I’ve just been watching Lesson Two of my Craftsy course – no knitting at all, and no measuring: it was all about taking photographs of oneself and analysing one’s body shape from the result. Most interesting.

I finished the socks last night, wound the Pakokku, cast on.

Zauberball socks have got to be fraternal twins, because the yarn never repeats. These have come out more different than most.

Here is a lesson in How Not to Do Things. I dropped that skein over the back of the chair while it was still as it came from the shop, with the label on and tied in places. It hasn’t been moved since. I had a bit of difficulty as I started to wind, and forgot the First Law. Which is, roughly, the skein is Not Tangled. If you pass the end under a strand, you will tangle it. Subsequent attempts to extricate yourself will make things worse.

I was soon in the difficulty you see. There is nothing for it but to wind a few winds every day for the next 50 years.(In fact, things are not quite that bad. I’m coming on pretty well., but it has taken weeks.) And I hope I won’t forget, next time. Winding the Pakokku was pure bliss.

(The needlepoint cushion-cover was done by my husband's grandfather. He was a surgeon, and believed it kept his fingers nimble.)

Nylon yarn

(Going back to that article in Zite – I’m not going to look up the link again.)

Artificial yarn must have really got going during the war. I remember an article in the Detroit Free Press when I was a child, about the first man to test a nylon parachute – until then, they had all been made of silk. Captured German ones were often pressed into service to make wedding dresses. Silk stockings went out as the war started, and never really came back.

After the war, nylon flourished. I remember a wonderful series of ads on the London Underground from the Wool Marketing Board – this must have been in the mid-50’s, because that’s when I was there:

Boney, after each campaign,

Went home to Josephine again.

This angered Mrs Marshall Ney

Whose husband used to stay away.

Tee-tum tee-tum the Golden Rule:

There is no substitute for wool.

When I was pregnant with Rachel, ’57-’58, I knit a lot of little things in nylon, thinking I wouldn’t have time or patience for careful washing. Sure enough, they didn’t shrink or felt, but soon turned into limp grey rags useless for keeping a baby either cosy or pretty.  I learned to wash wool.

“Machine-washable wool” must have arrived in the mid-60’s, matching my memory of it with the memory of the size of the children I was knitting for. It was sort of slimy, but otherwise lived up to its billing.

What I can’t remember is when the big breakthrough came, the mixtures of acrylic and wool which retain the virtues of both.

Luxury yarns are a whole separate topic – I have a half-theory that they are somewhat linked to advances in colour photography and printing in the 60’s.