Thank you for the kind words about the baby jacket, Lisa. I’m happy too, although beginning to reflect that time presses. The Games are a week today, and today is the last of what might be called tranquillity. On the other hand, I can go ahead and block it while knitting i-cord for the ties.

(Do you ever write about Chinese knitting?)

It occurred to me that if I want a swing jacket, here it is. All I would have to do is re-jig the front, doing away with the cross-over chest pieces, and re-size it. Garter stitch is infinitely slow – as I discovered knitting the ASJ, if I hadn’t known it already – but it’s slow because it’s eating up yarn. That’s a plus.



Back view. I should reach the second sleeve today.


The sight of the stash cupboard after nine months’ abstinence is pretty depressing. The only slip was one (1) ball of Heirloom Knitting merino lace for James’s jabot – and I knit it. I’m going to have to be firmer with myself than I had planned, when the year is up in November. Some KF sock yarn, certainly. But perhaps only one sweater-sized lot of a solid or near-solid colour. I'd been thinking two. And perhaps I could buy yarn specifically for Meg’s travelling-stitch hat in whatever magazine it recently appeared.

Then on with the show.

My new Japanese knitting books have arrived from Needle Arts. I bought two more of the Let’s Knit series. Marvellous stuff, but not as bizarrely wonderful as the first one I bought. Maybe I should ask Needle Arts themselves if that designer has done anything else. I don't even know his name, although there's a rather sweet picture of him included. (That's not him, below.)



I also got “Scandinavian Jacquard Caps” in Japanese – there are a couple of good ear-flaps. I ought to be able to manage one of them as a replacement present for Rachel Miles of Beijing, whose first hat never got there, given especially that I have a vague idea how to knit an ear-flap hat.

I wonder how much red there is in the stash? I seem to remember having to dig deep for the missing hat. It was lined in red, and had a Fair Isle pattern in which red figured. It’s funny how the appeal of that colour seems to transcend culture. Hindu brides wear it, and Chinese dragons. When I was a child in Detroit during the war, we occasionally had “coloring” when crayons were spilled out on a table and we helped ourselves. I vividly remember how red was always highly prized, and in extremely short supply. The big self-confident children got it all.

If need be, then, one ball of red something might be added to that November list.

MP3

The new earphones are a great success – they stay in, and the sound and my comprehension of it are transformed. It is as if I had put a BabelFish into my ear. I am less happy with the new shoes.

Helen rang up from Strathardle yesterday to say that she couldn’t close the bonnet (hood) of her hire car. I was sort of impressed with Life’s endless ingenuity at presenting us with problems large and small. She is going to Loch Fyne today, coming to us here in Edinburgh on Sunday. Mungo should arrive at Edinburgh airport from the US on Tuesday.

Let’s talk about knitting today.

I got on nicely with the little jacket again. After I had cast off the sleeve and re-attached the knitting to the abandoned body stitches, I found that the right side had become the wrong side and that I had knit the right sleeve while I thought I was doing the left one.

After more time than it should have taken, I grasped that these problems – if problems they were, in garter stitch – could be solved by turning the little sleeve inside out. But it means that when I come to do the next sleeve, I will need my wits about me lest it wind up on the inside of the jacket, or attached to the bottom edge.

Front view:

Back view:

I continue to enjoy short-rowing. I looked again at the VK swing jacket, No 19 in winter 07-08, where the swinging is achieved with short-row wedges knit side-to-side. It seems a good moment, positively providential, to have met Mary Lou’s “Coquille”, which does the same thing. (See also her web page for variations, and it sounds as if there are more on Ravelry.) It might be a good way to use up some sock yarn/ knock off a Christmas present/ practice short-row wedges -- with the thought of then adapting the VK pattern to my own stash.

Meanwhile Helen and I found a moment at Strathardle in the onward rush of life last week, to consider what she’d like in the way of lace. She opted not for the Emily Dickinson but for the good old Amedro Cobweb Lace Wrap which – furthermore, before I reach for Heirloom Knitting – she’d like with the original lace patterns. She thinks the Diamond Chain Stitch is somehow both Scottish and Greek.

I think I’ve knit that pattern almost as often as the Baby Surprise. It started with Rachel’s 40th birthday, now well in the past. Her daughter Hellie asked for one. I knit one for my mother – a slightly simplified version, by Amedro herself. And one for my sister’s 70th birthday. For both Hellie and my sister I put different lace patterns into Amedro’s useful shape.

Helen has chosen a luscious yarn, so-dark-reddy-brown-it’s-almost-black, which James and Cathy gave me for Christmas ’08. It’s labelled “cashmere” ("Lightness, Softness, Comfort, Conservation") and feels as if it might be, but Cathy suggests skepticism.

So maybe, when the work’s all done this fall (=Games Day behind us), I’ll think of alternating days of that with days of Green Granite Blocks.

Now it is time for my power walk. I read recently that if one pumps one’s arms and walks heel-to-toe, one can use twice as many calories. That means twice as much energy – I don’t think I have that to spare, apart from looking like an absolute dork. Don’t worry about me, kristieinbc. I walk round and round Drummond Place gardens on a dirt path. The traffic is near, but has no access to me.

Games 2010

We’re going to be all right – we’ve got “our” flat at the hotel for all three nights. Auxiliary accommodation is much reduced. I might have done a bit better yesterday if I’d made more of a fuss, given that I was entirely in the right. The main downers are that there will be no room for the Loch Fyne Mileses on the Friday night, and that there will be more people at Burnside itself than will be entirely comfortable for my husband. Nice people, to whom he is closely related in blood, but still a lot of them.

Alexander and Ketki often don’t come on Friday night anyway. This year, I had hoped to lure them by booking a particularly luxurious apartment with two generous-sized rooms. This is probably the last time we will observe the Games on such a scale – my husband really can’t take much more of it.

But having “our” flat is the important thing. For the last three years, at least, we’ve eaten the big communal meals there, Friday night and Saturday night. That room with the bay window is still a lounge, large and comfortable. Without that, the weekend would have been miserable, even if we’d found somewhere for everyone to sleep.

MP3

I spent a dizzy morning in town yesterday, polishing off errands and making decisions too fast. I am worried about my new shoes, Ecco as usual, but… And I think I jumped in too fast on a set of earphones at John Lewis. Beadslut, Skull Candy is available here. They look like just what I want. I’ll see how I get on for a few days, but I think I may go that way. Thank you.

Meanwhile, however, the Italian women’s program continues well. They were even talking about knitting, at the point where I left off yesterday. Something about women’s traditional tasks.

I had the instruction book up yesterday – it’s on a disk, of course – to see how to set it to repeat, and find what you techies must have known all along, that I can set it to repeat a small chosen section of the whole. I think that will probably be the way to go. For the time being, I’ll go on listening to the whole program. And this morning, I won’t walk at all, because I’m having my hair done. Games Day has much in common with Christmas, minus the damp and cold and dark and card-sending and present-giving. One wants to look one's best.

Knitting

Always a relief to get back to knitting, especially in times of stress. I’ve finished the left sleeve of the little Portuguese jacket. Today’s first task will be to cast it off and pick up the abandoned body stitches and carry on across the back.

I think maybe this new camera is better for colour.

Jeanfromcornwell, yes, Portuguese knitters seem to carry yarn around the back of the neck – or over a little, special pin worn on the left shoulder – and flick it around the needle with the thumb. I think I’ve seen it done. I’m going to try, when time presses less urgently. My own technique is a very clumsy self-taught drop-and-throw. But I’m afraid I agree with Mary Lou, that retraining is hopeless at my age. (And by the way, Mary Lou, I love Coquille.)

I start today with what can only be termed a Jo Watson Moment. (Is that her name? Watson?)

The difficulties of Games Weekend in recent years have been greatly relieved by booking a lot of self-catering space in the old Kirkmichael Hotel. I think you can see, towards the left of the first floor of the hotel in that link, a bay window. The room behind used to be the lounge of the hotel. I remember my mother sitting in that window, waiting for us to come walking over the bridge to join her in the morning.

