Storm

My sister says they are managing well enough – Old Saybrook provides hot showers, free wi-fi, water and ice in the high school, at least until the pupils are let back in. She says they can see the downed power lines and as of yesterday morning, no one was working on them, so this could last a while. She and her husband are seriously thinking of buying a generator. Powerless-ness has happened before, fairly recently, and it's not much fun.

Knitting

I even considered not telling you this, at least at first.

I went back to John Lewis and bought some Cocoon, inspired by my own writing, yesterday morning, of the Cocoon Experience. I got the reddish one – it’s called “Quarry Tile” rather than “Terra Cotta”, but it comes to much the same thing.

Worse is to follow: I cast on.

I started with Lynn Barr’s “Folded Scarf” from “Reversible Knitting”. But I found it fiddly, and anyway I’ve been there, done that, very successfully. So I ripped, and started again with brioche stitch, using EZ’s instructions from KWT, always a pleasure to revisit. It’s looking good.

I don’t often knit in the upper reaches of needle size. All I seem to have in 7mm is a huge, cumbersome circular – what did I use for Cocoon scarves in other years? It’s very uncomfortable – maybe I’m just getting fussier with age.  I have seized the opportunity to order some more KnitPros from Meadow Yarn: the two smallest sizes of circulars in 7mm, and some short straights.

And until they come, I’ll revert to the Wingspan and see it through.

Mary Lou, I would love to see your reversible cable scarf pattern. I’m not so far along that what I’ve done couldn’t be considered a swatch. Maybe I’ll have a scarf phase. Thinking of you sent me back to “wearwithall”. Theresa Gaffey’s stole is awfully nice, and could be scarf-ified by knitting it narrower. The rugby scarf (also nice) worries by being 14” wide. My brioche stitch is only about 9”. I ripped out the first start because it seemed too wide – but maybe it’s now too narrow?

Life is frot with problems.

I went back through John Lewis’s computers on my way up to haberdashery yesterday. Somehow the laptops seemed more expensive than they had they day before. You still get more bang for your buck with a desktop; I wouldn't need to buy either monitor or keyboard;  a man could come and get all the stuff off Old Faithful into a new one; and we have an external disk drive for use when my husband’s files need to be transferred. That's probably the way to go.

Archie is about to have a “leaveout” weekend from school and is coming to us on Saturday. I will discuss this matter with him.