Friday, February 21, 2020


A fairly good day. I got a job done – an email written – that had been weighing on my conscience. I did some more knitting. I would be fully 3/4s done with the edging of second side of the Cameron shawl had Perdita not come to sit on my lap again, quite early in Pointless.

I found the “Oak Park” scarf on the kitchen floor this morning. I had left in in its project bag on the sitting room floor. No harm done. In tidying it up, however, and placing it beyond paw-reach, I realised that I was wrong yesterday to say that the order of the stripes didn’t matter. They are brilliantly gradated. How will I manage? In Kirkmichael I ranged the balls of yarn along a shelf of the dresser in the dining room (where all indoor life takes place) – that clearly won’t work here, even if there were a dresser.

The colours will have to be arranged in a drawer, or on a shelf in a cupboard with doors. It’ll be something of a nuisance, since there is a change every four rounds. Good exercise.

Rachel sent me this link to a story about Fair Isles on Fair Isle, with lots of pictures. Some of them look mechanical to me, but the overall effect is colourful, and touching.

Quite a few universities are on strike at the moment – that’s how Archie can be here so often. A story in this morning’s Times says that lecturers are holding impromptu “teach-outs” on the picket line, and that University College London is offering a knitting workshop.

Non-knit

I have settled down for the moment with a Ruth Rendell called “A Guilty Thing Surprised”. It’s an early Wexford and I don’t feel that she had yet fully hit her stride. Italian this evening, however. Dante himself, in fact.

9 comments:

  1. All this "catting around" with your knitting certainly lends credence to your theory of what happened to the missing shawl, doesn't it? Now if only you could get the responsible party to tell you where she has put it.

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  2. I have an interlinear Dante on my Kindle; English and Italian. I always felt a bit like Lucia in the EF Benson books when I read it; she was a terrific cheat, keeping her Dante (with a paper knife marking the place) ostentatiously on show, but having an English translation just out of sight.

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    1. (my Italian is strictly derived from playing the piano..)

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  3. How about a box of some sort with holes in the lid for the yarn (in proper order) and then tape the box closed?

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    1. Anonymous4:12 PM

      That would be my suggestion, too.
      -- Gretchen (aka stashdragon)

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  4. Perhaps you could create a little bit of knitting and leave it around still on the needles and see who is tempted to play with it.

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    1. Cats know about such things. No fun at all!

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  5. I recall a photograph of your little balls set out in a row. That may help?

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    1. =Tamar7:26 AM

      You're right - a photo of Oak Park scarf yarn ranged on the dresser is at August 26, 2017 at Strathardle. But the photo is slightly dark; perhaps the original scarf website photo would be more helpful.

      I begin to think a locked trunk would be the only safe place to put a work-in-progress, now that the cats have learned to open bags.

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