A tough day – without a stitch of knitting, some measure of its toughness. Not all grim: I went to the exhibition of women artists at the Gallery of Modern Art with a friend and enjoyed it, although I would quarrel with its premise. Those people were artists, and needed to be seen in a context which defined them as such. It was a bit like seeing an exhibition devoted to people who painted with their left hand. (Might be interesting, actually.)

Alternatively, if it had to be restricted to women, I would have preferred more works by fewer artists, so that I could have learned something. There were something like 45 artists there, in a small show – one or at most two pictures from each. I recognized a few familiar names, but the many others flashed by in a blur. Wilhelmina Barns-Graham came out strong.

Knitting

Yesterday was a good day with Gudrun’s hap. I should have finished the centre easily today, had I done any knitting. I ordered longer needles in Symfonie wood. The gauge is 5mm, larger than my usual, which is probably why I don’t have the usual choice of luxurious needles in various lengths. I have been working so far with a 24-inch-er. I think EZ says somewhere that that is the only size one ever really needs, but I suspect Gudrun is right that greater length will be required here.

I have decided – reinforced by the re-watching of her Craftsy lesson – to pick up those YO’s from the front so as to produce the cross-legged effect. And I don’t see why I shouldn’t do that with a smaller-gauge needle, to make it a bit easier. That round isn’t knit at all: it’s pure picking-up. I'll let you know.

Non-knit

Thank you for your cat comments – I am very glad to learn that Perdita is not unique in her neck-nuzzling, and marvel anew, from your reports, at the variety of personality in those furry people.

Perdita was seven weeks old when she came here: in My Day, six weeks was regarded as quite old enough for a kitten to begin a new life. I am sorry that I didn’t meet her mother Esther. I don’t know why she wasn’t about that afternoon – perhaps her human family felt that the separation would be too painful for her. There were a couple of raucous ginger brothers.

An important anniversary looms: Perdita’s arrival in Drummond Place.

This picture was taken on the 17^th of June last year, and I think that must have been the day she arrived. I’ve looked back through my blog entries: they aren’t absolutely clear on the point.

 

I made that nice bed for her, that first night, and then shut her in the kitchen. I got up a couple of times in the night to see how she was, but found no trace of a kitten. In the morning, she emerged from the cupboard next to the hot water tank, where she must have been sleeping on a pile of plastic bags. Every night since then, except for the very few when circumstances have separated us, she has slept with me.

She has a Very Peculiar Practice, which she still maintains, of nuzzling into my neck at night, kneading, purring, and making sucking noises. It is the only time she ever purrs. I do my best to fill the role of her mother Esther in which I seem to have been cast, but I doubt if I do it very well. I have never known such behaviour in a cat, but on reflection, I have not known all that many cats. Sappho “Kitty” Smits of Detroit and the Jersey shore; Poussin Miles of Leicester, Birmingham, and Kirkmichael, Perthshire, both lived long lives. Neither of them thought I was her mother.

Here is a recent picture of Perdita.

Knitting

Thanks, as ever, for your comments. I have done the provisional cast-on with a crochet hook over the needle in my day, and I agree, it’s an excellent system, simple and secure. I have also succeeded with the cat ‘s cradle one, although I couldn’t attempt that again before doing some serious revision. I would really like to master the crochet chain – it must be wonderful fun unzipping it, when you’ve got it right. I’m sure you’re right, Liz, that TomofHolland’s chain is a bit longer than needed in order to leave a little bit hanging down at each end for security.

But it’s still a daunting challenge at the beginning of the project, as compared to “Cast on 5 sts. Row 1 (RS) Knit all sts.”

I continue to get on well with Gudrun’s hap. I have joined in the fifth ball of yarn, and may even finish the centre today.

Yesterday afternoon, deliciously, while my husband was resting, I propped up the iPad and knitted and watched Gudrun’s Lesson Three on Craftsy again, about picking up stitches around the centre and doing the set-up rows for the border. My plan is to do that much exactly as instructed and see whether or not I can endure purling alternate rounds.

Now I must find out whether I’ve got the Right Needle to go on with. I’m sure I’ve got the right size and length – but is it fashioned of a beautiful and luxurious material like the shorter one I’m currently using? 

As if the Haps Book wasn’t enough for one week – there’s more excitement! I must try to resist the temptation to make every sentence that follows into an exclamation.

I’ve had an advance notice about EYF 2017 – March 9-12. The class schedule will be available on October 7, and booking will start from October 15. Fingers on the buzzer! Now all we need is for Franklin to be among the teachers, for happiness to be complete.

This time I’ll know to leave March 10 free for the market. I’m still a trifle sad about having cancelled my class with TomofHolland in favour of the market this year, but it had to be done.

They’re having a “Knit Fest” in Inverness in late September, featuring knit-cruises on Loch Ness. I’m sure it won’t be nearly as good as ours.

I had another good day with the Hansel hap. I’ve now joined in the fourth ball of yarn and am steaming briskly down towards the finishing of the centre square. When I told Gudrun that I was knitting it, she said that the centre square was the most fun part. Rather to my surprise – I am so looking forward to those stripes. But I also very much enjoy knitting an edging onto live stitches, so I’m looking forward to that, too.

The whole thing is deliciously warm and light and cosy, and I am enjoying it enormously. I fit it into the crevices of the day, instead of just reserving it for sitting-down-time. This is knitting the way it used to be.

I very much like Kate’s remark, at the end of the chapter on construction in the haps book, that “Whether a sweater is made top-down or bottom-up, it is a sweater, and a hap worked borders-in or centre-out remains a hap.”

I’m sure I had some left-over tidbits about Saturday’s book launch to tell you – but all I can remember now is that Tom and Bruce weren’t there. They had stayed home to get the books in the mail. And that Kate herself looked younger and fresher than when I saw her last, at the EYF.  I was puzzled, once, as to why there should be a download option included with an order for the physical book, but now I see: so that everybody could have it on the same day.

I am glad I wasn’t faced with the agonizing choice of whether to wait for the post or have just a peek at the download.

I think my choice for first-one-to-knit is certainly Lucy Hague’s Uncia. I have an especial bias towards patterns that begin “Cast on 5 stitches. Row 1: Knit all stitches.” (Although, of course, the attraction of the Uncia goes further than that.) TomofHolland’s pattern begins with a 172-stitch crochet chain from which 162 stitches are picked up. As a provisional cast-on, presumably. I would have to do it differently as I have yet to distinguish those “bumps on the rear of the chain” and have experienced the agony of getting it wrong.

I have given a bit more thought to my newly-projected pattern of life, namely knitting nothing but haps from now on. You’re absolutely right, Ron: not having to worry about fit is a big attraction. By “haps” I mean anything you can wrap yourself in, large or small. The Neap Tide shawl qualifies, and so do the other projects I have left from the EYF: Mary Lou’s Bidwell shawl, and “Cameo flower” from Knitty, and Carol Feller’s “Yorkshire Capelet” from IK.

In alternate weeks, I will knit shawls and scarves of fine lace.

I think there are four sweaters in my queue – I’m afraid to look, for fear I’ve forgotten one or two. That’s four sweaters for which the yarn has already been bought, as it has for the projects mentioned above. I’m counting the partly-knit half-brioche and the yarn my sister will bring any moment now for my husband’s basic v-neck, long-sleeved sweater, but not counting Alexander’s Fair Isle vest commemorating the Scotland’s next victory in the Calcutta Cup.

That’s not likely to be next year, as the match will be at Twickenham. Still, miracles sometimes happen.