It’s now part of an apartment that sleeps six. At least since ’07 we have had it (plus other, smaller flats) for Games weekend, and, indeed, consider it “ours”. Last year, I booked it for this year (plus other flats) in late August.

Yesterday I began to wonder why I hadn’t yet heard from Angie about paying. I wrote – thank goodness. Sometimes it’s worth being neurotic. I’ve just had a note from her saying she has no booking for us.

I’ve copied for her the whole correspondence from last August, with comforting phrases such as “I shall put your booking in my diary” and concluding with her own “consider it done”. I anxiously await events.

It’s no use being in the right if people have nowhere to sleep.

On the knitting front, at least, things are going well. Changing horses in mid-stream was the right thing to do, and I continue to enjoy my little Portuguese jacket. At the moment, the short rows at the neck edge are on a six-row cycle, those forming the cuff on a four-row one. It’s all rather exciting but I seem to be keeping my head above water.

And maybe learning things about short-rowing that might let me return to the swing-jacket issue and design one for myself.

The Portuguese apparently don’t wrap a stitch when they turn in mid-row. At first I did it their way, but then decided that wrapping was neater. An eagle-eyed judge will see the difference, but I’m not here for the glory. I leave that to my six pea pods. The jacket is just to swell the number of entries, and, with luck, keep some wee soul cosy for a while.

I had a good time with my MP3 player yesterday, although the rush hour traffic swirling around Drummond Place makes listening more difficult than it was on my first such attempt on Sunday. I am going to pursue the advice Mary Lou and Donna gave the other day, about getting some fancy earplugs. Yesterday I listened to a women’s program – still lots of rapid-fire talk, but less laughter, and I think I did a better job of getting the general drift of what they were talking about. On we go. There’s no hurry.

Where to start?

We had a grand time with our friends from Birmingham days – they now grow vegetables on the banks of the Isis, and have to put up with badgers eating the sweetcorn. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

They were here in Edinburgh because their daughter (Flora Spencer-Longhurst) is appearing in a two-man play at the Assembly Rooms, “Wonderland”, about Lewis Carroll. (Edinburgh readers take note.) She’s had a substantial and very favourable (4-star) review in the Times. The Scotsman hasn’t got there yet. Helen and I and her boys hope to go next Monday.

Yesterday most unexpectedly I got a Canon PowerShot camera for my recently-passed birthday from Helen and Rachel. (Madhur Jaffrey and I share the birthday, including the year. She still seems to be bounding about, so why should I worry?) It’s essentially less fancy than the camera whose work you normally see here – but it takes better pictures. Here is the first ever:

If I tried to do that with the other camera – set on “Auto” – it would take the light level from the window and show the room in darkness. Likewise – or do I mean, contrariwise? – landscape shots with bright skies or sparkling frost come out over-exposed. The controls allow me to adjust shutter speed and aperture, and I used to understand those things. But in old age, maybe it’s better to have a camera that knows what to do and just does it.

(That pail contains the potatoes I brought from Strathardle. The idea is to save the soil that comes off them and take it back. My husband is a topsoil nut, but curiously cool on manuring. Manure is topsoil.)

Pixels can’t be adjusted on the new camera, so I’ll have to be careful not to let the computer get gummed up with multi-pixel’d shots of half-knit socks.

Another excitement yesterday was a package from the Schoolhouse – the English translation of “Twisted-Stitch Knitting”, “Norwegian Patterns for Knitting”, and “Portuguese Style of Knitting”.

I started with a last-named, and it’s most interesting. Much of it is concerned with the knitty-gritty – how Portuguese knitters tension yarn and form stitches. I mean to do some serious work with it. “Purling is easier than knitting” – how’s that for a statement that would have made EZ sit up?

There are some patterns at the back, and I was struck with this one: Side-to-side in garter stitch, shaped with short rows.

I admired it for a while, and then I thought, why not? I have found myself increasingly reluctant to get back to fiddling with that kimono. There’s still time. So I started it last night, scaling down to preemie size as I went. So far so good. The pattern is written with every row purl, but I’m not doing that.


Now I’m off to walk around Drummond Place Gardens with my MP3 player. I’ve only done it once so far. The earplugs stayed in. The sound is great. I couldn’t understand much of the Italian – rapid-fire conversation with much laughter. I’ve now downloaded a couple more programs which I hope will be calmer and more didactic. I want something I can nearly understand, to listen to again and again until I get it.

We’ll start with the good news, and work downwards.

A new follower!

And the MP3 player is in action. Archie, as hoped, had no difficulty solving my problem – I was pressing and holding the middle button, when I wanted a menu. What I needed to do was press and release it. Pressing and holding is for on-ing and off-ing, using the button on the side.

Getting podcasts from Italian radio is more challenging. Many buttons saying “MP3” produce only HTML documents. And after I finally succeeded in downloading a couple of real podcasts – right-clicking comes into the process – I tried to send some mail from my Google account and found that it just bounced into my “podcast” folder. That must RAI’s fault, mustn’t it? I re-booted.

Moving the podcasts on from computer to MP3 player is a doddle. The only remaining problem is that the earplug in my right ear tends to fall out. The two podcasts I’ve got should last a while, as listening to them several times will be part of the job.

Vegetables

A frittata incorporating my perpetual spinach and some odd kale leaves:

The “walking onions” are up, and looking good. I’m going to leave the bunching onions to bunch for the future.

I have real hope that my Colossal Victorian Climbing Peas will take a prize in the “Six Pea Pods” class at the Games. You can't really appreciate the size and fatness of the pods, in this picture. We ate some, very tasty, and I hope the remainders, here pictured, will fatten up in the succeeding fortnight.

My main potato crop, Pink Fir Apple, is abundant and delicious. I will also enter the “Three Potatoes” class. They’re knobbly and funny-looking which is why they never turn up in shops. But mine are brilliant, without a slug-hole in sight. In April-May, planting potatoes seems a fearful chore. In August, it’s like unearthing buried treasure. I skimped on the earthing-up this year, and it doesn’t seem to matter. Edwin Oxlade said the same thing in Kitchen Garden magazine recently.

August is for summing up, and thinking of next year. The major failure this year was that I found myself between lettuce crops, the first long gone, the successive ones still too small to feed a crowd. And no rocket! There’s no excuse for that. So we bought lettuce leaves from Tesco and I added “spicy salad leaves” and pea shoots and nasturtium leaves and flowers. And some tiny but tasty onions, not bunching.

But I wonder if it is time to give up on French beans, climbing and otherwise. The plants are fine. I’ve got a few beans, and there’ll be plenty in September. But growing that sort of bean is swimming upstream, in Strathardle. Stick to broad beans, which are easy, and we love them. Grow kale, and figure out how to stop the deer from polishing it off in November. And beets, and carrots.

I’ve run out of space without even mentioning knitting. I didn’t get to Stirling. It hurt, not going. It sounded so easy in Nov-Dec – right on the doorstep, mid-August, Helen or James or both would be here, off I go. But it didn’t work. If Franklin had been there, so would I have been, on the Wednesday, but that didn’t happen.

Knit Camp

No more news, much chatter. The British Yarn website is down. A list of tutors is still available, with all the non-UK names removed. The matter should be resolved today. A long life has taught me that days which ought to bring resolutions often don’t – but it’s hard to see how we could fail to get some news today.

What I want (and lots of others do too) is a solid, informative communication from the organiser – an email to the paying customers, not an oh-my-ears-and-whiskers post to Ravelry. Meanwhile, most of the non-UK tutors must be in the country already. Have they all, like Annie, been economical with the truth on entry? If so, will they be allowed to change their tune and teach? And many campers have begun their journeys, too.

There will be knitters in Stirling this week, whatever happens. Buzzing around perhaps like left-over bees when a hive has been emptied, but it’s likely to be fun. Annie took a picture of a man wearing a kilt.

Knitting

Just at the moment, I’m sick of this fiddly thing.

I’ll take socks with me to Strathardle today. They are always soothing. There will still be plenty of time to finish the baby jacket in Edinburgh next week.

One of Helen’s very-best-friends is in Kirkmichael with her. They were in the north of England somehow or other for a couple of days last week, children and all, and went into an LYS because the friend, who used to knit, thought she might like to start again.

