I felt very weak today, but a certain amount was accomplished. I made an appt to have my hair done, in order to be beautiful for the wedding – that involved walking up to the hairdresser’s, as I had forgotten their name. And I did several rows of the Spring Shawl and have reached the fifth, the antepenultimate, row of lace triangles. I learned that big word from Miss Taylor in her Latin class at Asbury Park High School and have loved it ever since. I don’t often get a chance to use it.

When I started knitting today, I found that the yarn had slipped off its cardboard cylinder altogether in the course of its recent travels. There wasn’t all that much of it. I could just have broken it off and attached the next ball. But I felt that I couldn’t present myself to the world – that means, to you – with the claim that I had knit a ball of Jamieson & Smith’s cobweb weight if I had, in fact, thrown away yards of it.

Fortunately the yarn didn’t tangle, and I knit it down to the end. Here’s where I am:

It occurred to me to wonder, as I was lying in bed this morning, whether I might put in two rows of a bright red, no more. Perhaps at the point where I pick up stitches for the borders. Would that be too eccentric? It is the Hindu colour of joy, the colour that brides wear. Hindu widows wear white. I don’t even know whether Jamieson & Smith offer red in that yarn. (No, they don't -- but they do have it in lace-weight.)

Speaking of cobweb: when I was on Unst with my Shetland Wool Adventure, the woman who showed us the lace collection there also showed us a twist of handspun which her auntie had given her, “for encouragement”, when she first started spinning. It was almost invisible. Compared to that, Jamieson & Smith cobweb weight is like knitting with ship’s cable.

Fruity Knitting today! The main interview-ee is Carol Feller. She talked about using gradations of yarn – I took a class on that subject from her  at the EYF once. While she was talking today, I remembered an old, old VK pattern:

I think those stripes are too wide for the mini-skeins in a usual assortment, but – having launched myself down this path – it might be the perfect pattern for that armload of related colours which I bought on Shetland.