Saturday, November 28, 2015

Let's see how much I can get down before the day rushes in on me.

I achieved yesterday's targets, knitting-wise. Three repeats of the pattern are finished, on the front of the Sous Sous. That's all of that, for now. And the Awesome hat has been cast on, and a couple of rounds knit – ready for a session at Kathy's Knits, whenever I achieve that again.

It remains to be seen whether Dunfallandy triangles are possible under present conditions. They need quite a bit of concentration and won't respond well to constant interruption. On the other hand rows are fairly short: 54 stitches at the apogee. And familiarity helps.

Beyond that, the main news is that VK has turned up, long before I expected another issue. It comes in a plain brown paper envelope and always surprises. It really is the only magazine one needs.

There's a whole page about the Vintage Shetland project – “publication at the end of November”. That's what we were promised at the time of the cloud-funding. In these technologically sophisticated days, she must have all the cloud-funders' email addresses in a tidy bundle somewhere, and all it would take is a couple of sentences to update us about the delay.

The website says only that the book is available for pre-order and will be dispatched (to non-cloud-funders) early next year. Poof.

I've still got a delicious amount of VK to read and contemplate. I am not going to be persuaded to knit with beads, I am sure. I am very much taken with Meg's article about unspun Icelandic. That's a new experience I could seriously contemplate and a little mild Googling reveals that the yarn is easy to get here. I wonder if there's anything on YouTube. I can't imagine how it works. Wouldn't it all pull apart?

Here Perdita intervened:


Pattern-wise, I like 9 & 10, two shawls. And 10 is knit in Koigu!`azs xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxv q1

10 comments:

  1. Good to see that knitting is still occupying a lot of your thinking bits - that must be very good for your health. Sorry to hear that you do not get to Kathy's Knits regularly - are there fears that you might sneak off to the ticket office?!
    Isn't Perdita LOUD today?! Bless her!

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  2. There's an explanation of the delay in Just Call Me Ruby's blog post (Nov. 21).
    I've never used unspun icelandic but I have read that it's very fragile to knit with but garments are sturdy.

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  3. Anonymous1:19 PM

    VK has always been my favorite too. Very inspirational for some reason. And even without the patterns, it's a darned good cosy read on a cold winter's night Chloe

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  4. The unspun Icelandic is quite sturdy knit up, but don't sit on your work and tug the yarn. Although it is easy to put back together again.

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  5. Are you signed up for the Vintage Shetland newsletters, Jean? A few weeks ago there was one sent out explain the reason for the delay. Important information was recently discovered that she felt needed to be included in the book to tie loose ends together. This was going to mean delaying publication.

    Unspun Icelandic is fun to work with. Like Mary Lou said, if it comes apart it's very easy to put back to gather again. You just overlap the two ends and rub them back and forth in your hands.

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  6. Hmmm, I received an email about the delay with vintage Shetland. Perhaps your email handily routed it off to a junk mail folder. I recall something about storms trapping them on one of the islands and adding more material to the book. I'm actually pleased with the delay since then it will be delivered during a lull season rather than the busy time of Christmas, but I imagine those who were hoping to give it for Christmas may not agree with me.

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  7. Anonymous9:32 PM

    I saw Susan today at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate. She had three items from the Shetland Knitting Project on display and was also promoting the book (available to order still).

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  8. Perdita (this is from one Cat to another) you must learn to spell a little better than that! :)

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  9. There used to be a yarn White Buffalo that was used for making the Cowichan sweaters. It was essentially pencil roving in a cake, what Icelandic unspun comes as. To knit it you would let it unwind around the cake so that some twist is put into it before it's knitted. I would think with the fairly long staple of the Icelandic it shouldn't come undone too easily.

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  10. There used to be a yarn White Buffalo that was used for making the Cowichan sweaters. It was essentially pencil roving in a cake, what Icelandic unspun comes as. To knit it you would let it unwind around the cake so that some twist is put into it before it's knitted. I would think with the fairly long staple of the Icelandic it shouldn't come undone too easily.

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