Helen wouldn’t let her buy any yarn until she consulted me. She told me on the phone to bring the new Rowan book, and anything else I thought useful. I’ve chosen Sally Melville’s “The Knit Stitch” and “The Purl Stitch”. Perhaps I’ll add “Knitting Without Tears”.

Fuzzarelly, thank you for the link to the techknit blog (comment yesterday). It’s brilliant, except for the use of “lay” for “lie”. What it seems to amount to, is that p2togtbl is still p2togtbl, but first you realign the stitches. Maybe I’ll try swatching that.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, because it is the single most useful piece of knitting lore I know – for any decrease, the stitch the needle enters first, winds up on top.

So anyway, we’re going to Strathardle today, back at the weekend. Have the “walking onions” come up? What is there to eat? Broad beans, surely. Helen says she’s kept picking the mange-touts, so I hope they're still in production. Salad? Spinach? Potatoes? French beans? Peas? It is all very exciting.

It is wonderful to have the Fishwife back on her allotment. It looks better after a month’s neglect than mine ever does.

Knit Camp

Well. Annie Modesitt’s blog says it all – non-EU tutors need work permits, and none have yet been issued. The organiser and a lawyer hope to pick them up tomorrow. “Lorilee” has been turned around and sent home from Glasgow airport – I’m afraid I don’t know who she is, or what she was to have taught. Her posts to Ravelry about the episode are calm and cheerful. Annie herself has apparently been admitted on a tourist visa. The opinion over on Ravelry is that you can’t switch from that to a work permit without leaving the country and coming back.

There is a great cacophony of voices on Ravelry, but as far as I can see, no more information than that. It's worth reading through the comments on Annie's post, however, if you're interested.

Annie sounds cheerful, and confident that she’s not out-of-pocket. That’ll be important for all tutors, but those of us who follow her blog with devotion will be particularly glad that Annie’s OK. I trust she means that travel expenses have been paid on her behalf – not just promised – and that she has somewhere to sleep in Stirling.

The organiser herself has little to say. She has started a thread called “I’ve had enough”. Is that what was heard from Monty before El Alamein, or Wellington before Waterloo, or even Leonidas before Thermopylae? (I say “even” because the Spartans were slaughtered to a man on that occasion.)

Knitting

Any further remarks seem superfluous, but I suppose I should note that I finished the other front of the little kimono jacket yesterday. The pattern says to join fronts to back at the shoulder with a 3-needle bind-off. I think Kitchener would be preferable – smoother – and will do that.

The pattern has its oddities. A nice little chain of stitches runs up the fronts as you decrease to form diagonals. On one side – the baby’s right side – this is done with K2tog on the right side and P2tog on the back. On the other side, we have SSK on the right side and – bizarrely, to my mind – SSP on the other. What does that mean? How do you do it? What’s wanted is P2tog through-back-loops which is what I did. I think there are fancy ways of doing that manoeuvre, but through-back-loops works well enough for me.

All this talk of Japanese knitting sent me back to the Needle Arts Book Shop yesterday. I wound up ordering two more in the “Let’s Knit” series – those words being the only ones in the book in English – and the “Clear and Simple Knitting Symbols” book. I think the latter should go a long way towards making Japanese stitch dictionaries accessible.

What I need to do now is apply myself, instead of just oooh-ing and aaah-ing. Thank you very much for the offer of hand-outs, Mary Lou and Maureen. (And, boy! am I impressed that you can teach Japanese knitting, Mary Lou!) I think I’ve got all I need, what with the Knitter’s article and the free pages on “Interpreting Japanese Knitting Patterns” from Needle Arts itself. I downloaded and printed those yesterday.

Going back just now to get titles and links, I noticed for the first time the book on “Scandinavian Jacquard Hats”. In Japanese, of course. That could be IT! I knit an ear-flap hat for Rachel-the-Younger in Beijing earlier this year, at her request, using the plug-in-your-gauge self-generating pattern the Fishwife pointed me towards. It never reached its destination. A Japanese-Scandinavian hat might be just what Rachel would like, and just the incentive I need to get to grips with a Japanese pattern.

An ahah! moment.

Needle Arts is a delight to deal with, up there with the Schoolhouse and Heirloom Knitting.

As for actual knitting yesterday, I finished the first front of my tiny jacket, and started the second.


While I was lining up links yesterday, I noticed that K1 Yarns has some nice classes coming up – one on Shetland lace next weekend, when we will be occupied with a visit from old friends from our Birmingham days, and anyway I know how to knit Shetland lace; and one on Freeform Knitting, which I’d really rather like to attend – on Games weekend. So I won’t be there.

Emily Dickinson

Skeindalous, you posted a comment in late July mentioning the new biography of ED by Lyndall Gordon – the book which posits epilepsy as an explanation for her oddity. There is a full page review of it in the current “Economist” – that’s a lot of space for a book review, for them – in which they call it an “astonishing” book which will “revolutionise the way in which Dickinson is read for years to come.”

That’s the one I tossed aside because it didn’t have my mother in the bibliography, but maybe I should take another look.

I looked at my mother’s book again yesterday. It suggests nothing more than clinical depression as an explanation, but does say that the family were worried about Emily's oddities and reclusiveness when she was in her twenties. I didn’t pursue it – what is the evidence for their concern? But if she was epileptic, those closest to her would have known, and closed ranks, rather than trying to get her out into the world, wouldn’t they?

There’s a new bulletin from CT on Mungo’s blog this morning. My job on Games Weekend is to provide the picnic eaten on the field – clearly it will be impossible to come up to the picnic standards of the Connecticut River. (Helen will do Friday evening, Rachel will take Saturday, and on Sunday we usually manage to get by on leftovers.)

Here’s Mungo in CT shucking corn.

Not much knitting yesterday, but I finished the back of the little kimono jacket, did the maths – with what success, we will soon see – and started one of the front pieces. The pattern is curious in the way it leaves edges unfinished. The lower “skirts”, unattached to each other, are just raw st st at the sides -- I have frogged and started again with garter st borders, you will remember – and the back neck is similarly stark.

I felt yesterday that, whether I go to Stirling on Thursday or not, it sort of behoves me to get to grips with Japanese knitting. Helen CKS and I went to a lesson at K1 Yarns once, taught by Mrs Habu, so I’ve got a vague idea of the basics.

I spent some time yesterday, therefore, in the Japanese Knitting and Crochet group in Ravelry – I’ve been a member for nearly a year, but don’t go there much. In a list of resources, I found a reference to an article by Gayle Roehm in the Spring, ’97 issue of Knitter’s, “Understanding Japanese Patterns”.

And there it was, almost at the bottom of my pile. That was in the great days of Nancy Thomas’ editorship. The article is four pages long, and consists of solid, serious information. All I need now – once I’ve finished the Green Granite Blocks and some lace for Helen – is a KAL. (Interestingly, at the end, when she is listing resources, she gives only addresses and telephone numbers, both in the US and Tokyo – there’s not a website to be seen. How the world has changed in 13 years!)

The experience made me wonder, for a moment, if it is a good idea to go ahead with my plan for phasing out knitting magazines. Some of them, anyway. Starting with Knitter’s.

Miscellaneous

Angel, I like your idea a lot, of being able to pay the Twist Collective a flat fee for a particular issue that would let you download all of those patterns. Should you suggest it to them?

Reaching yesterday's milestone in my Yarn Fast has made me reflect again on the enormity of the problem. Effectively, there has been no new yarn for nine months now. The stash is totally unaffected. I've thought of some yarn I could take to the charity knitters in Alyth -- I'll look that out today. Short of actually dying, I can't think of what else to do. Well, I can. I must buy very little in November, and resume the fast at once.

Kind of a pivotal day on the yarn-fast front. My only lapse, since November, was a ball of merino lace from Heirloom Knitting, for James's jabot. And I knit the jabot, so stash wasn't enhanced (much).



Today is also Thomas-the-Elder's birthday. He's so old I've forgotten exactly which one.