Looking at the pictures in the new book, I began to wonder seriously about wearing a hap instead of a sweater. It would leave the arms free-er. It wouldn’t bulge embarrassingly over the bosom. One would need a good belt to tuck it into, but that shouldn’t be insuperably difficult to achieve.

I spent some time yesterday sorting and filing papers, in a vain search for last year’s MOT certificate. The car is going in for the new one on Tuesday, and if I can find the old one, they can run consecutively. Otherwise, I’ll lose 10 days or so. Well, that didn’t work – where on earth could it be? But I found Meg’s DVD on how to knit her Fair Isle vest. I didn’t have the slightest memory of acquiring that.

So all we need is the Calcutta Cup.

The book is all we were promised, and I had a grand time.

I got there relatively early, 11:15 or so for an 11 a.m. “off”. The shop was crowded, and so was the little teaching-room behind where the signing was actually going on. Kate and the books of course were there. I had mine signed by her and Jen and also had Gudrun and Lucy Hague sign their patterns.

And, as in the preliminary daydreams, I told Lucy Hague (she’s wonderfully young) about the Dunfallandy blankie and the horizontal cable it incorporates. She knows the Dunfallandy stone but didn’t know about the blankie. And Gudrun is not scary at all, taller than I expected. She is in the process of moving back from Portobello to MA. They have been here a year and I think they meant to stay, but teen-aged children haven’t found it easy and want to go back.

After a while I went back out into the shop and sat on Kathy’s accommodating sofa and read much of the book. There is a lot of useful and interesting material about 19^th and 20^th century Shetland. A crisp chapter by Kate about construction is fully as informative as I hoped and expected. The Shetland way is to knit from the borders inwards.

On page 35, a simple method is given for determining which way a particular shawl was knit –attributed to Sharon Miller. If the auld shell holes curve over like bridges, it’s borders-in; if they are hooped under like bows, it’s centre-out.

I don’t understand this, but trust I soon will, by looking at the centre-out shawl in my hands. I got a certain amount more done yesterday, despite the excitement. I have passed the centre point and am now decreasing.

Several of the original shawls from the book were there -- Kate's own Moder Dy, in both its Buachaille form and the J&S jumoer-weight one that she showed us in a recent blog entry. And Mel herself was there, who knit both. Kate said, endearingly, that she is a slow knitter. Just like me!

I also saw Jen's Nut-Hap, Tom of Holland's Hexa, Gudrun's Lang Ayre, and Donna Smith's Houlland. (That one is rather small -- you couldn't hap yourself in it.) Although Lucy was there, I didn't see the Uncia, but I might have missed it, The room was crowded and I kept noticing things I hadn't seen.

The idea of spending the rest of my life knitting haps, large and small, is rather attractive.

The great day dawns.

I was on the doorstep yesterday evening snipping herbs for our supper, when Kathy and her husband came by, on their way home after a long, hard day at the LYS. She was in a state of some excitement about the morrow, and said she hadn’t heard from KD since Wednesday and was afraid she might not have the books and might not turn up.

(You don’t get to be Micro-Business of the Year by disappointing Kathy at the last moment.)

I told her that I had been promised my copy for today, and she was happy to believe that if one copy was going to be available, they all were.

Now I must assume a smart-casual costume of some sort. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow, insh’Allah.

I got on well with the Hansel hap yesterday. Soft, fluffy garter stitch seems to suit my mood at the moment. I am now within five rows of the centre. I finished the second and attached the third ball of yarn – 25 gram balls give a great sense of forward movement to one used, as I am, to 100-gram skeins. It now looks as if the centre will consume about 4 ½ balls: I think I’ve got plenty.

I had some connectivity problems last night and this morning. All seems well now. (If turning it off and on again doesn't work, try the Reset button.) But how bereft one feels, cut off from the world!

I had just begun to allow myself the luxury of the slightest tremor of anxiety, because KD had promised us pictures of the Haps book pouring off the presses, and no such pictures had come. But now they have – I found them yesterday afternoon, buried in Promotions. We are set fair for tomorrow. I've even had an email from her saying that the copy she means to give me, despite my protests, is ready to be handed over on the spot

My sister says she wouldn’t mind the Uncia. That’s Lucy Hague’s wonderful shawl, which I wouldn’t at all mind knitting. Greek Helen has fallen in love with Tomofholland’s contribution, the Hexa. I’ll need to see the pattern before I know how knitterly that one is. I can see myself spending the rest of my life with this book. My sister will be here in a couple of weeks, bringing the discontinued madtosh yarn for my husband’s sweater which will have to be added to the already-prodigious queue.

At least, meanwhile, the Hansel hap proceeds well. Now that I look at the pattern closely, I see that Gudrun does indeed say to knit the final stitch of each row tbl while the diamond-shaped shawl centre is increasing, and through the front of the loops thereafter. Nothing beats reading the pattern with care. I’ve got about 20 rows to go before the half-way point. It’s looking wonderfully cosy already.

When I got done re-reading Sharon Miller’s hap book, I went on to her Lerwick Lace Shawl. I long to be doing that sort of thing again, and I think that might be my choice, rather than the new Jewel Long Shawl. One more for the queue.

Skeindalous, thank you for the quotation from Psalm 139!

Yesterday was a better day, nursing-wise, but none of them are easy.

I did finish the first ball of yarn employed in the centre of the Hansel hap, and attached the second. I doubt if I’ve knit more than a fifth of it yet. I have nine balls of MC altogether. But once the centre is finished, the main colour has no more to do until edging-time. And there's plenty more in Lerwick, I'm sure.

I’ve now got more than 100 stitches on the needle, and the rows are pleasantly endless. I’m loving this. I feel as if I were helping God to knit the baby.

I thought I might as well watch Gudrun’s Craftsy hap-class again, although I have half-a-dozen unfinished Craftsy classes. Here I am actually doing what the class is about, instead of feeling guilty all the time about not doing my homework, as with the others. And I learned that the trick of knitting into the back loop of the last stitch of every row, is only for the increase rows. Once the centre passes the halfway point, and starts declining, you’re meant to knit into the front of those stitches. It’s something to do with keeping the dear little edging loops as uniform as possible.

KD has posted an interesting tutorial by her husband Tom, about how to make a hap-stretcher. I’ll never do it, or even commission one, but it’s nice to know that the detailed instructions are available. The photographs include her Moder Dy pattern from the new book, knit in J&S jumper-weight instead of Buachaille. It looks to me as if the centre is knit straight – i.e., not on the diagonal. Only two more days and we will KNOW. I suspect the jumper-weight hap is a more useful size. It's thoroughly beautiful.

Susan Crawford has published another update about the progress of the Vintage Shetland Project. Everybody is hard at work on page layout, she says. What an interesting career it could be, these days, being a Graphic Artist who works on self-published books!

I am slightly worried when Crawford says: “I have worked very, very hard to try and ensure that the complexities in these unique pieces from the Shetland Museum are not obvious to the knitter.” I don’t quite know what I expect of this book any more, if anything – but I didn’t expect to have complexities concealed from me. Complexities are the whole fun. 

Yesterday was another tough day on the nursing front.

The knitting of the new hap, however, progressed regardless. Or, irregardless, as we used to say. I have reached the point where the rows seem long, and they will be a good deal longer before I reach halfway. I hope to finish the first 25-gram ball of yarn today. That will make me feel I am getting somewhere.

Maureen in Fargo, thank you very much for your comment. It’s interesting to know that Gudrun recommends knitting the last stitch in each centre row tbl in her Craftsy class – I think I have watched that one all the way through twice, but I had forgotten that. And I think I agree with you, that I like that crossed-leg effect when picking up stitches, although memory is vague as to what I am talking about. Perhaps it is the picking up of stitches from the flat edge of an edging in preparation for my preferred, Amedro-style, borders-inward shawl knitting.

