Monday, August 17, 2015


The big news is that Franklin has a new Craftsy class — about colour. Not what I would have chosen, myself, from his remarkable repertoire, but since I would happily pay over the odds if he were teaching the Elements of Esperanto, I have signed up.

I’ve also gone for another new class, about Portuguese knitting. I’ve got the book. I’ve tried. But as I am ever in pursuit of a way of knitting faster and more efficiently, I’ll try again. I feel that the Portuguese system (yarn tensioned around the back of one's neck) may not require the hands to do quite so much in the way of learning new movements as, say, continental knitting does. We’ll see. I saw a woman in an LYS in Athens who was knitting with a variant of the Portuguese system.

I didn’t do any knitting yesterday.

But I fished this sweater out of the drawer and took it to my husband. He can get into it, but without much to spare, and he wasn’t comfortable. He did better in a store-boughten one.


I must have knit this, many decades ago. Maybe I vaguely remember. It’s successful, in some respects, although it is difficult to believe that those armholes ever fitted properly. Now they buckle disagreeably. When I first fished it out, I thought that the pattern was unbroken over the shoulders which would be nearly impossible. (Meg might conceivably graft in two colours. Not me.) But that is an illusion.

It makes me all the more eager to get started on a new Fair Isle vest. Meanwhile this one might do for an adult-sized but still skinny grandson. I’ll see Mungo for a while today, on his way from his other grandmother’s 80th birthday party somewhere in England, to Strathardle. I’ll try him, to begin with.

This is what passes around here for an exciting day. Some removal men have come and removed a chest of drawers and a fire screen, on their way to James and Cathy in Sydenham. Mungo will appear in the early afternoon, and the rest of his family not long after. And an electrician is expected, to fix a fuse which he has already attended to once. 


And I’m now off to the hospital.

5 comments:

  1. well Franklin and colour! that has NOW lured me in. i have not taken any craftsy classes yet.... but am headed there to sign up tout suite!

    good luck with the fuse and the visitors! glad there are family around... are you planning a visit to Strahardle soon?

    its hot and humid and the dog days of august and i wish i were on a week vacay at a beach. sigh. (or in shetland)

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    1. have just signed up for Franklin's class and discover i had another class as well (cables with Fiona Ellis).. something to do these dog days of august

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  2. Happy Birthday Jean! I've been out of town celebrating mine. I met my two sisters in Chicago for a long weekend, that with train delays turned out to be longer than expected, but lovely. I have a vest I knit for my father many years ago that my step mother returned to me after his death. It still has a tea stain on it, which I rather enjoy. Maybe one of the grandsons would like it, good idea.

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  3. I began watching the Portugeuse knitting class yesterday, and I must say that I am enamoured of the ease with which purling can be done. I enjoy the knit stitch as well once I was able to correctly place my hands and yarn. There does indeed seem to be less hand motion and I find that I experience less hand and forearm fatigue as well. I hope you enjoy this class and Franklin's.

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  4. I started knitting in the Portuguese way a couple years ago, after watching Andrea Wong's YouTube video, and have never looked back! When people ask, I tell them that while my right hand has been very busy for 64 years, my left hand and thumb have done practically nothing, and therefore have none of the repetitive motions issues yet -- give me 30-40 more years, and we'll see how that thumb is doing!

    I've put the class on my wishlist . . . maybe when it's cooler . . . .

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