The Yarn Yard website is back up: good news. Natalie doesn’t always name her colours these days, and I think it’s a pity. It must be very difficult to keep doing it, but Posh Yarn manages. The Posh names are very good, and it’s part of the pleasure of browsing that wonderful site. My very first purchase when the yarn fast is over…

And speaking of websites, I’ve only just discovered that the Fall Twist Collective is up. Who needs magazines on paper?

Knitting

Better garter stitch edgings have failed to eliminate curling, but have reduced it to a point where I can hope that blocking will do the rest. I should move on to one of the front pieces today. Don’t apologise, kirstieinbc. I should never have entertained the idea of not entering something in the Games, especially this year when it is for a good cause and can be done so quickly.


We sat down last night with the calendar, and although August remains as complicated as ever, coming-and-going-wise, saying it out loud somehow helped. We’ll go back to Strathardle on Monday, insh’Allah. I’ll take my Japanese knitting along – both the things required for the class, and some magazines/books I’d particularly like to be able to knit from. Thursday is the day, and you never know.

Will the walking onions be up?

Southern Gal, my MP3 player is a 2GB Logik. (It’s worth following that link – Southern Gal’s most recent post is about the sad news that knitting is to be cut from the curriculum in Shetland’s schools.) I have packed it away in its plastic box and put it in The Box to take to Strathardle. I can do no more by myself. But when I tackle the problem again with Archie, I will remember what you say, Theresa, about holding the menu button down for an unconscionably long time. I think I’ve done that, but it’s worth trying even longer.

So yesterday I was forced to do my power walk (four circuits of Drummond Place Gardens which I think add up to about a mile) alone with my thoughts. First I settled yesterday’s meals – mussels for lunch, chicken for supper – and then went on to the question of whether I should knit a Games entry after all.

I decided that I would, and I would do it properly, with a schematic and a swatch.

Kristieinbc, this is your fault, for Sunday’s comment.

After breakfast I printed out the kimono pattern – which lacks a schematic – and chose a yarn from my Yarn Yard collection. (Natalie’s server seems to be down this morning, hence no link.) I had the uncomfortable feeling that I could spend a year knitting exclusively Yarn Yard without running out – Adult Surprise Jackets, anyone?

Winding took a while. The schematic was easy. The back of the kimono is a square – 9 ¼” for the smallest size in the original. All I had to do was knit a 6” square and calculate the other pieces from that. While I was out shopping for the mussels and the chicken later in the morning, I reflected that I might as well take a guess at the gauge. If I got it right, that was the back done. If not, I had my swatch. Solvitur ambulando was the order of the day.

And I did get the gauge right – my piece is about 6 ¼” across. The fabric is lovely.


But it curls appallingly, despite a garter stitch border. Too much so to rely on blocking.


So I’m going to take it out today and start again, with a wider garter stitch border at the beginning and with garter stitch edges of at least four stitches each side. Curiously, the pattern lacks those. The bottom of the little kimono hangs loose – there are no side seams below the armpits. So it won’t even have itself to give it substance.

Mary G., thanks for the vote of confidence on the question of old women and long hair. I was afraid I'd been offensive. The Rowan model has hers in a bun in some of the pictures, and looks terrific.

Non-knit

I thought Mr Clinton looked alarmingly gaunt in the wedding pictures, but dieting often affects men that way. Our former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, still looks haggard, a decade or so after he and his wife took his weight in hand.

Vivienne, it was a great comfort yesterday to know for sure that I have ordered the right replacement needles (because Knit-Pick = KnitPro Symphonie). Thank you.

MP3 player

I might as well start here, since we are all now embroiled in my titanic struggle. I am now seriously entertaining the possibility that there is something wrong with the little machine – although, obviously, I must consult Archie before taking any more radical step.

I read the manual again this morning. The idea, repeatedly, seems to be that you scroll through the options – I can do that – and then press the >II/M button – the big one, in the middle – to get a menu, and to do everything else. I cannot get any response out of the >II/M button. I’ve tried re-setting.

Yesterday I downloaded a couple more worthy radio programs from the BBC and moved them to the MP3 player, I think successfully. I thought if I presented it with a choice, it might offer me a menu. No.

So that’s where we are. It’s no use worrying about the Italians until I can play the player.

Knitting

…provides a more cheerful topic.

The third rank of green granite blocks for the right front is established, and well forward. I should put in the central dots today, and get well on towards the point where the tops of the blocks begin to recede.


And a good stint of GGB’s leaves a little time in the later evening for the sock. I’m not all that far now from the first heel-turning.


I think the stripe-repeat on the yarn is shorter than in some KF yarns, but I may be imagining that. I've got more stitches than usual (64 instead of 56) for a woman's sock because Helen wants them loose. That could explain it.

Knit Camp looks less hopeful, as it looms nearer. August is just too stressful. If I could be picked up and put down without effort in Stirling, if I could be guaranteed a stress-free and preferably kitchen-free day or two afterwards to recover, I’d love to go. None of that is possible. But the option is still open. We’ll see how next week unfolds.

Writing yesterday about the Games and not-knitting has at least prompted me to have another look at the selected pattern – the Sachiko kimono (Ravelry link). It really is rather perfect – simple, elegant, easy to put on a small fragile person. Maybe, after all…

Lots of news.

The big news is that Mungo has posted his first American blog entries. Don’t miss. Here is a picture of him at Boston airport last Tuesday, being signed for by my sister.

Here he is hanging out with the boys after a cycle ride to the beach – Mungo is lower right.

The sad news is that – I can scarcely bring myself to write the words – I broke TWO of my beloved Knit-Pick sock needles. I had laid the knitting on the floor beside my chair, and the chair somehow shifted itself on top of the knitting. Stupid, stupid. I have just ordered a set of 2.5mm KnitPro Symfonie’s from this source to replace them. I was afraid I’d have to get a whole pack of six sizes. Was I right to go for something that looks the same but might turn out not to be?

I finished the second rank of GGB’s for the right front, and should establish the third rank today. As usual, a picture will follow when I’m far enough past the second rank that it shows up properly.

Kristieinbc, my current thought is that I won’t knit anything for the Games this year. That could still change. I’ve got the pattern and there’s plenty of suitable yarn in the stash. Or the new “Knitting” magazine has a neat little garter stitch baby hat, preemie sizes included. It wouldn’t win but it could be useful to a premature baby and the more entries there are, the more the winners can feel justly proud. The entry form doesn’t have to go in until the week beforehand.

I’ll enter some vegetables: Four Potatoes, Six Pea Pods, and Collection of Four Vegetables should all be possible. One year I got a Second for my Collection of Four Vegetables.

MP3

Progress, of a sort.

I grabbed a Reith lecture from the BBC, downloaded it, and, I think, transferred it successfully to the MP3 player. When it is plugged in, the computer sees it as a removable storage device, and in that state the Reith lecture is clearly there and indeed the computer even started to play it to me at one point.

But I can’t get the MP3 player, when unplugged, to do the same. I can’t get it to do anything except scroll through the headings. The instruction book doesn’t help. I’ll take it along to Strathardle when next we go and set Archie to work on the problem. I don’t think he’s quite the technology buff his cousin Alistair is, but he’s a Modern Youth, and that should be enough.

Theresa and Linda, I tried a total search of my computer looking for *.mp3 files, after the Italians seemed to say that I had downloaded one, and nothing turned up.

More non-knit

The good news yesterday was that we met the man who very recently bought the flat next-door downstairs – he’s going to live there. This unremarkable-sounding fact is news because for the last ten years or so an absentee landlord has let the flat to students. Although it is next door, it is also, due to the kind of complicated architecture which often prevails behind those orderly Edinburgh facades, directly under part of our house, and in particular directly under our bedroom.

Joy was unconfined.

August. We got here.

I forged stoutly ahead with the GGB’s yesterday, and have reached the row where colours must be set for the tops of the blocks of the second rank, for the right front. Steady does it, eventually.

With all this heightened excitement and rushing about, I have begun to worry about whether Helen and I will ever have time to sit down here in Edinburgh with lace patterns and stash yarn to consider the future, so I have packed a selection to take to Strathardle.

