Comments &  Miscellany

I’ve done 19 of the 50 straight rows up the front of Relax2 – so I might reach the half-way point today. Grannypurple’s comment yesterday was enormously encouraging. She was wearing her Relax the happy day we met, so she knows what she’s talking about.

Lou, my sister wrote yesterday and made the same suggestion, that I take my iPad to an Apple store to get the OS upgraded. Guess what? There is no Apple store in Edinburgh. I learn that we are about to have a super duper one on Princes Street (which will be good news for Princes Street). There’s a lot of Apple stuff in John Lewis. Maybe they’d do it? But they’d have to do it on the spot, without taking my iPad away from me.

Ruth in Ontario (comment Monday), I don’t really like the idea of ebooks for knitting, and only get them where there is no real-world edition. It’s the same with cookery books (another category which overflows around here). I’ve ordered Anna Dalvi’s “Ancient Egypt in Lace and Colour” from Amazon.com, since Amazon.co.uk doesn’t seem to have it. I’ve also pre-ordered Liz Lovick’s lace book. The inundation is getting worse.

(On the other hand, the iPad is absolutely brilliant at preventing further increase in the piles of paperback novels. I’ve just finished re-reading John LeCarre’s “Little Drummer Girl” and am now half-way through the new Ruth Rendell, “No Man’s Nightingale”. It’s far from her best, but Ruth Rendell in mediocre form still beats most of the rest.)

“Knit Your Own Britain” turned up yesterday. I’ve already got “…Royal Wedding” and “…Scotland”. I ordered this one for the sake of an item I actually mean to knit as a Christmas present. It sounds fiercely fiddly. It involves both embroidery and stiffening with acetate. Where do you go to get that? I’ll have to knit it off-radar, but if I actually do it I’ll tell you all about it in the end. It's mercifully small.

Fancy Tiger (scroll down industriously) has been touring Scotland, in a party which includes Stephen West (a personal friend, I feel, since I did his Craftsy class). Kristie and I have been mining the Shetland sections for suggestions. The latest entry finds them on Skye, visiting the Shilasdair shop. I had some of their yarn once. Mail order? Or a desperate purchase at a craft show where there was nothing else?

In any event, I didn’t like it, and eventually gave it away. The naturally-dyed colour was dull, and the yarn was scratchy. It is obvious that things have improved out of all recognition. Luxury yarns, in rich, wonderful colours.

And I love Fancy Tiger’s Meow Foundation yarns. I’d knit my husband a pair of tortoiseshell socks (= “calico cat”, I think) if there were any acrylic in the yarn. Price and ordering info are hard to determine – maybe the yarn isn’t in the shops yet.