This experience may change my mind about that, at least for basic haps. I do like the look of those loops along the edges.

Mary Lou, it’s hard to compare Gudrun to Sharon Miller’s book because Sharon is so diffuse, describing so many different ways of doing things. I don’t think I had even been aware of what she calls “cruciform” haps, where the shawl is knit borders-inward without mitred decreases at the corners. Whereas Gudrun has written a pattern: do this, do this, do that. It will be very interesting indeed to see how KD handles all this – only three more days now. You’d think there would be balloons outside Kathy’s Knits, but there’s nothing but a hap poster in the window, illegible from street level.

Franklin’s book is wonderful. I long to rush out and buy a set of pens and carefully colour it in. It deserves to be preserved in colour. But the only time available for such an enterprise is Knitting Time – I am sure Franklin himself would be the first to appreciate the difficulty. 

Great excitement: the yarn arrived from Lerwick, and I cast on at once. Not the least of the attractions was the easy way in. I hope Gudrun won’t feel that I am infringing her copyright if I tell you that the first thing to do is to make a slipknot and place it on a needle. And then the first row is YO, K1.

And when one is feeling tired already at lunchtime, and battered by life, that is the sort of instruction one is glad to embrace.

I’ve now got about 50 stitches on the needle, out of a required 144. That’s not as far along as it sounds, but it’s a start. The needles prescribed are rather larger than I would have chosen; the fabric is soft; the gauge doesn’t matter a whit. Whoopee!

Catdownunder, I think it’s probably too late now to switch to knitting the final stitch of the row – the YO from the row before – through the back loop. I like the idea, and will try to remember it. When it comes to picking up the loops, I’ll take time and actually think about which way to do it. I could do a few and see how they look and tink back if need be.

And I was very interested in your granny’s diagonal centres, Jenny.

But that’s not all that happened yesterday.

Attached to the package from Lerwick by a useful Post Office rubber band, was another, smaller one. It was from Into the Whirled, and contained a 100 gram skein of Pakokku sock yarn in their colourway “Vampires of Venice”.

I can’t remember how long I have been occupied with the quest for that yarn, nor how it started. One of you wrote to me recently to say that it was available on the itw website. I ordered it – there was only one skein – even before I replied to her email.

At the beginning, I didn’t even know that “Vampires of Venice” had anything to do with Dr. Who. I just thought it was about vampires and Venice. Now that I’ve got the yarn, I feel that the colours are suitable for both.

When I had my wonderful 80^th birthday party, in 2013, Alexander presented everybody with tea-towels on which was printed a “found poem” made up of lines from this blog. The Vampires of Venice are mentioned there – so I’ve probably been looking for them for four years, at least.

(I copied out the whole poem for you as soon as we got back from Strathardle that summer – you’ll find it in late August, 2013. It’s brilliant.)

And today, Amazon say they’re going to deliver Franklin’s colouring book!

Along with some more RC Sherriff. It was good to hear from a fellow-admirer of “The Fortnight in September”, Peggy. I’ve ordered Greengates, which you say disappointed you (comment, Saturday) and also the science-fiction one, The Hopkins Manuscript. Science-fiction is definitely not our genre. We shall see. I’ll try to remember to report back.

Comments

I agree, Mary Lou, we don’t want sorrel soup laden with cream. I’ve done a bit of googling and failed to find exactly what I’m looking for. I’m certainly not a spontaneous cook, but as I remember, all one does is sweat some chopped onion and a chopped potato in butter; add stock; add sorrel; liquidise.

That’s good news, Jane, that you’re going to persevere with your Dunfallandy, and perhaps even better news, that your edge stitches are still live. As I remember, all you need on each side are those live stitches and perhaps two from the gulf in between the two triangles – far fewer than the pattern specifies.

Knitting and Not

The tennis was too exciting yesterday to allow for much knitting, but I got a bit done, all the better for having the Sous Sous out of sight. One of the rewards of a misspent life is that I have a lot of bags given me by LYS’s when grateful owners wanted to reward me for major expenditure. They are now nearly all full of yarn-and-pattern for future projects: presumably what the acronym-writers had in mind with PIGS: Projects in Grocery BagS. The Sous Sous bag is from The Elegant Ewe in Concord, NH. I hope it flourishes.

Tennis: why was the Paris crowd, asked to choose between a Scotsman and a Serb, so enthusiastic for the Serb? Whatever happened to the Auld Alliance? It’s not even as if the Serb were the underdog – but perhaps that’s irrelevant. Perhaps cheering for the underdog is an Anglo-Saxon thing. At any rate, the Serb won and the Frenchies went home happy.  I wonder if Murray could have carried on the post-match interview in French as fluently as Djokovic did?

I have continued to read and think about haps. Sharon Miller says that knitting the centre square from corner to corner, although not traditional, has the advantage that when the shawl is folded and worn, the garter stitch rows in the centre run from shoulder to shoulder. You can see this clearly in the photograph which illustrates Gudrun’s “Hansel” pattern although there it is a baby being carried.

I am much like Epaminondas (although I suspect it is not Correct to mention him) in my enthusiasm for acting on the most recent instruction issued to me. If the yarn had arrived on Saturday – J&S emailed on Friday to say it had been dispatched  – I would be well forward with the edging for the first side by now. If it arrives today or tomorrow, I am likely to cast on a corner of the centre.

Gudrun does the centre that way, with a YO loop at the beginning of every row, making a nice open edge for picking up the borders later on. I knit Hellie’s bridal shawl centre-out and seem to remember a lot of trouble with the picking-up. But that was without YO loops.

Yesterday was better on the nursing front.

Comments

Mary Lou, I meant to say – one cannot possibly have too much sorrel soup, in my book. I’m growing it in a pot on the doorstep for that purpose, and would be glad to have ten times as much.

Thank you for your help and encouragement in the matter of (ahem) laying the Sous Sous aside. Jean, the first appearance of the word TOAD in yesterday’s essay is a hyperlink to a whole list of those knitting acronyms. BUFO is a particularly wonderful one which I had forgotten: Boring UnFinished Object. And bufo of course is the genus in which TOADs find themselves: Trashed Object Abandoned in Disgust. (I would prefer “Despair”.)

Fuzzarelly, I have followed your advice and eliminated the Sous Sous from the side bar. But I haven’t trashed it. I can still take a deep breath and go back. Love those cables.

KayT, I think I got the Jewel Long Shawl from Sharon’s Etsy shop – I am a member of the Heirloom Knitting group, and I followed a link, and I think that’s where it led.

Despite all the license you kind people have given me – Jane, I want you to persevere with the Dunfallandy blankie. Only two more triangles – that’s nothing. I am a dyed-in-the-wool hater of sewing-up. If I can do it, you can. Bits of mine fell apart and had to be sewn up again. Have you left the stitches live on the final edge of the triangles? I think that helped, when it came to picking up – although it’s a bit late to be telling you now. And I am sure that the picking-up numbers in the Knitty pattern are wrong.

Fortified by your encouragement, I had a good day with half-brioche, thinking ahead to a few design decisions I will eventually (in fact rather soon) have to make – about saddle shoulders and neckline. And I compared hap patterns (Gudrun Johnston, Madeline Weston, Sharon Miller) and can only conclude that there’s a good deal of latitude here. “Knitting is forgiving stuff,” is one of the very best of EZ’s mots.

Non-knit

The BBC put on a brilliant production of “Journey’s End” in (perhaps) 1988, which would have been 70 years after the end of the Great War. I hope it might reappear during the four years of centenary we are currently experiencing. It is searing stuff.

