Progress, of a sort.

I tidied and blocked Relax2. It looks big enough to accommodate both me and an elephant. But I tried it on before blocking, to see in which directions I might want to tweak it, and it was perfect. And felt wonderful next to the skin. Once blocking was in action, I found that width-wise it was exactly size Medium; length-wise, a couple of inches long. How did that happen?

  

It’s the third sweater finished this year – Ed’s Gardening Sweater and Relax1 being the others. Doesn’t sound like much.

I have also nearly finished the BSJ. It occurred to me that I could kill two birds with one stone by practising mattress stitch on the seaming, which would justify me in returning to Franklin’s Craftsy lessons on Heirloom Lace Edgings.

That didn’t quite work, because the shoulders of the BSJ seam a selvedge edge to a cast-on one.  The result of the mattress-stitch attempt was very impressive, but so slow that it would clearly have taken me until Thursday to finish. I switched to overcastting.

Then I had to knit an edging for the neck. I did a broken rib, like the bottom of Relax. It’s not entirely successful, but I’ll leave it.

And I decided not to go with double-breastedness this time. It doesn’t fold properly, despite the nice drawings provided with the pattern. I’m going to fold it as you see in the picture. In the left-hand column of buttonholes I will sew buttons that don’t attach to anything. The right-hand column will have real buttons that button, sewn to the layer below..

And, incidentally, when I had the object in my hands, cast off and sans stitch markers, it took me a while, even now, to figure out how to fold it.

I mean to set out on a shopping expedition this morning, light-weight wind-and-rain-proof jacket from Tiso, maybe new shoes from Ecco, probably lunch to carry home from Marks & Spencer. But I doubt if I will be strong enough to go on to John Lewis for buttons. I have to go back up there later in the week for insulin, anyway.

So what about knitting this evening? Will I cast on the Milano?

Helen CKS is back, always a treat. And she says – Helen knows everything – that we are about to have (=starting tomorrow, Wednesday)  a three-part series on BBC4 about the Golden Age of Knitting. Who’d ‘a thot it?

Time runs out – I won’t look up the proper credits for this one – but FiberQat & Another, you’re absolutely right that Lizzie must see a major league baseball game. In my day, Kansas wasn’t included. The major leagues were circumscribed by the distance players could conveniently travel by train from one engagement to the next – St Louis was the westernmost outpost, and they weren't very good. I’ll tell her.

I gather Detroit has lost everything – but we’ve still got the Tigers?