The 199th follower has joined us! This is exciting!

My sister is gone. I got up and saw her off in the darkness. She should be airborne at the moment, if all is proceeding according to plan, between Edinburgh and London. Her subsequent flight, to DC, doesn’t leave until after lunch. It’ll be a long day. She’ll spend the weekend with Theo and Jenni, insh'Allah, whose baby is now fairly immanent.

I probably won’t see her again until The Wedding, still more than a year distant. We have reached a stage in life where Brutus’ farewell to Cassius before Philippi (I love it) is not inappropriate:

If we do meet again, why, we shall smile:

If not, why then this parting was well made.

He concludes, a couple of lines later,

But it sufficeth that the day will end,

And then the end is known. Come, ho! Away!

She brought me a pedometer, which promises to be good fun. I have had them before and have been unimpressed, but this one claims to be founded on a superior technology. It will certainly provide an incentive to keep moving, at least until the novelty wears off. I was slightly short of 5000 steps yesterday, just pottering about.

Knitting

I’ve finished the first rank of sheep on the Rams & Yowes blankie, and they’re looking cute. There’s no edging – that comes later – so it curls, which makes photography difficult. I’ll try tomorrow, by which time I should have started on the next set of sheep.

I’m having a bit of trouble figuring out which yarn is which. The ball bands identify the yarns only by numbers – I’ve mentioned this before. It was easy to discover the Shetland names for each, and write them on the ball bands. The key to the pattern, however, identifies them not with symbols but with little coloured squares. This makes the pattern charts very legible, in one sense, but it’s not always entirely easy to decide whether gaulmogot or shaela (say) is intended in a particular spot. All the yarns are undyed.

I don’t suppose it matters all that much. I’ve labelled the first chart with my decisions, in the hope of at least achieving consistency.

And the Milano proceeds. I’ve pretty well decided to go for Relax3, shape-wise. But I’m glad to say that I still have several peaceful evenings before I even have to start increasing for the dolman underarms.

Comments

I think you may well be right about those Greek “knitting sticks”, Tamar. My first reaction to your comment was, “But, it says on the label…” But the label doesn’t make all that much sense, and museum curators, even in Greece, may not know all that much about knitting. “Used as an extension of the knitting needle, the holder is tucked under the left arm. One of the five needles used in knitting socks and stockings, the one on which the stitches are gathered, is fitted securely into a small hole at the top of the holder.”

I can’t see holes on those sticks into which a needle could be securely fitted, either.