Valerie, yes – at least, I discovered a good deal about RC Sherriff’s writing when looking him up in conjunction with “The Fortnight in September”. I mean to order at least one other of his recently-republished novels.

Only a week to go!

Yesterday was tough on the husband-nursing front.

I knit a bit more half-brioche. And I re-addressed myself to the Sous Sous. It is now very close to being declared a TOAD. The problem was, you will remember, that I had attached back to front with the back upside down. So the first problem was to unpick my firm back-stitching and yesterday, perhaps predictably, I snipped the wrong thread at one point and have spoiled a couple of inches of the neat garter stitch edging which belongs at the bottom of the back.

I’m sure I can fudge something. Do I want to? Have I got enough strength and indeed life left for this sort of thing? I think I want to snuggle down with a hap for a baby. (I’m afraid I’ve ordered the yarn for Gudrun's "Hansel" from Jamieson & Smith).

The more I think about the TOAD idea, the more attractive it becomes. There wouldn’t be an acronym for it, if other knitters hadn’t been here before.

And in only a week’s time, I can (at least in imagination) discuss hap construction with Gudrun herself, and ask Lucy Hague (who wrote “Celtic Cable Shawls”) whether she has seen the Dunfallandy blanket pattern with its interesting innovation of the horizontal cable.

Meanwhile: the new VK has arrived. It is to be bi-monthly henceforth, I gather. I hope it won’t spread itself too thin. OK so far: I like the cover pattern (No. 10, in case you have a different cover in the USofA) and also No 6. In a parallel universe, I would knit both…

There’s a plug early on for curved dp’s from a German company called Niko Knit. Has anybody tried them? I don’t like small circulars, for small circular items. They hurt my wrists and I’d rather use four or five short straights. But I’d be very interested to hear what you think of these.

Sharon Miller’s “The Jewel Long Shawl” has also turned up. Wow!

Non-knit

A book recommendation for you. We recently read, somewhere or other, that R.C. Sherriff – who wrote “Journey’s End” – survived the Great War and wrote a good deal else as well. We sent for one of his novels, rather dubiously on my part: I adore “Journey’s End” and felt that anything else was going to be a disappointment.

We have just finished  “The Fortnight in September” as our bedtime reading. I think it’s wonderful. It’s about a lower-middle-class (I think you’d say) English family going on holiday – from London, where they live, to Bognor – for a fortnight in September. That’s it.

I'm thoroughly back in the saddle. Will there ever be two such days in Strathardle again? Helen and the remnants of her family are going back to Greece today, leaving Archie and Fergus behind at school here. Archie is on the very verge of the exams which will settle his fate, at least as far as university is concerned.

Knitting-wise, I feel I am back in the doldrums from which I rescued myself temporarily with the Neap Tide shawl. (I have sent it down to London with Rachel, to be given to Juliet’s mother Lucy.) I knit a few rows of half-brioche yesterday. What I must do is take the Sous Sous back in hand and bring it, at the very least, to a near-completed stage from which I can launch myself into a hap for the forthcoming great-nephew (see yesterday).

I’ve printed out the pattern for Gudrun’s Hansel hap, and compared it to the Madeline Weston one with which my hap-knitting career began. Stitch numbers are very similar. Gudrun has a slightly deeper border. All this sort of thinking is abstract until I have read KD on hap construction – only eight more days to go.

The distressing thing about Gudrun’s beautiful colour choices, is that she says one needs 132 yards of each of the two least-needed colours.  Jamieson&Smith jumper-weight is 125 yards per 25 gram ball. Still, if that’s the case one will just have to face up to left-over yarn. Nice for Jamieson&Smith, not quite so nice for me. Things would have worked out better in the long-gone days when yarn was put up in one-ounce balls.

Non-knit

Thank you for your helpful comments about gardening. There’s lots going on on the doorstep here which I haven’t told you about, including the recent acquisition of a quince tree. Greek Helen, knowing I was thinking of such a thing, has arranged to have a big Greek pot shipped here when her belongings come home to Edinburgh in August. Meanwhile the tree is in plastic and seems perfectly happy. Picture soon.

Politics

Not Hillary – the EU referendum.

There was an article by Someone Who Should Know in the Times or the Telegraph yesterday saying that the environment was better off being protected by the EU.

Rubbish.

A leading British bee-man used to live in Kirkmichael. He told us once that, when he was President of the British Beekeepers Association, he tried to prevent the importation of queen bees from the continent to stop the varroa mite reaching Britain. (Beekeepers will know what I mean.) He was told that it couldn’t be done, because of EU rules about free trade. That’s silly – British beef was banned from the continent during the BSE crisis. But AK is a gentle man as well as a gentleman – if he had been a bit more like Donald Trump, perhaps British bees might have been saved.

He doesn’t think that there are any feral honeybees left in Britain. Our own small observation confirms this – we never see them anymore. Bumblebees have taken over, and are working very hard to show themselves worthy of the contract.

And anyway (environment-wise) the British are keen on it. It’s the Italians who turn out in the spring to shoot migrating songbirds.

New follower! Welcome!

So – here I am back. I had a wonderful time. The weather was peerless. The bats are flying in the delicious late-evening hour when it’s still miraculously light – we’ve never had so many. We approve of bats. I worked hard in the garden – perhaps a little too hard. Mr Cochrane cuts the grass and keeps things in general order. My job was to rescue individual plants from an encompassing morass of weeds. It was hard to choose which ones to rescue.

I started with the little rose I mentioned last time I was there. The ground elder threatened to overwhelm it despite my earlier efforts. So I did it again. The rose itself looks very cheerful. No buds yet -- it flowers very late.

Then I rescued our white lilac. I’ve still got the labels that were attached when we bought it, but, alas! I haven’t dated them. I think this is its third year with us. The two flowers are certainly its first ones. We had thrown a net over it, whenever, with which it was by now thoroughly enmeshed. Much of it had grown through the net, and was, nevertheless, apparently unassailed by deer. So I cut the net away, slowly and laboriously, and didn’t replace it. Just weeded and watered and fed and mulched the plant.

I rescued our Good King Henry patch, in memory of happy days in my vegetable garden. It is one of the very few things that survive. I could probably have spent the time better on prettier or more useful plants, but I’m not sorry to have done it. We had some for lunch yesterday. If you soak the leaves in salted water for a while, they really don’t taste too bad, and it is satisfying to be eating something that was (they tell us) brought to Britain by the Romans. The photograph shows the Good King Henry patch after weeding, and also after it had been harvested for lunch.

And finally the Rosa Mundi, a plant Greek Helen gave me long ago. It has suffered badly from neglect, and is now somewhat overshadowed by an unproductive apple tree, but it’s doing its best, and there are a few buds for this year’s flowers, and I hope it’s feeling a bit better with the weeds gone.

By then there were lots more candidates – the productive apple tree! The current bushes, including the Summer Pudding bush! The photinia! All neglected. I think if I were there for longer, and the sun went on shining, and Mr Cochrane continued to deal with the grass, I could still keep up a worth-while garden without feeling as beat up as I do now. If only.

Knitting

I did virtually none – a round or two on the socks.

Big news: Theo’s wife Jenni is expecting another little boy, a brother for Ted, who will be three at the end of October. The pregnancy is more than half over – they didn’t trust their luck, to make an earlier announcement.

Despite the wonderful book which will soon be in my hands, I’m thinking Gudrun’s “Hansel” pattern, at least for the colourway, to be knit (what I think of as) Amedro-fashion: edging first, then pick up stitches for all four borders and knit inwards, mitring the four corners, then knit the centre back and forth from the live stitches of one of the borders, picking up stitchs alternately from first one and then another of two other borders, finally grafting the live centre stitches to the live stitches of the fourth border.

