Thank you
for your sympathy. We’re still on our feet. I got in touch with the insurance
company – we don’t have contents insurance (for various reasons) but we do
insure the fabric of the house, and the main expense here is going to be the
ceiling. I hired a big dehumidifier, on the advice of the downstairs neighbour
who helped with the inundation. As he rightly predicted, emptying it twice a
day makes one feel one is doing something.
A man from
Imperial Consultants (sounds very sinister) will come this morning to see if we
are wet enough to satisfy the insurance company. I was told not to get the
dehumidifier until he had approved the expense but I thought, bugger that.
I didn’t
know about freezing books (and there wouldn’t be room in our little freezer drawers)
but that is an interesting fact to file away. There is only one bookcase in
that room, and it was out of the line of fire. There were art books piled on
the unfortunate sideboard. My husband says that sort of paper sticks
irretrievably together when wet.
The top of
the sideboard will need to be re-French-polished. Damage to pictures is slight,
and retrievable. I will put my husband to work making some sort of list, hoping
that the offenders’ insurance will help.
Knitting
I have
finished the first Zauberball sock. It was only towards the end that it
occurred to me that perhaps the colour sequence will never repeat. Zauberisch,
indeed!
Fit is
snug. Sunday's try-on revealed that fact, so I didn’t add any additional negative ease
for length. I am knitting 64 stitches on 2mm needles (because these square ones
don’t come in my usual 2.25mm size), and getting 8 stitches to the inch. The
circumference of my foot is something like 10 inches. Part of the point of the
Sock Project is to get seriously to grips with size. I think I’ve learned
something here.
And I paid
the customs charge for the Japanese snood yarn by buying expensive stamps over the counter. Anna Livia,
that is an interesting idea, that the Royal Mail website is scrambling my
address. The only other time I’ve had trouble with that credit card was at the
Apple App Store – the card is basically American, and I live in Edinburgh
Dutch Heel
Mary Lou,
it was when Judy Gibson said that one does not knit 1 stitch beyond the decrease
that I suddenly saw how to do a Dutch heel. But the difference is more than
that. There is a centre panel of 1/3 of the heel stitches which stays
unchanged, instead of the widening wedge of the standard heel. The decreases
are done on either side of it, in a vertical column.
So instead
of gradually widening out to the edge of the heel stitches, one gradually
brings the edges in to oneself, so to speak. I hope the Zauberball chooses a
bright colour for the second heel, so that I can have a better look at it.
The heel of your sock shows what we call the "endless night" of Zauberball--just when you're ready to expire of colour boredom, it finishes. And it does not repeat...
ReplyDeleteRegarding your credit card problem, someone posted in a Ravelry group that they tried to use their US credit card to purchase a kit from Virtual Yarns in the UK and their card would not be approved. After a call to the company they discovered that their card can NEVER be used for international purchases. I wonder if you're experiencing something of the same sort of problem? Maybe not, maybe you use it often in Edinburgh with no problem but sometimes the cards have different security policies for use over the Internet than for direct swiping......and with all the new regulations cards are changing a lot of their policies.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jean, that makes much more sense. I'll have to try it on my next sock.
ReplyDelete