I haven’t yet worked out a Scheme for the comings and goings this month, and it’s getting fairly urgent, as Knit Camp is next week. We must get back to Strathardle soon, to start bringing in the harvest; and then back again for the Games. And, in relation to that latter event, Helen and I need to sit down and start making LISTS. There will be something like 20 people to be fed for three days.

I found my thoughts about the yarn I currently intend to knit a travelling-stitch something in – found them easily, because I had taken the trouble to label the relevant blog post. I should do that more often. It’s Rowan extra-fine merino DK. Meg’s hat pattern in the new IK will make a perfect swatch.

Otherwise IK leaves me unstirred. Nothing to snuggle into. Maybe they’re saving that for the winter issue, but this is the time of year, with the days already visibly shorter and the occasional leaf drifting downwards, when one begins to contemplate snuggling, albeit from a pleasant distance. The new Rowan offers plenty of snuggle.

(What Rowan also has – this is churlish of me – is a not-uninteresting section in which three models of very varied ages wear the same straightforward garments interchangeably. What I am churlish about is that the oldest model – an attractive woman, distinctly old – wears her white hair loose over her shoulders in some of the pictures. I think that looks awful. Revolting.)

I found myself wondering, how would I know about books, if I forged ahead and gave up some of these ridiculous magazines? New and serious knitting books are certainly not to be found on the shelves at Waterstone’s. The answer is fairly easy: read blogs, and keep watching the Schoolhouse Press website. I am keenly looking forward to the new EZ.

Non-knit

No progress with the MP3. The Italian radio station (link yesterday), under “podcasts”, offers buttons saying “MP3” and when you click on one, no one asks where you want the file to be stored, but there is activity in that bar at the bottom of the screen which says it is being downloaded. I’ve done this two or three times, and have despaired of finding the file, if indeed it’s here.

I thought of going for BBC World Service Italian – but the BBC World Service doesn’t broadcast in Italian.

I think my next step is to go for something easy, maybe Neil MacGregor, and see if I can get him onto the MP3 player, and then return, fortified, to the Italians.

I think I’m making progress on the MP3 front. I want to grab some Italian radio programs. Fortunately “podcast” in Italian seems to be “podcast”. I tried the BBC site, to see if they might be better at providing comprehensible instructions as to how to proceed. It was suggested there that right-clicking might come into it. I still haven’t managed it. I thought I had, at one point, but then couldn’t find the file anywhere on my computer. I wonder what “download” is in Italian.

FiberQat and AnnP, I think you’re right that it’s going to be a simple drag-and-drop operation once I’ve got hold of the files.

Real life is gradually resuming. Yesterday I spent with Fergus while his parents and brother Archie went to Giffnock (where that?) to see an Asperger’s specialist because Archie is said to have a mild form of that condition. I don’t like labels. They came back very pleased with the experience, however.

Fergus and I took a bus to the Camera Obscura, which I think he enjoyed, and walked home. I’m tired, still. Yesterday evening I could do no more than continue sock-knitting, but I hope to get back to Green Granite Blocks today.

It occurred to me that my blog entry for yesterday would at least show up early if anyone google’d on “Wineapple Dickinson” – but it doesn’t.

Knitting

The Ravelry team have now pulled out of Knit Camp, so the final Saturday can no longer properly be described as a “Ravelry Day” although in all other respects it should be unaffected. To lose Franklin and Ravelry within a week, however, looks, in Lady Bracknell’s phrase, like carelessness.

The difficulty in that case, and I think in several others, was that no contract was in place, and when it came to the knitty-gritty of agreeing on one, the attraction couldn’t accept the organiser’s terms. On the other hand, Annie Modesitt still seems to be coming. She’s fussy about contracts, we know from her blog. I think I’m right in saying she won’t teach for Stitches events because she doesn’t like what’s on offer.

Publications have been flowing in unrecorded. I’ve got the new Rowan magazine, full of luscious things. The opening section is sweaters for both sexes, and scarves, in Cocoon and Big Wool. Very inviting. Very expensive. I knit Thomas-the-Elder a scarf in Cocoon for Christmas last year. It’s wonderful stuff to deal with, and I liked the result a lot, but I think it was the most expensive Christmas present I gave.

(Nobody notices, if you knit it.)

The new IK turned up yesterday – just as Fergus and I were setting forth. I’ve read Meg on travelling stitchery and although I didn’t learn anything, it was wonderful to find it there. I wonder if I will be able to turn back and find my own decision on the yarn with which to knit a travelling stitch jacket-or-sweater, when the fast is over.

And speaking of podcasts, the BBC Radio Four “Open Country” program this morning was about Fair Isle – and about knitting, not birds. Again, I don’t think any of us will learn anything, but it’s a good, intelligent program. I’ll leave you to figure out how to download it.

Skeindalous, first of all.

My mother’s writing name, her maiden name, was Anna Mary Wells. Her Emily Dickenson book was “Dear Preceptor”, a biography of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Since my mother was primarily a Dickinson scholar, and since Higginson’s claim to fame lies largely – although not entirely – in his friendship with Dickinson, appreciation of her genius, encouragement of her, and his role in the publication of her poetry after her death, that is what the book is largely – although not entirely – about.

Long sentence. “Dear Preceptor” was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1963 and very well received. Not a light under a bushel or anything like that.

My soapbox moment – whenever it occurred; I can’t remember either – concerned Brenda Wineapple’s book “White Heat” in 2008. That book is about Dickinson and Higginson and was billed on the dust jacket as “the first book to portray one of the most remarkable friendships in American letters…” Reviewers believed and repeated that statement. I’m still seething.

My sister and I got nowhere, complaining to the publisher and to reviewers.

I don’t know about Lyndall Gordon. Is that the new book that says ED was epileptic? If so, I had a look at it in a bookshop, found that it had “Wineapple” but not “Wells” in the bibliography, and gave it no further thought.

I can see that there’s not going to be much room for knitting, in this post. I did virtually none while we were away. I have resumed Green Granite Blocks since returning, and last night added the spots to the second rank of blocks on the right front. I am feeling rather bogged down – there’s a long, long way to go. I have also started some KF socks for Helen.





The vegetables are on the whole fine. I was very happy working among them. It's a very special sort of happiness.







The bunching onions continue to promise well.



The walking onions turned out to be healthy-looking little bulbs with vigorous roots. They are not above ground yet. We’re eating mange-tout peas (but mange-tout peas never taste as good as my father’s snow peas, from his Victory Garden in Detroit in the war years) – and salad and the first potatoes with beans and real peas to follow soon.

The summer pudding was a great success. I made another one with white currants for consumption after we left. I’m told that was just as good.

The rosa mundi is in bloom.

Helen and her family and friends trekked up to Loch Esk for a day’s fishing. Here is Mungo showing my husband the catch.
Mungo is now in CT with my sister and her husband and their new dog. We’re all eagerly looking forward to his blog reports.

Here’s another problem for you: I have taken to doing a few minutes’ brisk walk in Drummond Place Garden in the morning. It is very boring, so I have been trying to activate an MP3 player I was given for Christmas. I gather in order to grab podcasts and transfer them to the player, I need a podcast-grabbing-program. Any tips or suggestions on how to proceed? I use Windows XP.

Helen’s here. And James is back in Beijing. A new chapter opens. We’ll all go to Strathardle today, where her husband and sons will join us today or tomorrow. I’ve got the Linda Dick organic chicken which will be the centrepiece of the meal ending in summer pudding, if the gods smile on us. Who knows? – maybe the garden will provide potatoes and a vegetable.

We’ll be back in the middle of next week, if all goes according to plan. I’ll tell you all about my onions.

Franklin

Anita has left a new comment (on Wednesday’s post) about Ysolda’s decision to pull out of KnitCamp, and I’ve had a message from Maureen – who has spoken to Franklin – which confirms her (Anita’s) guess, namely that there was a contractual problem. It must have been sad for him, given, as you say, Mel, what an Anglophile he is. That’s what I started out as, and then I met Scotland. We might have done the same for him, had things turned out differently.

Clearly, Franklin is not at all to blame. Nor is Dolores, even.