We’ll see.  

Perhaps I got a little bit more than usual done yesterday; perhaps not. I don’t feel that I feel as strong as I ought to feel.

One of our carers left recently on maternity leave. We heard today that she has a little girl, very much the desired sex. I tidied up the Milo Bambino – we’d nearly forgotten about that one – and applied a bit of judicious steam iron in lieu of blocking, and packaged it up nicely for her. Another FO! 

Today’s teaser-hap is another stunner, by the Icelandic designer Helene Magnusson. I restrained myself with some difficulty from ordering the yarn kit immediately.

It is not, by the way, for these bursts of girlish enthusiasm that KD wants to thank me – but I’m glad to hear that they have inspired some to order the book. I sent her my obituary of Gladys Amedro from the Scotsman, and responded when she put out that appeal for people who had knit the famous Paton’s leaflet by “Mrs Hunter of Unst” in the ‘50’s.

Comments

Thank you for all of them. You can be sure that I’ll tell you all about the book launch. We are about to face a sad gap between the revelation of the final teaser-haps and the release of the actual book, a 10-day desert. Fuguestateknits, I am sure this book is, as you say, a classic and a keeper.

I am greatly looking forward to KD’s chapter on the traditional construction of haps. I was rather alarmed when she said that there was more purling than might have been expected in her own contribution, the Moder Dy. If I knit it, as is quite likely, there will be less. I might wrap and turn at a corner – as I did for the edging of the Dunfallandy blankie, and nobody has complained yet. Or I might try to master Fleegle’s technique for garter-stitch-in-the-round using two balls of wool.

KnitWit, I was worried by your comment a couple of days ago, fearing that you wouldn’t have the courage to knit Gudrun Johnston’s Hansel pattern. I’ve bought it; it’s safely there in my Ravelry library. I have read through it hastily: it’s not difficult if you don’t mind purling, and I’m sure you’d have fun. I have the hap-piest of memories of my first hap, the one in Madeline Weston’s Traditional Sweater Book. Her method is rather unusual – borders-inward, half of the shawl at a time, so that at the end you have two corner seams to sew. But no purling. Like Gudrun’s pattern, it’s done in Shetland jumper-weight which makes it a pretty quick project.

Tomorrow is the big day when I’m going off to Strathardle for an overnight stay. I’ll be back here on Thursday, insh’Allah.

I’m sorry about yesterday's silence. The confusion of having-people-about throws me into a real old-woman tizzy these days.

But WHAT excitement – the launch of the Haps book right around the corner, a few steps beyond the Hussains’ invaluable corner shop, closer than the butcher or the fishmonger! It could hardly be more convenient unless they had decided to have it in our own sitting room – and that might have been awkward. Of course I will be there! Kathy’s Knits is a good choice, because she sells exclusively British wools, and because KD used to live around here. But still a most unexpected blessing.

Yesterday's teaser-hap was a spectacular "fancy" from Lucy Hague (who will be at the opening), and today's is a cosy shoulder-wrap from Hazel Tindall herself. 

KD has written to me saying that she is going to give me a copy of the book because I “helped” – quod absurdum est. Or if I did, I have already been more than repaid in pleasurable anticipation. In either case, now she doesn’t have to send one. She can either give it to me that day, or I will more than hap-pily  buy one and have it signed by her and Jen and Gudrun and Lucy. I’ve taken Gudrun’s Craftsy class on hap-knitting and am rather afraid of her.

Other knitting news is good, too. I’ve finished and blocked the Neap Tide shawl. At first, I thought I could just pat it into position, but then I found that it lacked two or three inches in width – and anyway, no lace edging ever knit has failed to be improved by being pinned out. So I’ve done that, and am very pleased indeed with the result. It is very close to the dimensions on the schematic.

I took two pictures but can only download one.

Perdita likes to help with blocking, but she also likes to pull the pins out and bat them about. I fear she might swallow one, and have to exclude her from the room. She is determined to get back in, and she is a good deal more nimble than I am.

I’ve enjoyed every moment of the process, and am delighted with the result, and also have an extra twinge of pleasure at having actually finished something I bought at the LYF market that happy but extravagant morning.

I knit a couple more rows on the half-brioche sweater last night, and am ready to begin the patterning on the front. And it is now time to face up to the Sous Sous, of course, as well.

Today’s hap is a small one, lacy all over, a “fancy hap” according to KD. Not as startlingly wonderful as some of the others, but wonderful nonetheless.

Patience, Karen (comments yesterday) and I have now heard from Susan Crawford, so all is at least reasonably well. Her second fortnightly report is about the difficulties of reconstructing the pattern – in a range of sizes -- for a particularly difficult and beautiful ‘50’s cardigan. She has produced a range of wool in colours to match the antique ones. One of the photographs in the new report shows the modern sweater, knit in the new Susan Crawford yarns, and as far as one can judge from a computer screen, the match is pretty well perfect. This is going to be good when it all comes together.

The Neap Tide shawl is all but finished. A few more rows, tidying, blocking. Today should do it, except that Greek Helen and her family are about to arrive and excitement may overwhelm me. As I said yesterday, I’ll miss it.

Thank you for your thoughts about e-books. I very much like the idea of, in future, buying any book that sounds like a book-of-patterns for the Kindle app on my iPad, and printing out any patterns that I actually want to knit. I can’t, at a glance, see how to do that, but I’ve just Google’d the question and there seem to be answers. I probably won’t want to knit any of them anyway. I’ll be too busy knitting haps.

Today’s teaser-hap is by Gudrun Johnston, and it’s another good one. I’m clearly going to have to spend the rest of my life knitting haps. I clicked on everything in sight in Jen’s blog entry introducing today’s shawl, and I particularly like, for its colours and simplicity, Gudrun’s “Hansel”. I’d better put that one in the Queue before it gets away. I may even turn out to prefer it to KD’s own hap-book hap, Moder Dy.

I’m going to be rather sorry when the haps book is finally published, and this delicious interval ends – waking up in the morning and spending the first hour and a half of the day in a state of happy anticipation of the forthcoming hap. With the near-certainty that it won’t disappoint.

Poor Susan Crawford! On May 10^th, she wrote a message which she said was the first of a series of fortnightly reports about the progress of her book. That was 16 days ago. Never mind the book, I am now somewhat worried about the woman, if even a promise to update us once a fortnight is too much for her to keep.

I have sped on with the Neap Tide shawl. The part is finished, where I decrease a bit more slowly during two repeats of the edging pattern. Now it’s all systems go for the end, and I suddenly realise that I won’t have it to knit for much longer. I’m going to miss it. I’ve got the half-brioche sweater to steady myself by, as I face up to the Sous Sous again.

Comments

Wooleidi, I don’t think electronic will do it for me, with knitting books, although I haven’t really tried. I have bought a couple of cookery books that way, and it didn’t work. But I do think I can prune my absurdly large stash of knitting books quite a bit, when the time comes, by adhering to the principle of taking reference books along with me, and leaving books of patterns behind.

But even that won’t entirely work – I’ve got Madeline Weston’s “Traditional Sweater Book” here on the table beside me, and Rae Compton’s “Complete Book of Traditional Knitting”. The former because it contains the pattern of the first hap I ever knit, the latter because Susan Crawford referred to it in her first (and so far, only) fortnightly message. Both are essentially books of patterns, especially so Weston; both I would want with me for the final move.

And what about my few 19^th century knitting books? Unlike Franklin, I don’t think I’m ever going to knit from them – but could I leave them behind? This is going to be very difficult.

