for a rapid and unscientific trawl – and I didn’t find anyone who did it like Jared. I’ve forgotten, now, what was in what book. Someone started by picking up the stitches across the back neck and knitting back and forth, casting on a few at the end of every row. The loose tails were eventually sewn down. Someone picked up all the stitches and knit them back and forth, unshaped. The majority seemed to favour doing the collar entirely separately.

So far, Jared’s version looks wonderful. I have high hopes for it, although I am slightly concerned for what comes next. Jared has a couple of toggles. I’m not wildly enthusiastic about them – but the neck is cut very deep. Will it gape unless secured by toggles?

I’ve just browsed Ravelry, and have come home with try-it-and-you-may-I-say, as usual. Most people put the toggles on, but not everyone has fastened them for the photographs.

 The shawl collar looks slightly skimpy in many photographs, deep and luxurious on Jared’s model. The instruction at this point –  see yesterday – is to knit until the back-neck is 4 inches deep, or until wrap-and-turn reaches the markers indicating where v-neck shaping began, whichever happens first. At the moment my collar all-but measures four inches, and I am about an inch and a half short of the markers. Maybe I’ll do a few rows more.

Non-knit

All the subjects into which I was so eager to plunge yesterday, notably death and astronomy, seem unattractive this morning.

I was grateful for your comments yesterday, Kate and Maureen, confirming my impression that Interweave is not entirely facing up to the iPad. My Piecework subscription is working fine, in the Zinio app. And they put out that emag about colour, all very interactive, which runs under an app of its own. I’ve got that and I don’t know that I’m tremendously impressed with interactivity, but it’s on the iPad and it runs.

By comparison, the brioche stitch workshop seems a modest production for a machine which will play movies (although I haven’t got that far yet with mine). Where did you go in Ravelry, Maureen, to have that discussion with Interweave?