Yesterday was the Bard’s birthday and even in our toothless states, we managed to ingest some haggis and neeps and tatties. A dear friend sent me this.
I hope it was taken yesterday.
Thank you for your help with the centre of Mrs Hunter’s shawl.. I have tried to do some actual thinking today,
never a process I enjoy.
Here are the "givens":
1) To make a square in garter stitch, cast on some stitches and knit
twice that many rows.
2) To make a centre square in a borders-inward Shetland shawl, knit
back and forth from one side, taking in a stitch alternately from the adjacent
sides. At the end, graft the final row to the live stitches of the fourth side.
That means that you will knit twice as many rows as you have stitches on each
of the four borders. Thus making a square. See above.
OK: Mrs Hunter – who is writing a pattern in which each of the six parts
of the shawl are knit separately and sewn together afterwards -- says to cast
on 143 stitches for the centre. So you would expect 286 rows, or thereabouts.
But no. She gives a 20-row pattern and then says:"Repeat rows 1-20
incl. 11 times."
That's
what I didn't really face up to until yesterday. That sounds like 220 rows. Or
if the instruction just quoted means "11 more times", it would mean 240 rows -- still well short of the
286 needed for a square.
I've looked up the closest parallel I could find -- Amedro's
"Phillip and Michael" shawl. Sure enough -- twice as many rows as
stitches. Yesterday I was thinking of decreasing abruptly down to 110 stitches,
so that I could knit 220 rows as Mrs Hunter specified (maybe). But now I don't
see much point in that since Mrs Hunter apparently wasn't aiming for a square
and I am.
Now I think I’ll just decrease down to 141. 140 (=280 rows) allows me to
fit in 14 repeats of the 20-row pattern, and the extra one allows for Mrs
Hunter’s “K. 2 rows” at the end.
Well, that’s all pretty boring. I’ll let you know how I get on. I’ve reached
row 78, of 86, of the border pattern, so all this arithmetic will start
happening in real life pretty soon.
I got my copy of “Wool Tribe” today, the EYF magazine. There are some
mildly interesting patterns for accessories, and some articles – but the big thing
is the plan of this year’s layout. Jared has taken a big space in the
concourse.
Students – that’s me – can get in an hour early on the opening market
day. I didn’t avail myself of that, last year, and still don’t know how it
works geographically – something about going around the back. But this time I
mean to try, in the hour before my class with Hazel Tindall.
Baa Ram Ewe will be there, sure enough – I’m sure if I turned up and
asked how many skeins of their Dovestone DK was required for the shortened
version of “Ancasta” as mentioned but not specified in Laine, they’d be able to
help. They must be even more irritated then I am.
There’s an article in Wool Tribe about a walk you might like to do in
Edinburgh, of which a major feature is the Sheep Heid Inn in Duddingston. They
mention a number of notables who have dined there, starting with Mary Queen of
Scots, but, oddly, omit the most recent. The Queen herself, who almost never
eats out in public, went there for a meal last summer after a happy day at the
Musselburgh races.
It is hard to write about her from Edinburgh for an international
audience, because she is not “Elizabeth II” here. But you can get a long way by
just referring to her as “The Queen”.