Sue, (comment yesterday), whatever is speeding towards you from Susan Crawford, it couldn’t possibly be the Vintage Shetland book. Publication is now scheduled for August 15. Let us know!

Today’s teaser-hap is another “Oh, wow!” Maybe we’re going to have to knit our ways through this book after all. It’s by Kate's co-editor, Jen Arnall-Culliford. It looks as if it might involve a daunting amount of k1,p1 rib for the sake of making it reversible, but that should be trivial for one such as I who has (almost) knit the Sous Sous of solid double moss stitch.

Kate Davies’ blog and wonderful photographs warmed me towards the Veera Valimaki hap yesterday. It’s done with madtosh yarns, which of course I love. What fun it would be to choose two for that particular combination!

One of the particularly delightful things about all this, is looking forward to the half of the book we’re not hearing about just now, Kate’s research into Shetland hap shawls. She is a trained academic, a university lecturer until her stroke early in 2010. If by any chance you don’t know about it, read this and then read this.

And now, look at her: designer, stylist, businesswoman, and I can’t think of a noun to cover the creation of Buachaille – not a matter of some pretty colours and her name tag on somebody else’s base, but a whole new yarn which she has engineered from sheep to mill to dye pot. Famous, and loved, in a wholly different world. There are clichés to hand, about ill winds, and doors opening as others close, but they all seem inadequate to this extraordinary situation. I was surprised, looking out the links above, to be reminded how very recently it all started.

I gave a little more thought to the idea of plucking out from my shelves the books I have actually knit from. Not so easy. I must have all of EZ, to begin with, whether I have actually knit anything from a particular book or not. And much of Kaffe, similarly.

It might be more useful to think of assembling the little collection which must go with me to the nursing home when my time comes. For reading matter, I can rely on the iPad – I think I can trust our children and our finances to ensure a nursing home with wi-fi. But for knitting books, one needs paper. And there may not be much shelf space there. Mary Thomas, EZ, Kaffe, Barbara Walker, Sharon Miller, KD, Eichenseer-Grill-Kron for Bavarian twisted stitch… they may have to find room for another bookcase, after all.

There’s a strong bias towards reference books in that little list.  Even in one’s terminal nursing home, one can download individual patterns from hither and yon as required. It may be a useful brake to apply to book-buying henceforth: will I want this one with me in the nursing home? Haps, certainly.

Meanwhile, the Neap Tide shawl progresses very nicely. A couple more days should see it done. I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer, and counted stitches. I seemed to have two too few. That was easily adjusted by omitting two decreases. I found it alarmingly difficult to work out what to do, however. Too few? Too many? Skip a decrease? Put in an extra one? 

I had an excited email from Greek Helen yesterday – she said she follows Kate Davies on Instagram and had just seen Tom of Holland’s hap. “Oh wow”, was Helen’s comment – and that, presumably, without being fully aware of its hexagonal wonderfulness, or of the equivalent wonderfulness of Buachaille. I had better add it to my Queue.

Today’s teaser-hap is by Veera Valimaki. I know the name – VK? although I’m sure I’ve never knit anything by her, nor can I associate a pattern with the name. Her hap is another good one, but it doesn’t quite suggest delicious snuggling like the preceding ones.

What a brilliant launch this is proving to be – at presumably little or no cost. Poor Susan Crawford!

I awfully like your idea, Melfina, (comment yesterday) of trying to knit at least one thing from every book on one’s shelves, and one from every year’s-worth of a magazine. I’m too old to embark on such a project, but it might still be interesting to rearrange the books to put all the ones I’ve knit from together. There’s a great appeal in trying to structure one’s knitting.

I like the idea of a KAL, too, although I’ve never done one. There is talk of an informal one to start soon, involving Sharon Miller’s new pattern, the Jewel Long Shawl. We’ll see.

Little to report. I advanced the Neap Tide shawl somewhat, but not much: it was an interrupted and uncomfortable day, yesterday. But I’ve eliminated nearly 40 stitches and am whizzing forward, at least intermittently. 

I wake these days in a state of great excitement, and as soon as I have put on enough clothes to be able to open the door to the early-morning carer without embarrassment, I go on-line to see today’s teaser-hap. I had a whole hour’s wait this morning – but was rewarded by Tom of Holland.  

It’s an interesting thought, Amy, to knit right through all the patterns in a particular book. Like you, I would never do it. But this is clearly a case when the idea is at least remotely thinkable, and it will be fun to watch Ravelry and see whether such a group forms. What a wonderful pile of haps would result, after a couple of years.

I’m pretty sure that the book I have knit the most from, surely more than half, is Amedro’s “Shetland Lace”. But I wouldn’t want to commit myself to doing the rest.

Heart-warming story

Ten days ago, one of the very best of the private carers we have daily, James Lawrie by name, told us that he had a client of 106, Ben, a bit tottery and more than a bit hard of hearing, but still able to distinguish a hawk from a handsaw, and a passionate Hibs fan. James had conceived the idea of taking Ben to the Scottish Cup final.

He had a friend who would provide a limo to take Ben to Hampden Park in Glasgow. But he needed tickets. You would have thought the football club would jump at the chance – Ben is obviously one of the oldest people in Britain, and I would be willing to venture a modest bet that he is the oldest to be living independently.

But James was having no luck. He went to the club and showed his ID as a Bluebird Carer and explained his mission, and they said he would have to send the request by email. He did that, and did it again, and had no reply.

So at that point, when we last saw him, James thought the best he would be able to do would be to get Ben to the Hibs clubhouse on Saturday to watch the match there.

But now it turns out that wiser counsels prevailed, somehow or other. Cinderella went to the ball. James will be here again on Friday – they send us a weekly schedule of who is coming on which day – and I expect to hear all about it.

Ben was not even born the last time Hibs won the Scottish FA Cup.

Back to knitting

Here’s the latest state of the Neap Tide, in two pictures because I couldn’t figure out how to get it in one. The decreases are definitely beginning to tell, and I am speeding on towards the finish:

Hibs won! My husband and I, unaccustomed to watching football, gave up 15 minutes before the end, with Rangers in the lead and apparently in command of the field. So we missed a thrilling finish and a rather interesting riot to follow.

I’m much enjoying the daily teaser-haps from the forthcoming book. I was wrong about Carol Feller’s pattern – it’s not available yet. I jumped to the wrong conclusion from the fact that it is in three projects already – but that turns out to be Carol and her test knitters. My conclusion, that the designers in this book retain their copyrights, may still be on track.

I was surprised to learn yesterday that “happenstance” is an American word. It’s not one that exactly trips off the tongue every day or so, but it had never occurred to me that it is not in general pan-atlantic circulation. Dictionaries confirm. The shorter OED doesn’t have it, Webster’s International (which has everything except for “Kitchener stitch”) gives it as “humorous, U.S.” I never thought of it as humorous. I thought it was just a useful word.

I made some progress with the Neap Shawl. The point where the straight central section turns south towards the tail is clearly obvious. But only about 10 stitches have been eliminated so far, and the garter stitch section feels as wide as ever to the knitter. I think it's time for a picture. 

I don’t care much for football (as you will have surmised) – but this is something special. Go, Hibs!

Well, the yarn arrived – the Buachaille for “Miss Rachel’s Yoke” -- and it’s wonderful so everything is all right. At least on that front.

Kate Davies’ “Moder Dy” hap is indeed enormous. I think the reason is that Buachaille is really a bit too large a yarn for a traditional hap pattern. I suspect the pattern could be knit very successfully in jumper-weight yarn (as KD herself suggests in yesterday’s blog).