I’m now a member of the Knit Camp 2010 Social Group group on Ravelry (Tricia’s comment yesterday). The effect is reassuring. Did the Camp organisers but know it, the sense of being able to speak freely is much to be preferred to a forum devoted to midges and cheerfulness in which one knows that dissenting voices are being silenced.

So at the moment I am sadly hopeful, so to speak, of an interesting day with Donna Druchunas on the subject of Japanese knitting.

Knitting

I finished those socks. What a relief. And knit a few more rows of the Green Granite Blocks. Now Helen and I must find some time in a busy morning to look at lace yarns and patterns.

I am tempted to start a pair of KF socks in Perthshire instead of forging ahead as I ought with that eternal sweater.

Today’s event is – Helen.

Lisa, I did write to Franklin on Tuesday when I heard the news. We have corresponded in the past – I provided him with one of the Latin words on the shawl he knit for his niece, and a bootlegged copy, I am afraid, of the Bridget Rorem lace alphabet, now available from the Schoolhouse Press. But no reply this time.

I think I may attempt a message today to the Delores Devotees group on Ravelry, along the lines suggested in your comments. It’s no use writing to the Knit Camp group which is heavily monitored and devoted to messages about KALs and protection against midges. The news of Franklin’s non-appearance was posted there by the organiser, an hour or two before she sent the emails to the paying customers. It has apparently attracted no comment at all.

Life

My new email address (drump at btinternet dot com) has suddenly sprung to life. I’ve ensconced it in Outlook Express. Now I must go through the Outlook Express address book and see if there’s anyone who needs to know about the change. For the time being, it simply relieves me of vast quantities of advertising, the result of all my on-line Christmas shopping in years past.


So the one remaining thing to test, is adding additional computers to the system. That will have to wait until someone comes to visit with a laptop.

Yesterday’s young woman was very pleasant. She did stay to lunch, and for much of the afternoon. She is working on a kind of archive of the reminiscences of elderly art historians. It will be deposited somewhere.

I signed up for Facebook the other day, for an entirely unworthy reason. I had heard that a young woman with whom I am not acquainted often wrote about her mother, whom I know. I wondered if her posts were public. They’re not, and I am ashamed of myself and certainly don’t intend to startle the young woman by proposing myself as her friend.

But the Facebook experience is extraordinary. As soon as I had identified myself, I found a cheerful group of six or eight dear people, wanting to be my friend. A bit like dying, I imagine, and being welcomed by familiar faces on the farther shore.

Knitting

I have successfully established the second rank of Green Granite Blocks for the right front.


Once I had done that, I thought I might as well finish off those blasted socks. I took unusual care to make sure I was operating on the correct, too-long, sock, and then cut off the toe and took it back. For the successful sock, I started the toe shaping as soon as the Oliver shaping was finished, with four stitches remaining between the decreases. That meant that I was able to recover the stitches for this sock at precisely the same point.

I’ll finish it off this evening, if the excitement of the day’s event allows. And THAT means I can select a KF colourway from stash for the next pair!

Rachel’s younger son Joe – the Grandson, of the Grandson Sweater -- embarks on life’s third decade today. It’s the only birthday-ending-in-zero for which there is no specific card on sale, at least at John Lewis. Happy Birthday, Joe, anyhow.



Well. Franklin. Dawn’s comment yesterday says it all, a good deal more neatly than I am about to.

How could this be? He has been promised as a star turn to Knit Campers for the last seven months or so – plenty of time for a double-booking to come to light. Even Franklin doesn’t have that many overseas gigs. Passports and travel plans would have to be in hand before now. He must be in touch with lots of people – including the camp organisers themselves – who would occasionally say, See you in Stirling. Dawn’s hypothesis is the only possible explanation.

If the double-booking was made this year, surely he would honour the earlier commitment?

The substitution, Mary Jane Mucklestone, is brilliant. The organisers did well to get such a big name, and such an appropriate one, at short notice. If I were interested in learning how to photograph fabric, everything would be fine. But since I am interested in being taught how to photograph fabric by Franklin Habit, I’m out of luck and out of pocket. Similarly, Dawn, who I am sure can knit a tomten with one hand tied behind her.

Which day is your cable class, Dawn? Can we meet when I’m there for Japanese knitting on the Thursday? It will be easier for me in many ways to take only one day away from domestic responsibilities. That’s a plus.

Life

I continue to wrestle with my new broadband connection. Specifically, to try to find my email. I tried your suggestion, Judith, but soon ran up against the now-familiar stone wall. I tried sending a message to myself as drump at btinternet dot com from Googlemail. It bounced back with the message that there is no such address at btinternet.com.

Maybe things will settle down after a few days. I have emailed the BT help desk. Eventually I may have to phone them.

Yesterday’s event, lunch with a friend, was very pleasant. Today’s is an unusual one – a young woman with a recording machine is coming to interview my husband about his memories of the founding of the Association of Art Historians in which he was closely involved. We’ll have to offer lunch, although we hope she’ll go away. Piperade, I think, into which extra eggs can be incorporated if need be at the last moment.

Knitting

What with one thing and another, I am still a couple of rows short of the top of the first rank of Green Granite Blocks on the right front.

Stop Press

Franklin has pulled out of Knit Camp.

That is my new Hub. Isn’t it nice? I’m sure the ease of yesterday's transition owed a lot to it. It already knew many of the things James struggled for hours to teach the Netgear router about my former ISP.

I’m now trying to find messages for my new address -- drump at btinternet dot com. It’s no use writing to me there because I don’t know where to go to pick up mail. Googlemail (address in sidebar) works as usual, thank goodness. And I must look into security. James said before he left that it is important to ensure that students in the flat downstairs can’t download porn on my wi-fi.

Knitting

Yesterday’s event, apart from BT Total Broadband, was my husband’s appointment at the Royal Infirmary Breathlessness Dep’t. They can’t do anything for him, but say that he is not declining, or at least not rapidly, and that his resting oxygen level is good. There was a long wait, as expected, and I finished off his second sock.

The first is too long. I Kitchener’d the second in the evening and it’s just right. It won’t take long to re-knit the toe of the first one. Is this an argument against toe-up sock-knitting?

(They had a pamphlet on the rack, just in front of where I sat knitting, called “Coping With the Final Stages of Chronic Lung Disease”. I would have loved to have a look, but didn’t, so as not to worry or distress my husband. The man on the front of the pamphlet looked pale but otherwise as cheerful as any man could in his condition.*)

Today’s event is a friend coming to lunch. I’ll make soup.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the right front of Green Granite Blocks is bounding forward. I should finish the first rank of blocks this evening, and set the second.

I used my brilliant new connection last night to winkle out the information I need about Knit Camp – times and places of classes, what to bring, map of Stirling campus, train timetables. I feel better having all this together, and still think the organisers might have sent a simple email.

They have a “list of tutors” on the Ravelry Knit Camp page – it’s fairly short, and doesn’t include Franklin. I deduce that it is a list of tutors whose classes aren’t full. It does include Donna Druchunas who is going to teach me about Japanese knitting. But of course there is no way to distinguish a tutor who is below the class-minimum from one who is a few short of the maximum.

Vegetables

The walking onions turned up yesterday, too. The plan is to go to Strathardle on Friday, with Helen – her arrival is Thursday’s event. I’ll plant them straight away, of course.

Rachel is already overwhelmed by her husband Ed’s allotment crop – more artichokes than they can eat, marrows, courgettes, borlotti beans, mange-tout peas. Will I have anything? Well, peas, hopefully, and red currants for the summer pudding. Courgettes and the first potatoes and broad beans not far behind. Not too bad.

*see Pepys on the hanging, drawing and quartering of poor Major General Harrison.

Here I am! Full marks to BT!

The installation process has consumed blogging-time -- no worse than that. I should be back here tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the day I switch ISPs, so it is safe to assume I won’t be here. (In fact, at the moment, I can’t connect today.) I haven’t yet received the box of kit from BT – which will include a wireless router they call a “hub” – but I am confident it will arrive. I am hopeful (but not confident) that I will be able to do the rest myself. I’ve already got the User Guide, from which I deduce that the hub will be pre-set to talk to BT. That should help.

