Tuesday, September 11, 2018


Not Andrew and Andrea at all, of course, this week. It was only a week ago that we had that splendid interview with Norah Gaughan and I ordered the collection of her VK patterns and it wasn’t published yet, then it was, and I’ve now got it. A busy week.

The Kirigami progresses well. (Yoke sweaters knit themselves at this stage.) The pattern is a 10-round repeat. I’ve finished the first and started the second, offset by half. There are more than 300 stitches so it’s not really terribly fast. At the end of this second iteration, and every time thereafter, we have a decrease round. Then things will speed up considerably.

The pattern is very pleasing to the eye, but would scarcely show up for a camera, the yarn being so dark. I hope it will be more photograph-able after the offset repeat.

Norah G. advises not reading a pattern through to the end before you start. All will become clear when you get there – and she’s certainly right, in this case. It’s one of those lengthy Brooklyn Tweed patterns and it all seems crystal-clear now that I’ve embarked on the chart.

The only difficulty, of course, is when you are doing a set of increases or decreases and suddenly discover, a couple of paragraphs in, the dread line At the same time…

I did some more book-arranging, today creating the how-to-knit-and-design section. I spent some anxious hours wondering where Odham’s Encyclopedia of Knitting was – it was an important book in my own evolution as a knitter, first encountered in a library in Leicester in the late 60’s. I wished I had never started re-arranging books; I could have died without knowing it was missing. But then I found it.

So far I haven’t moved Barbara Walker into the stitches-and-techniques section, where she certainly belongs. I thought I’d leave her where she has always been. Now I think I’ll move her tomorrow. (This is fun, all these decisions.) My husband brought the first two volumes back to me from New York at some point, perhaps in the 70’s or early 80’s. I had never heard of her. “Now you will never need to buy a knitting pattern again,” he said.

6 comments:

  1. I had to laugh at your husband's comment about not needing to buy another knitting pattern. It's absurd of course, but I have often thought that I don't need any more patterns (or yarn), but the key word is "need".

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  2. I would like to bet that your husband didn't fully appreciate what he had said! Then and now, so many people dismiss knitting in their minds as a minor pleasant pastime. We know better.
    I wanted to comment on your books that go missing and come back. After nine years in this house, I pretty much know where everything is but still have losses and finds. One of the worst problems is the way their spines will change - for instance the "Red Guide" which for years was easy to find until it decided to have a beige dustjacket.

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  3. Anonymous11:22 AM

    Sounds just like a husband. Chloe

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  4. Anonymous2:05 PM

    I told my husband the other day, now we will have to put off retirement a few years, a yarn store opened just a short drive from our house. He snickered about that.

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  5. Do you still enter your books in Library Thing? You can use one of the descriptive fields to denote location.

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    Replies
    1. Hah, Maureen! That would work if I put them back where I took them from!

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