Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

I’m glad not to be there – Christmas is bad enough, without another Big Cook this close. But despite my churlishness, I hope you all have a nice day.

All well here. I finished the basic knitting of the Earth Stripes, as hoped. Today, without even pausing to cast off, I’ll have a Cashmere Gansey Day.

The Linked Ribs are about 22” long and I figure I’ve got about enough yarn for 48” in all – not really very long. I’m very grateful to everybody for their help with the problem yesterday. I figured out (not without some effort) how to post an ISO in Ravelry, and did so. Nothing yet. I also searched the Noro Silk Garden stashes – what a glorious lot! – and after much tedious clicking on what proved to be the wrong shades, and perhaps a certain amount of passing over the right one, I found it on page six or seven.

I wrote to her, she wrote back – she’s not letting go, but took the trouble to find it for me in a shop she knows: Glory-ousknits.com. I’ve ordered two balls. I would have preferred not to attempt a commercial order from abroad. I was in the post office the other day and learned from a poster on the wall that they now charge eight pounds for their trouble when something is stopped by Customs and Excise. That’s eight pounds in addition to the duty. It’s going to be an expensive scarf if they catch me.

New Topic

Elizabeth wrote to me yesterday to tell me that Mary Walker Phillips died earlier this month. I didn’t know. Here's the link. I’ve printed it out to keep in my copy of her Counterpanes book.

Non-knit

I’ll get back to politics soon, I’m sure, but today’s news is that a plague of jellyfish, ten miles across and thirty-five feet deep, has completely destroyed the only salmon farm in Northern Island. A kind of jellyfish previously unknown in these waters. Presumably if the ancient Egyptians had gone in for salmon farming, God would have visited them with jellyfish before proceeding to kill the firstborn.

Bits of This and That

I had a good evening with the Earth Stripe. The plan is not to measure this morning, and to press on regardless this evening, and hope to find tomorrow that I have exceeded the specified length by a couple of inches.

If so, Friday can be a Gansey Day – notice my sister’s comment of yesterday: it seems to be working. I got the initials charted this morning, as planned.

On the other hand, I’m now pretty certain that I don’t have enough Silk Garden for a five-foot scarf – and shade 34 seems to have disappeared from the universe. I am sort of surprised that Ravelry doesn’t have a bulletin board for yarn-appeals. They were a constant theme on the old Knitlist, and very often successful. I’ll just have to knit a short scarf. And be more careful next time.

Politics

I must look at Doonesbury.

I’ve wandered around the Internet a bit on the subject of Donnie McClurkin (not, so far, the other performers mentioned). It’s not entirely easy to find a straight story, but it sounds to me as if the purpose of the concerts was to endear Obama to the black community, among whom, I gather, he scores rather low. And it also sounds as if McClurkin, who has clearly had a hard life, has lots of things to say of which his view on sexual orientation is only one.

A politician has got to travel supplied with a long spoon, for supping purposes. Even in one’s own modest private life, one has friends with views one ardently dislikes. I have a dear friend who is not sure that capital punishment is wrong, and my son James even used to defend G.W. Bush (that was before Iraq). On the other hand, a politician has also got to be alert to the question of who he is supping with. Whom.

Countrymouse, I was glad to hear you say that you’d never heard of Obama in an anti-gay context. On the other hand -- there seem to be lots of other hands involved this morning -- if you google on “Barack Obama and Donnie McClurkin” you’ll find plenty of blogs and websites which share Mel's anger.

Back to my knitting…

The Earth Stripe is 55” long – how did that happen? Another couple of evenings should see it done. See Phase One done.

I added some more links to the Linked Rib yesterday, too. I am now much less sanguine about the question of whether I have enough yarn – I think that initial odd-ball must have been almost intact, and the length it contributed won’t do at all as 1/3rd of the total. However, I also don’t think dye-lot is going to matter in a project like this: as long as I can match the color-way. It continues to be enormous fun.

The designer was trying to copy in knitting the 90 degree twist of the famous Infinity Tower in Dubai. The scarf in which she claims to have succeeded, the Tricorner, has been badly served by the photographer – it looks like plain old st st with some garter stitch bands, and I’m sure there’s more to it than that. Maybe I’ll try it next.

And there is also Twisted, a failed Infinity Tower attempt, she says. I’m not sure whether Linked Rib is another failure, or an extension of the idea once she’d got it right.

(This is “Knitting New Scarves” by Lynne Barr I’m still talking about. Get it, if you have any interest in scarves at all.)

Maureen in Tacoma Park, you asked about hot-water bottles covers a few days ago. I think I started from something in a magazine. But I also think I remember that the end-product was mostly mine.

I found this one and that one (free patterns) through Ravelry, of which I much prefer the latter, especially for that neat row of buttonholes at the bottom.

Politics

Inexperience doesn’t worry me in Obama (although Hillary is trying to instil such anxiety). Kennedy was a junior senator. And Clinton – remember him? – made an absolute hash of his first months. He was going to “hit the ground running” and all he did was hit the ground. Important government posts were unfilled for months. He got the hang of it eventually.

I am much more concerned about what you said yesterday, Mel. It doesn’t fit with Obama as he has been presented to me, a man who asks questions and listens to the answers and thinks about them. I’ll do a bit of clicking on the subject, but it sounds bad.

It is possible (although not easy) for me to cast an absentee vote from here. I did it last time. I'm not going to bother if Hillary is the candidate.

Today is my husband's 82nd birthday.

I didn’t quite finish the ribbing for Theo’s gansey. The next session will see it done. I’ll spend this week’s Osteoporosis Half Hour (when I take my pill on Wednesday morning) finishing the charting of the initials.