If I fail, I’ll get a man in right away. This week is unusually fraught with event; that won’t help.

Since I can’t (yet) connect this morning, I can’t re-read yesterday’s comments, but you are right, Lisa, that there seem to be two Geoffrey Duttons, of almost identical age and not entirely dissimilar careers, a world apart. I faffed about for a while yesterday trying to see if they might not be the same man after all, but I agree there were two. In a few hundred years’ time, art historians will find it very hard to believe that there really were two French 19th century artists named, respectively, Manet and Monet.

(I’m connected! Hello, world! Perhaps for the last time.)

As for Kaffe, my belief, on not much evidence, is that he designs fabric, knitting patterns in that sense, and the knitty-gritty of transforming his ideas into garments is done by someone else. But having started to formulate that idea, I remembered the dramatic coat and the bat-winged ikat in “Glorious Knitting” – he must at least have wanted to achieve those shapes, even if someone else actually did it.

I think, in fact, that “Glorious Knitting” shows a certain amount of transitional discomfort on this point. “Knitting patterns” meant something slightly different then. People expected shapes and texture. That’s why they chose that – rather awful, to my taste – thing with a peplum for the cover of the first edition of “Glorious Knitting”. And why my sister-in-law said, when I showed her the book back when it was new, “It’s just colour”.

I don’t believe, in short, that the over-the-shoulder way of knitting was something he insisted on. It is interesting to learn from Judith’s comment that it is a 19th century technique. I did it for his Arabic patches sweater in “KF at the V&A” and didn’t much enjoy the process.

I've finished the ribbing for the right front of the Green Granite Blocks, somewhat slowed by skein- and butterfly-winding, and am now embarked on the pattern. Knitting only half-a-row is going to be fun.

Lisa, I’ve never attempted intarsia in the round. I’ve read about it. I know it can be done (although at the moment I can’t think how). In fact, in a situation like this, I don’t mind purling. The whole experience of a KF design is so different from other knitting anyway.

Helen's shawl

I took some pictures yesterday of the lace yarns I’ve rooted out of stash for Helen’s consideration:

Lorna’s Laces, “Helen’s Lace” (appropriately enough):

Cheery Tree Hill suri alpaca in the colourway “Martha’s Vineyard”. This was an extravagant purchase of mine at Stitches East in ’02. Memory had suggested that there was some possum yarn in the blend, but memory erred. I wonder if it would do for the Dickinson – observe the ball already wound in the middle of the pile:

James’ and Cathy’s Christmas present to me in ’08. It’s labelled “cashmere”, but Cathy says not:

Some purchases of my own made in Beijing on our one glorious visit, in ’05 perhaps. The colours are wonderfully Chinese-looking. I’d love to use them:

Bless you, catdownunder, for saving me from the humiliation of a comment-less day, and even more for actually knowing Geoffrey Dutton. Did someone say something about a small world?

I had one extra advantage in my search for his garden: proving, if proof were required, that we’re going to go on needing the printed page. My husband, with a lifetime of research under his belt, said, start with the phone book, when we read the obituary with its reference to a garden “north of Blairgowrie”. We were in Strathardle at the time, and there is no possible Dutton in the current book.

But here in Edinburgh, we keep the Tayside book-but-one (and do the same for Edinburgh at the other end). And in the older book a Dutton was listed – although without “G” among the initials – for “Druinchardain, Bridge of Cally”.

Well, Google on that and you soon find that that’s Geoffrey Dutton’s address. So then all you have to do is locate Druinchardain.

Knitting

The back of the Green Granite Blocks is properly finished, and I am advancing through the ribbing of the right front.

The pattern – I’ve mentioned this before – asks one to carry on, over the shoulder, and knit the fronts downwards. I don’t see the point. And I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with Kaffe. I don’t think he designs knitwear, in the ordinary sense of that phrase, although he certainly has views about possible – often dramatic – shapes.

So I left the stitches live, and am starting again from the bottom.

I got a bit anxious about the fact that I seem to have used nearly half of the amount of yarn provided for Colour A (which figures prominently in the ribbing). But a quick search of the Rowan odd-ball bag has produced a sufficiency of the right stuff, or near enough. Dye-lots don’t matter here. So that’s all right.

There is one colour whose effect I don’t like at all, as it appears on the back. When you see the colours all lying in their box ready for deployment, it looks as if it would provide an interesting accent. But in practice, I don’t think it works.

The pictures on the models in the California Patches book all seem to be arranged so that you can’t see the places where that colour appears. And there is one mysterious picture of the complete back – knit in a different colourway: Red Granite Blocks, perhaps. No comment in the text, and no discordant colour there.

I don't know what that intrusion at the bottom of the picture is -- the camera case, perhaps. But it underlines one appearance of the offending colour, and there is another upper left.

I’m about to try a substitution from the odd-ball bag.

I looked out some lace yarns for Helen’s consideration yesterday, and became thoroughly depressed at the size of the stash. It’s now eight months since the yarn-fast began, interrupted only by buying one ball of merino lace for James’s jabot – and knitting it. You wouldn’t know anything had happened, in there amongst the yarns.

My plan, roughly, is to buy! buy! buy! in November – when one needs cheering up, anyway – but to buy less than can be knit in a year, and then start another fast. We’ll see

We had a good walk, and were very lucky with the weather. There was serious rain from time to time, but it fell while we were in the car, or having coffee in a nice place in Gullane, or, at worst, walking through trees. We drove west of Edinburgh to Yellowcraig and walked perhaps five or six miles in all, along the beach and back along the dunes. All rather wonderful.

I was too tired last night, in a thoroughly nice sort of way, to get much knitting done. The back of the Green Granite Blocks is finished – indeed, I’ve gone a row too far – but not finished off.

Gardening

I ordered some “walking onions” from an eBay seller yesterday – all your fault, Mary Lou. I’m going to try them in the part of the garden fully exposed to rabbits (and thus well away from the strawberries). There are plenty of rabbits about, but they are, for whatever reason, leaving me alone this year. I had hoped maybe parsnips and perpetual spinach would both be safe, and so far both of them are. Plus some spicy salad leaves. By nature? or because the rabbits have declared an amnesty? We will see whether walking onions can be added to the list.

We have occasionally bought books after learning of the author’s existence from his or her obituary, and did so again last week, Geoffrey Dutton’s “Some Branches Against the Sky”. It arrived yesterday, and has been set aside for thorough reading in Strathardle.

Dutton was Australian to begin with, and his distinction was in biomedical research, but the interest of the book to us was that it described his “natural garden” -- not the same thing as a wild garden, apparently – somewhere “north of Blairgowrie”.

The Telegraph obituary said that he kept the precise location of the garden secret, but you can’t really do that in the Age of Google, and I’m pretty sure I’ve found it, just above Bleeton Hallet on that rather scary road from the A93 to Alyth. Not in Strathardle itself, but well within our orbit. We might have known him, were we more inclined to scrub up and go about in society.

He was a writer -- a poet, indeed – as well as a scientist and a gardener. The book promises very well. His approach to gardening sounds much like my husband’s. He deplored improving the soil – it only encourages weeds. I wonder what has happened to the garden. I learn, from dipping into the book, that a natural garden can be recovered from neglect fairly easily. And its outlines would surely survive for years.

Still, you can’t grow vegetables that way. It was Mrs Duthie of Bleeton Hallet who told me, at the Games one year, that rabbits don’t like broad beans. I wouldn’t have believed a lesser expert, but she’s right. I’ve been growing them fully exposed to rabbits for a decade now.

Thanks for the help with the shawl-choice. Susan, I’m saving your advice about beads and feeling, at least for the moment, inspired to try some. I think the Dickinson shawl would suit Helen-in-retro-mode. She’ll be here soon. We’ll see what she thinks.

There was a bad moment yesterday when I had an email to say that their flight today, Athens-London, had been cancelled due to yet another Greek strike. She said they’d drive home, if they had to. But then another email to say that David had found a flight for them. I trust they’re on their way.

