Mary, thank you tremendously for the offer of “Knitting on the Axis”. I misunderstood your first comment, as you suspected, and was going to say, Thanks, but I’ll take your word for it. But – second comment – if you really don’t want the book, I’d be very happy to have it. Write to me at the address in the sidebar and we’ll work out the postage.

Knitting

I am 11"  into the sleeve of the small Brownstone, with a target of 16".  I may shorten it a bit – the last thing a boy wants is sleeves dragging in his soup.

Last night I wound the first skein of the three from Happy Knits. As I did so, I became uneasy – not about colour, but is this yarn finer than what I have been knitting with? That wasn’t it. I soon defined the problem – it doesn’t seem to be plyed. I wish I were a spinner and understood these things. I have knit with yarn like this at sometime or other – what was it? when? Manos?

The labels are singularly unhelpful. The skeins in the original order, now constituting Big Thomas’s sweater, were labelled “Tosh DK (formerly known as tosh worsted) 100% superwash merino wool”. The three from Happy Knits, one of which I wound last night, are “Tosh merino DK 100% superwash merino wool”. The yardage, gauge, needle suggestions, on the two labels are identical.

I also have two skeins from Jimmy Bean – “Tosh DK”. Nothing about “formerly known as…” Everything else the same – but the Jimmy Bean skeins are plyed.

Buyer beware.

I have joined in the unplyed skein and knit three or four rounds. The colour match is really quite remarkably good, even by this morning’s dim contribution of natural light. There is a change – the unplyed yarn makes a shiner, silkier fabric.

I think it’s probably best to go on like this – the three Happy Knits skeins might even be enough to finish, or at least to finish minus the collar. I am less confident about the colour-match of the Jimmy Bean skeins. Life is frot with problems.

If there is still something left at the end, I’ll go for a watchcap. Maybe for me.

Non-knit

I must press on – Sundays are hard work. But I want to say:

I have eliminated Gardening and Cooking from my Zite magazine (iPad app) and switched to World News. (Knitting is still there, of course.) The American slant is fascinating. It’s not that the news is different -- the emphasis is. Over here, we’re mostly concerned at the moment with the collapse of civilisation as we know it in the form of Greece, the Euro, and the implications for the world economy of what seems to be about to happen. Zite is anxious about the potential zapping of Iran. So are we, of course, but we lack that American sense of Israel as the 53^rd state or whatever the total is by now. The Zite selections are by no means uncritical of Israel, but there is still that sense that Israel-is-us which is lacking here.

I wonder if I have expressed that clearly enough.