It would be fun to try “Moder Dy” with Jamieson & Smith’s “Shetland Heritage” yarn, and indeed that may be the path I will go down. But I am thinking of this, not as something to huddle under myself, but as a blankie for the Next Baby – there’s bound to be one, sooner or later. So I may stick with Buachaille.

(It turns out that that word is no harder to spell than many another, if one puts one’s mind to it. Pronunciation is another matter.)

And while we’re thinking about Shetland – the Shetland Textile Museum, at the Bod of Gremista on the edge of Lerwick, has just opened for the season with an exhibition called “Fair Isle Makes Its Mark”; by “Fair Isle” meaning the island of that name, not just the style of colour-work. The exhibition traces the history of knitting on Fair Isle. All this and Whalsay too!

I have knit on, as hoped, and finished the (enormous) centre section of the Neap Tide shawl, and begun the decreases on the far side. They are achieved with K3tog’s, always a difficult stitch. I am being very careful. It’s the middle stitch which tends, with me, to lurk quietly while I knit the next few rows and then make a sudden and disastrous bid for freedom.

I think I have spotted the place where there are two repeats in which the decreases will have to slow down. Soon the decreases will begin to make themselves felt, and the work will seem to go faster. When I reach those two repeats, I’ll count stitches and calculate.

No, still no yarn. I begin to be a teensy bit worried. But the website says they post Royal Mail second class.

Today’s teaser for the Hap Book is a design by Kate herself – “Moder Dy”. A pretty traditional hap, pretty wonderful. I can see it elbowing its way to the top of my queue as soon as available. Yesterday’s teaser hap from Carol Feller can be purchased right away, as an individual pattern; for this one, you have to wait for the book. I deduce that the contributors have retained their own copyrights from the beginning.

I spent some happy time yesterday clicking on links from Kate Davies’ post about the book, leading me soon to Ella Gordon and her blog post (May 8) about the exhibition of “Fair Isle Knitting Through the Decades” at the Whalsay Heritage Centre. It is enough to decide one to abandon one’s responsibilities forthwith and go to Whalsay next week. Kristie, what about it?

Ella has posted lots of good pictures. Some of the designs are extremely interesting. There is a vest on which the patterns appear to be diagonal – knit on the bias? The two fronts don’t seem to match all that well. The back, viewed in reverse through the v-neck, seems to have horizontal patterning. An interesting idea, less than perfectly worked out?

Quite a few – not a majority, but more than one might have expected – have patterns arranged vertically.

For actual knitting here in Edinburgh, on with the Neap Tide. No more unpicking of the Sous Sous – my little knitting scissors have been tidied away somewhere; I’m sure they’ll re-emerge soon. I should finish the long, long straight section of the Neap Tide shawl today, and begin the descent on the other side. On the way up, I knit almost all of the repeats with increases on every right-side row. But for two of them, the increases were only every fourth row, as specified in the pattern – I soon realised that if I went on like that, it would be a dreadfully long time before I achieved the desired width. And I didn’t grasp that, since I was also falling far short on row gauge, I might as well go on with the gentle increase.

So now my task is to find those two, so that I can balance them as I go downhill.

I am rather inclined at the moment to carry on with this shawl until I finish it, rather than trying to fit it into a scheme with other projects.

No “Miss Rachel’s Yoke” arrived yesterday. Surely it will today.

Sharon Miller has published a new pattern – The Jewel Long Shawl. I’ve ordered. And Kate Davies has started taking pre-orders for the hap book, and releasing the designs one by one. Today’s is by Carol Feller and I like it – but I don’t think it’s the one I’m waiting for.

I really must get some serious lace back into the schedule a.s.a.p., while I still can.

I have sort of re-engaged with Ravelry, after being encouraged by you to go back there and add all my recent purchases and their patterns to my Queue. I was surprised to discover that I already had a considerable queue – a few things that have been dealt with, one way or another: the Relax, the Sous Sous. Others I am no longer interested in: Anhinga, February Lady Sweater. But others, totally forgotten, of some interest: Mixed Feelings Pleated Tee, [BIG]rubble.

I mean to move on to dealing with my Projects. I have already deleted some, forgotten or of very minor interest, and mean to add current WIPs and, at the very least, the Dunfallandy blankie.

In my early Ravelry days I actually catalogued the stash – all that yarn which is now, I hope, being enjoyed at the women’s prison before they close it down. I don’t think I’ll do that again. I'd better find those pictures and delete them.

I knit on yesterday, on the Neap Tide shawl, still engaged with the long flat central portion, and reflecting on how I could have shaped the shawl much closer to the designer’s intention – gentler slopes up and down, shorter central section – if I had paid careful attention to gauge from the beginning. I’m still not complaining. This is going to be good.

I had a lot of fun last night putting all those projects for which I have yarn and pattern into my Ravelry queue, as you suggested, Lisa and Joni. And like you, Lisa, I spent such happy time doing it that there was little or none left for blogging.

As with anything, an actual, finite, written-down list is less terrifying and less depressing than the vague feeling that I’ve-bought-too-much. Although that remains true.

As for actual knitting, I went on with the Neap Tide shawl. I found the ball bands, and they are both from the same dye lot. The shawl is beginning to feel substantial, but when I stretch it out on the floor and measure, it is still short of a metre. (The finished size is supposed to be two metres, and I am past half way.) I’m not going to worry. Blocking can achieve wonders, and anyway it feels as if it will be big enough.

The new IK turned up. New editor, lots of really good patterns, especially shawls and summer tops. And I’m interested in the Summit Vest, towards the end. It’s closed with a zipper. (Horror! Horror!) The zipper is of a different colour to the knitting, and set in so that the tape shows. My died-and-gone-to-heaven dream is that Franklin will come to the EYF next year and teach his class on fastenings, but until then I am rather taken with the thought that a little clumsiness may not be the end of the world.

The one thing I would complain about with this issue, is that there’s nothing to read. There is what I am sure is an extremely useful article about designing set-in sleeves, but all that arithmetic is less than soothing at the end of a long hard day. I speak as one who is not afraid of arithmetic.

Here is the promised picture of the sweater I knit for Rachel, long ago. “1969” the magazine says – she was 11 that year. I knit it twice – both times for her? I can’t remember. I never knit the hat, but I like it. Maybe there will be enough Buachaille left over from Miss Rachel’s Yoke to attempt it.

Politics

I am sorry for anything I said yesterday that offended anyone. All of us are nervy in this extraordinary election year, and I will try really hard not to overstep again. My sister emailed me in defense of Hillary, and I replied with the paragraph I had been polishing in my head for publication here. Just as well. Hillary hurt my feelings, all those years ago, with her famous line about baking cookies, and I have found it hard to acknowledge her undoubted abilities ever since.

And Kentucky couldn’t make up its mind.

For a while, I wrote blog entries at night and then tweaked them a bit before morning posting. Trouble is, there often wasn’t any time at all in the morning. So I started posting at night.

But this morning there is a brief window of time – and I do want to say, before Kentucky starts voting, how disappointed I am in Mrs Clinton’s announcement that, if she wins, she will put her husband in charge of running the country. So very yesterday. She would scarcely be the first woman president at all – it would just be Bill’s third term.

We’ll see what Kentucky thinks.

New system: post at night.

That was a reasonably good day. My husband was not terribly well, but not very ill, either.

I proceeded with my plan for the Sous Sous. I have unpicked the neck edging from the back neck, and even got a bit ahead of myself by starting to unpick one of the shoulders. They were done with a stout back stitch, I am afraid – I couldn’t make mattress stitch work. I didn’t do very much: one unconsidered snip, one impatient tug, and the neat bottom edging which I am struggling to recover, could be ruined.

