I was wrong about the weather yesterday – the rest of the country (Scotland, GB, take your pick) had another glorious day, but the clouds over Drummond Place didn’t burn away until late in the afternoon, so the chillis stayed in the kitchen all day. Today will clearly be better.

The first flowers on the better Apache plant have faded. The excitement now is to see whether they have set fruit. On Big Nameless, an unfertilised flower falls at the slightest touch of a fingernail. That’s not happening on the Apache, so maybe…

Knitting

One of the things one learns in a long life is that, no matter how outré a vice one adopts, there are other people out there who practice it, too. Kristieinbc, and perhaps you, too, Karen, are fellow stashers of Craftsy classes!

Yesterday I not only signed up for Stephen West’s class, I actually watched the first lesson (despite having two unfinished courses to my credit, and two other unwatched ones). He is young, good-looking, rather camp. (Am I allowed to say that?) Maybe he was just camping it up for Craftsy. I’m not complaining; camp is fun. It is not a word, incidentally, that I would apply to Franklin. He’s fun in a different way.

We’re knitting a shawl. In the first lesson we started off with a very interesting little garter stitch square. Perhaps I’ll just dip into the madelinetosh sock bag and have a go. And then watch Lesson Two! What wickedness!

Karen, I was interested in what you said about double knitting. I wondered why Craftsy offered two classes, especially when one of them was by Alasdair P-Q himself. I’ve got his book (somewhere – things are getting out of hand) and will never knit from it, I am sure. It all sounds too difficult and tight. But I am willing to be persuaded by the man himself. And now I know that if it still sounds too difficult, I can try Lucy Neatby. I love her, anyway.

And then there’s Brioche Knitting, and Designing with Cables, and…

I must get back to Herzog (saving Franklin, like the best chocolate in the collection, to be savoured at the end). I have sort of decided that I don’t like Fitted, when it means knitting that defines female ins and outs. I prefer to relax in a Relax. On the other hand, a well-fitting sweater, such as Herzog wears as she teaches, is a fine thing. I must press on.

As for what is going on here, I measured Relax2 this morning. It comes to 36cm and for a moment I thot, hey! but then I consulted the pattern, and it turns out, for the size I am aiming at, that I need 38. I don’t think I’ll measure again. I’ll count eight rounds – I’m counting anyway, for the placement of the eyelets – and then start increasing.

Stephen W promises directional increases in Lesson Two. Karma, wouldn’t you say?

Anonymous, I was most interested to learn that the absence of Rowen Art Yarn from John Lewis, St James’ Centre, Edinburgh, isn’t just a local eccentricity.