Greek Helen has written a marvellous account of the mosaic she made for Thomas and Lucy. Don't miss. It includes a picture from the wedding day of the Princess shawl in action, but I think you've seen that one already.

Thanks for the nudges about the “Marius sweater”. Of course the concept was familiar, once I looked it up, but I don't remember ever hearing the term before. I think maybe that's the direction I'll head in, if Scotland win the Calcutta Cup and I find myself knitting sweaters for the boys on Loch Fyne.

I continue to read Kate Davies' Yoke book with great interest. The chapter on Shetland has a lot about what might be called the Great Yoke Boom of the 50's and 60's, when everybody in the islands was knitting yokes to be attached to machine-knit sweaters. I remember beautiful Munrospun packs – way out of my price range in those hard days – containing a yoke, plain yarn for the rest of the sweater, and (I think) a skirt-length of beautiful toning tweed. If I'm not imagining this, I wonder if such kits ever turn up on eBay.

I must try to find the Vogue Children's Book with the yoke pattern I knit for Rachel (twice, I think). It was my eureka-moment as far as Fair Isle knitting was concerned – I discovered that I could happily carry one of the colours in my left hand while the right hand was busy with the other, although I can't (then or now) knit “continental” with only one colour. And I discovered what enormous fun it was.

My sister-in-law asked, of Rachel's finished sweater, whether I had bought the yoke ready-knit. A compliment indeed, in retrospect – for if I had, it would almost certainly have been knit in Shetland. This must, given Rachel's birth-date in 1958, have happened somewhere in the late-ish 60's.

KD speaks of people who grew up in those days hating knitting, because it represented the churning out of those yokes to a deadline. And of the old woman whose dementia revealed itself when she could no longer remember the fern-and-star pattern.

This is a book for reading.

(Meanwhile, back at the ranch) all went well here last night. I did my 2 1/3 scallops on the Unst Bridal Shawl edging without mishap. There's a long, long way to go, but the third corner is now visibly behind me. I started winding the first of Carol Sunday's beautiful colours. The yarn (100% merino) is fine – it would have to be, to facilitate the intricate pattern of her Aberdeen mittens for which it is intended. I don't think fineness is a drawback in a scarf – and fisherman's rib is a warm, dense fabric.

Eventually I retreated to Archie's sweater.

Non-knit

The pop-up ad plague has reached Black Death proportions. My sister says to switch to Firefcx. Here on Blogger, I regularly get a banner across the top of the screen with ads for jeans. I have finally grasped that it is a Joyce-ian joke on my name.