Rain! Much needed. Cold, to the point of beginning to wonder whether I should put the heat back on. Dark. And the forecast for the rest of the week is not much better. That means that when we do set sail on our cruise (if we do – Covid and Ms Sturgeon permitting), however grim the weather, we won’t be able to say, if only we could have sailed on May 1 as planned. So that’s a plus.

 

2494 steps so far today. I walked around the garden alone. C. came yesterday, and we did two circuits – the secret is just to go on talking – and I got a bit beyond 3500 steps by bedtime.

 

For knitting, today, I struggled with brioche. I see that I knit Carol Sunday’s “Soutache” as recently as 2019 – and it certainly looks like a two-colour brioche. (What happened to it?) But the skill hasn’t stayed in my fingers. I think maybe Sunday simplified things somewhat – but how? Today I was relying on Marchant only. I started with the Italian two-colour cast-on – I think Helen posted my struggle to Instagram – and got nowhere. I finally found a note that said that if you were really too old and stupid to master this, you could cast on with a long-tail as usual and take it from there (joining in the second colour for the first set-up row). So I did that.

 

And then did a swatch of basic brioche.

 

And then started in on “Mr Flood’s Chart” where Marchant walks us through a charted pattern. (This is from her “Knitting Fresh Brioche” book.) I’m not finding the symbols entirely easy. The actual execution is not difficult. Arne and Carlos have just posted a video about two-colour brioche knitting, but they are doing it in the round which is in some respects easier – you purl with one colour and knit with the other. And the Norwegian way of holding the yarn undoubtedly helps, but I’m too old to master that.

 

I’m not far enough along to determine whether or not this will do for cruise knitting, when I want to be able to toss off sophisticated witticisms as I knit.

 

Reading

 

I’ve finished Clare Chambers’ “Small Pleasures” (highly recommended) and have reverted to “I Vicere”. I’m also meant to be exploring Moravia this week,

 

Jane (comment Thursday) Thank you for the reference to Numbers 3:44-51. I am embarrassed to reveal that I can’t reach my bible – Archie will be here tomorrow; he can get it down for me. There are two other editions (King James and Douai) in the Mosaic Room, but I don’t dare open the door as I am not nimble enough to catch a frisky cat.