Today is St Swithin’s Day and it’s not looking good. Not actually raining (very much) here at the moment, but we are enveloped in a haar. I am meant to be going for a walk with husband’s neice but am inclined to think we should wait for something better. I didn’t get lace yarns dug out yesterday, what with one thing and another. The forecast suggests there might not be a chance to photograph them in natural light before the end of the month.

Angel, I’m sorry to hear you’re not knitting. I like imagining that Oberlin yarn shop. I wonder if there was one in my day. I knit in high school, trying to marry Woolworth’s yarn to Vogue patterns with singular lack of success. For those four years at Oberlin, nothing at all. Then Glasgow, and everybody was knitting, and I remembered how much I had liked it. That was the real beginning.

There’s a thread on the Historic Knitting Group at the moment about Knitting 50 Years Ago, for heaven’s sake. I can’t bear to read it.

All well on the Green Granite Block front – I should finish the back today.

The haar has lifted, and it’s not raining. Not nice, but not raining. Difficult one to call.

A beautiful day yesterday; not so this morning. No hope of natural-light-on-the-doorstep for the Green Granite Blocks.

Otherwise, however, all is well. I have reached the row in which the front-of-blocks dots for the sixth rank will begin to be inserted, and indeed if all goes swimmingly, I should finish the back of the jacket tomorrow.

The computer was slow-as-molasses yesterday, but remained connected. I bought and downloaded and printed – not without difficulty -- both the Emily Dickinson shawl pattern (Ravelry link yesterday) and Anne Hanson’s “Pine and Ivy”. The latter a strong contender: the Faculty Meeting Knitter alerted me to it a while ago, but doesn’t seem to be knitting it yet.

I also flipped through a few books, feeling sort of Faroese. But Faroese usually means fingering weight, and it’s lace weight or finer we’re after here. The Dickinson one is gossamer, and I think really should wait until the yarn fast is over and it can be knit in a proper Dickinsonian grey.

The pattern disappoints by not telling me how to attach beads. It doesn’t tell me how to knit, either, so perhaps that doesn’t constitute grounds for grumbling. I’d need “273 clear glass 6/0 Japanese beads” and a 1mm crochet hook. The positions for the beads are marked on the charts. Good old Google will fill the gap, if I ever get that far.

Now I must seek out some possible yarns.

Slow cooking

I had a good time last week with my new toy. As a way of life when lots of people are about, Helen is right that cooking in the morning while the kitchen is full of breakfast and chaos is a good way to start the day. Then clean it all up and off you go.

I wished somewhat that I had bought the smaller John Lewis programmable slow cooker which I recently gave Rachel. My one seems awfully big, even for four adults. And a couple of meals were near-spoiled by, I think, being cooked for too long. I don’t really need to program it. I can come in from my vegetable-growing at what I deem the appropriate time, and turn it on.

And when Helen gets here next week, she’ll straighten me out on the whole topic.

Vegetable-growing

I have been reflecting lately on the near-miracle of the fact that we can afford to eat at all. I know about agri-business and chemicals and all that. But even so the production of food seems so labour-intensive when one is actually doing it that I am astonished that anyone can do it, and harvest and package and ship the stuff, and sell it – with a generous slice for the seller – at a price anyone can afford.

And in the olden days, three thousand years ago before agri-business and chemicals were invented, how did people grow enough food to support cities? In villages and towns, people can continue to grow a lot of their own. But not in cities. Wheat, is the answer. It still supplies 20% of all calories consumed in the world, I learn from the Economist. Rice, another 20%.

Mary Lou, I will keep walking onions well away from the strawberries. Thank you.

I did it. I got my MAC – Migrating Access Code, or something like that – from my current ISP and relayed it to BT and the changeover will happen next Monday and I will probably never be heard from again. I had better print out what I can, while I can, about Knit Camp. I still don’t know what I’m going to do, but it’s as well to have the options open.

We talked about this Big Change while my sister was here. She thought I could run both accounts in parallel for a while. Can you in America? I think maybe it was possible here back in the simple days of dial-up, before the need for MACs.

A good day on the Green Granite Block front, too. The sixth rank is established. I’ll attempt a photograph tomorrow, when I should be far enough forward to let the fifth rank be seen in all its glory.

Greek Helen phoned yesterday, still in Athens. They’re coming to England later this week (as you should know by now from reading Mungo’s latest blog-entry) but going first to David’s family and only next week to us. So one of the things I must do is look out lace yarns and patterns for her to choose from.

I stumbled across the Emily Dickinson shawl (Ravelry link) yesterday – I like it a lot. My mother was a Dickinson scholar of some distinction, and Helen was very fond of her. So it would make some nice connections.

It involves, however, beads, which are against my religion. On the other hand, again, several knitters whose work I admire and respect are devoted to them. Maybe it is time to move forward. Perhaps I should at least buy the pattern and have it ready for Helen’s views. I’m not sure I have any suitably Dickinsian lace yarn, though. Mine tends towards garish.

Summer pudding (& vegetable-growing)

I use Delia Smith’s recipe for summer pudding, except, as I said, that I use only red currants. And take the crusts off the bread -- I don't think DS says that specifically. My husband says, oddly, that there should be a transverse slice of bread in the middle. That’s pretty well impossible, unless you’re using a bowl the size of a mixing bowl. Maybe he retains a vague war-time memory of days when red currants and sugar had to be made to go further? He’s right that the fruit-soaked bread is the whole point.

Mary Lou, I am worried about the removal of “walking onions” from your garden. They sound fun, and I thought I might go on to them when I had mastered bunching ones. I am trying to encourage every sort of vegetable that has the slightest capacity to look after itself. I constantly buy “spring onions” and I thought having something in the garden that would do as a substitute would be a real blessing.

By the way – I set out five salsola soda plants in the end, and they seemed, in the week we were there, to be taking hold very happily. I even tasted one. Yes! It’s not so much the flavour as the delicious and unexpected crunch.

Everything seems all right this morning, connectivity-wise, but failure lately has been sudden and unprovoked, as if the machine knows that James is gone and I’m on my own. I must get back to the prob of switching ISP’s, rather neglected in recent days.

Strathardle was wet and midge-y but we had a grand time. No knitting to speak of. Cathy and Alistair and I went to see “Noises Off” at the Pitlochry Theatre.


James and Alistair went camping. I drove them up Glen Fernate along an interesting single-track road and then they skirted the south edge of Ben-y-gloe, if I’ve got it right, and walked down Glen Tilt,


to Blair Atholl, where we picked them up the next day at the Atholl Arms Hotel.


Now they’re in Cornwall, celebrating Cathy’s parents’ Golden Wedding.

Vegetables (and weeds) progress. I am becoming obsessed by the concept of bunching onions, and increasingly hopeful for my own. My vegetable-growing books aren’t terribly much help, being much more interested in the growing of onion-onions. Googling seems to suggest that we are talking about alium fistulosum, of which there are many cultivars. Not all equally hardy, perhaps.

There seems to be a nice range of interesting oriental ones. I might have a go at some of them next year, and also try the red variety of the Siberian (or Welsh) Bunching Onion, said to be the hardiest of all.


Siberian or Welsh:


Italian (cipolotto da mazzo):


For the Fishwife, these things grow like weeds – literally. They seed themselves pleasantly in odd corners of her garden. (Towards the end of her July 4 post.)

As for the rest, the mange-tout peas and the Colossal Climbing Victorian ones are coming into flower. In the background, on the dyke, you can see one of Helen's mosaics. The design is, essentially, the same as Green Granite Blocks, except that the blocks are facing the other way.


Beans are cheerful but, except for the broad beans, not making much progress.


The nematodes have expired and the slugs are back at work on the second sowings, especially the lettuce. The red currant bush, carefully netted, promises a summer-pudding's-worth of harvest again this year. (My husband insists, contrary to all authority, that summer pudding be made entirely of red currants.)

No knitting in Strathardle, but I have happily resumed the Green Granite Blocks. I should finish the 5th rank today, and accomplish some or maybe all of the setting-of-colours for the sixth. And the sixth rank is the one that doesn’t get finished, because one reaches the shoulder seam first.

Connectivity problems. Back soon, I hope.