I then went on with the Neap Tide. I’d like to get it to the decrease stage before laying it aside. The point where I joined in the second skein is slightly detectable, and I am slightly annoyed. I’m sure I haven’t consciously thrown away either ball band: if I find both, I’ll compare them. I bought them at the EYF, from Old Maiden Aunt herself. That doesn’t exempt me from checking dye lots.

The joining-line isn’t all that bad, however, and will be less so when the scarf is a bit scrunched up and tossed with insouciance about the shoulders. And it means that if the worst happens, and I don’t have quite enough to finish despite my careful positioning of the centre marker, I can order another skein and risk another join line without worrying too much.

I printed the pattern for Miss Rachel’s yoke today, and also for the Crazy Stripes tee. (Let’s not forget my little splurge at Ginger Twist recently.) Lots of pages, for both, and the printer twice demanded a new ink cartridge, and I am pleased to report that I was able to give it what it required without deflecting it from its task. Last time, a new cartridge meant that I completely lost touch with the printer and had to invite a friend in to re-establish contact.

And I’ve heard from KD’s shop that my parcel-has-been-dispatched. This is exciting. I’ve seen Buachaille – at the end of last year, I used to go sit at Kathy’s Knits while a carer was here, and knit hats for Christmas presents, and talk to Kathy when the shop was quiet. She was a member of the Seven Skeins Club (or however many skeins it was – I’m not sure) and showed me some. But now I am about to have a whole armful of my own,

Amy, I had already thought of knitting the gauntlet pattern, or some of it, onto the lower sleeve, and am greatly heartened by the fact that you have done it.

Southern Gal, no, I’m not using Ravelry properly. But that’s a very good idea, to find a category for the projects in which I suddenly abound: yarn bought with a specific pattern in mind. Well – USO, of course, UnStarted Object. There must be a way to list them in Ravelry, and that’s what I ought to do.

I’ll try to find and scan for you the pattern of the yoked Fair Isle sweater I knit for our Rachel, many years ago. That pattern wasn’t just about discovering that I could knit Fair Isle, it also introduced me to the acute pleasure of knitting a yoke. KD tries to describe the sensation in her yoke book.

I am grateful for all your sympathy – especially for yours, Judith, which came so quickly after I had posted last night about my disaster with the Sous Sous.

The danger of its becoming a UFO is high. My current plan is to address the steps I mentioned last night, one at a time. Today I unpicked the grafting that held the ends of the neck edging together. Tomorrow I will unpick the edging itself from the back neck. Then one shoulder seam. Then the other.

And I will certainly go see what people are saying on Ravelry, as you advise. I don’t use that resource nearly enough, nor do I contribute to it as I ought.

I have a dreadful confession: after that talk the other day, mostly my own, about what-are-we-going-to-do-while-Kate-Davies-closes-the-shop-down-for-a-wee-while, I went and ordered the kit for Miss Rachel’s Yoke and Gauntlets. It reminds me of a VK pattern I knit for our Rachel long ago, when she was a young teen-ager. It was the pattern in the doing of which I suddenly discovered that I could do Fair Isle – drop-and-throw, as ever, with my right hand; continental picking with the left. I can’t do continental with my left hand by itself, only in conjunction with a different colour in the right hand.

That’s fine, as far as it goes, but I have far too many projects in the yarn cupboard already. Perhaps giving away all that stash was a mistake. Perhaps it kept me grounded.

Maybe I could restrain myself more effectivly if I wrote down a list of the projects I have acquired – remembering that my sister is soon to arrive with the discontinued madtosh DK for my husband’s (much-needed) long-sleeved v-neck sweater. And I must certainly resolve not to order yarn in the evening when such judgment as I retain is distorted by exhaustion.

As for actual knitting, I went on with the Neap Tide shawl. If my vague calculations are roughly right, it will be about the size the designer intended, and will use the same weight of wool. But it will involve vastly more knitting. In the straight centre section upon which I am now engaged, the designer (our own Mary Lou) asks for six pattern repeats. I will have knit 16. On many more stitches.

Literary criticism

Perdita often sits on the kitchen windowsill, looking at birds and making little chattering sounds while thrashing her tail. We think often of Gray’s wonderful poem, “her conscious tail her joy declared”. My husband and I saw the very vase in an exhibition in London not all that long ago.

But today I decided, and will continue to believe, that it wasn’t as bad as all that. Selima was a perfectly healthy cat. She climbed out of the vase, wet, furious and embarrassed as cats are when they have made fools of themselves. Gray made a better poem by providing a different ending.

Today Archie and Fergus are coming – Fergus to stay, at least overnight. He’s having an exeat from school, or something of the sort, and we are all going out to a rather wonderful-sounding Turkish cafe for lunch. I will have to do some scrambling, to have lunch to leave with the carer for my husband and also to make provision for the other three weekend meals. Archie is on the very verge of his A-Level exams and for him, life is real, life is earnest. He’ll go back to school after delivering Fergus and lunching.

The news on the local knitting front is that, at last, I re-engaged with the Sous Sous. I cast off the front shoulders and sewed them to the back shoulders, not without difficulty. There is a narrow ribbed edging to the very deep v-neck at the front. The instruction is to leave it on a safety pin on one side, and knit it onwards by itself on the other, until long enough to reach across the back neck.

I did that, and then grafted it to those stitches on the safety pin, being very careful not to twist. Then I tried to sew it to the back neck, and found that it was twisted.

That’s where I am now, or a bit beyond – I have un-grafted, and am ready to do it again. The important thing is that the Sous Sous is back in my hands, and I think the worst is over. I should be able to pick up stitches for at least one sleeve today.

....

That much, I wrote last night, expecting to post this morning. I didn't manage that, but I got everything else done and we had a fine lunch and my husband was well cared for. In the afternoon I started measuring down the Sous Sous for the sleeves.

I found myself wondering why the back was unfinished at the bottom edge, while the front had a nice little edging. After only a very little pondering of this problem, I found the answer: the back has been attached upside down. Its nice little edging is subsumed in the shoulder seams.

I am sure you can imagine my state of near-despair. All I have got to do is un-graft the neck edging (again), unpick its attachment to the back neck, and unpick the shoulder seams. It doesn’t sound too bad, put like that. But…

Yesterday we had our walk – perhaps two miles, along the Water of Lieth to Inverlieth Park, back through Stockbridge. I would have said about two miles, my friend thinks less. It was a good stretch, for me.

I think you may be right, Chloe and others, that what I want is a wrist pedometer. If there were some measure for this new weakness – lung capacity? oxygen saturation? – it would be nice to monitor that, but I doubt if it can be done. Sleep patterns and heart rates seem to me fairly useless. I’ll keep working on it.

I came home tired, as I would have felt after eight or ten miles only a few years ago. So tired that I didn’t knit at all. There was the Neap Tide shawl, ready to be picked up and progressed with. But I had promised sterner things for myself and was paralysed into total inactivity.

I spent some more time with Jared’s Wool People 10. There are some thoroughly good things there, although nothing that quite makes me want to fling down the needles and order the yarn and start on it right away.

Much more exciting is the news from Kate Davies that it’s All Systems Go for the hap book. I had somehow got the idea that it wouldn’t be out until the second half of the year, but it’s going to the printers next week and to US in early June. Once it's at the printers, pre-ordering will start, and she’s going to suspend other activities in her shop from then – someone has already commented with the problem that sprang to my mind: what if I want to cast on a hap right away with some Buachaille yarn – but I can’t order the yarn until I’ve seen the haps?

Patience, is the only possible answer.