The random-stripe EPS progresses well – I’m ready to increase 10% (or whatever it is) and embark on st st. Here are the yarns, as promised:

 

BUT today I got the latest pattern in Kate Davies’ new club. And I’ve just this moment had a message from Pam – another who can’t leave a comment – who has anticipated what I was about to say: here is the pattern I’ve been waiting for. Her “Evendoon” pullover! All the colours anyone could want to get through the winter solstice! And in her Schiehallion yarn – that’s an important part of the deal, for it is the name of our beloved local mountain. “Evendoon”, we are told, means “straightforward”. Nobody here in Scotland ever uses these Kate Davies-y words to me.

 

It’s a top-down, which (as I think I said recently) I don’t think I’ve ever done. New skill, or at least, new experience.

 

Well, I didn’t actually send for it today, but I don’t think it’ll be long.

 

I had another nice time this week sitting and knitting a bit with Arne and Carlos. When they talk about design, they talk about “collections”.  Maybe I would find their work more congenial if they produced patterns one at a time like KD. Of course she has someone who knits them for her, and probably other help in pattern-writing, but I am sure she works hard on the details of each one.  The result is something that feels more hand-crafted, for want of a better term.

 

Other

 

I made another batch of kimchi today. I am becoming positively Korean in my attachment to it. Can I assume that fermented vegetables have the same virtues (whatever they may be) as vegetables eaten fresh?

 

I heard from C. today (who is still her daughter’s full-time carer) that wee Hamish, as well as articulating “da”, has mastered the Zulu click. The development of language is fascinating. It is we grown-ups, of course, who turn “da” into “Daddy”.  I wonder if the click has a similar use that delighted Zulu parents can attach to it, and I look forward to discussing this with Hamish’s father Manaba. There is a story somewhere – Herodotus? – of some people who isolated a baby from all speech, in order to discover what the original language was. Eventually the baby said “ma ma” and since that is the Persian for “bread”, that proved that Persian was the original language and I am glad to say that the child was surrounded by normal speech thereafter.

 

I’m reading Nancy Mitford’s “The Blessing”. Can’t stay away from the Mitfords. Helen brought me some Spanish omelette the other day which incorporated some beets grown by the Duchess of Devonshire’s granddaughter, friend of a friend of Helen’s. Nancy Mitford would have been her great-aunt. Talk about degrees of separation.