The cashmere is heaven to work with, and is knitting up beautifully. There is not the slightest sign that I can detect, however, of the hoped-for irregularity in the dye. And it’s awfully blue.

I am braced for the possibility of having to start again after a few inches of body, if the size is wrong. If my knitting could be said to have improved in my later years, it would be for that reason alone: that I have learned at last to rip and start again, if something is not right.

And I have trouble calculating from swatches, however generously large I knit them. (Meg says somewhere that she never knits swatches. Sensible woman.) I think of Major Erskine in Evelyn Waugh’s “Men at Arms”, who “…was strangely dishevelled in appearance. His uniform was correct and clean but it never seemed to fit him, not through any fault of the tailor’s, but rather because the major seemed to change shape from time to time during the day.”

This is the picture my sister referred to in her comment yesterday. That’s Theo on the left.

A couple more links were added to the Linked Rib yesterday – it’s a very satisfactory thing to grab and add half-a-repeat to as one passes through the room ostensibly on one's way to do something else – whereas the Earth Stripe, with all that ethereality, takes a certain amount of settling-down-to and figuring-out-where-one-is.

But it wasn’t neglected. I figure if I can add three inches a day, I can finish knitting the basic rectangle this week. I think I achieved that much yesterday, but I’m not going to measure this morning because…

…today is Sunday, and that means cider-drinking and Theo’s cashmere gansey. I could conceivably finish the ribbing today– and then it will be time to knit in his initials, and I’m not quite ready. There’s no difficulty. Brown-Reinsel has done all the work; all I have to do is copy the needed letters into some squares on a chart I’ve already started. But I begrudge even that amount of pencil-and-paper when it cuts into knitting time. I’ve already done the one thing that required some slight effort, namely devising a lower-case “e” in seed stitch, necessary for rendering “LeCompte”.

I’ve forgotten what the connection is meant to be between this sweater and getting Barak Obama elected, but I’m sure that Iowa needs me. I am disconcerted, however, that both real-life friends and cyber-ones whose opinions I respect, notably Joe and Mar, don’t share my enthusiasm for the man. I think he could really heal and unite. I haven’t felt so keen since Kennedy.

VKB

No fewer than eight wartime Vogue Knitting Books are coming up on eBay next week. Not many months ago, when I first discovered eBay, I would have been prostrate with excitement at such a prospect, totally unable to breathe. And worried about the expense, with Christmas coming. By now, I’ve got all of them except one, and can approach the eventful evening in a state of some calm. The seller is offering some wartime Stitchcrafts, too – rest in peace, whoever’s was the treasure-trove now up for grabs.

I couldn’t keep my hands off the Linked Rib scarf yesterday – I guess I’ll have to acknowledge it to Ravelry as a WIP. It doesn’t look much like progress – but it’s about 10” and I’ve all but finished the odd-ball I started with, which was perhaps 1/3 of a complete one. I have two further balls so far intact, so a bit of elementary arithmetic reveals that I have enough to reach the 60” prescribed. It's rather nice the way Silk Garden starts a new colour for each link, but I'm not going to try to force the next ball to do the same thing.

The construction is most ingenious. You’ve got these ribbed flanges, and every so often you divide the ribbing, with knit stitches to the fore, and the purl stitches in back, and do a few rounds of st st. When that is subsequently re-combined into more ribbed flanges, they turn out to be miraculously offset from the previous ones by 90 degrees.

I think the dividing-and-recombining stunt is employed in at least two other scarves in the book, with different results.

It’s not entirely easy, but I didn’t have to do any substantial tink’ing yesterday, unlike the first day.

The poor old Earth Stripe wasn’t entirely neglected. It’s now got about 45” of its desired 60”. I should be able to finish the knitting next week if I make any serious effort at all. When Chronic Knitting Syndrome saw it on Thursday, she thought maybe it wouldn’t need a fringe. I pooh-pooh’ed the idea at the time, but it has taken root. We shall see. She agreed that attached i-cord should work for the edging.

If you want an addictive time-waster (just what we’re all looking for), have a go at the jigsaw puzzle in her sidebar. She brought the original knitting along for me to see, and it’s pretty wonderful. Is there some Kauni in my future?

Comments

Knititch, that is a fundamentally interesting idea, that knitting is not particularly flattering to women. It may go a long way towards explaining a number of disappointments in the past.

Mary Lou, I’m delighted with the news that Edith Sitwell was a knitter.

And I’m impressed with the thoroughness of your education. I knew about WWI when I was young, trenches and all, Flanders Field, America arriving very late. I can remember WWII – from a safe distance – and I had thought the Great War was about as bad, useless-slaughter-of-young-men-wise, until I came to England in 1953 and went about and saw all those memorials in all those villages, with three or four times as many names in the first list as in the second.

Chronic Knitting Syndrome and I had a good time yesterday. We sussed out the Linked Rib scarf all right (page 56 of Knitting New Scarves). It’s not easy, but it’s fun. So have I got another WIP on my hands? I had some difficulty finding a yarn in stash which was about the right size for the pattern, and also the right size for the only set of six dp’s I could find, other than sock needles. But I hit it lucky with some Noro Silk Garden – and there’s enough to finish the scarf.

I sternly set it aside and added another four inches or more to the Earth Stripe Wrap in the evening. At this rate, I’ll be edging it in a week or so.

The holiday VK turned up yesterday. Mel, when I grumbled about the fitted, cropped patterns in IK I wasn’t just thinking of the condition politely called “fluffiness”. Women of a Certain Age tend to get rather brick-shaped. (I’ve been trying for days to think of the right word for a three-dimensional figure with rectangles on four sides and squares on the ends. I failed.) I have no style, and have never dressed well in my life, but I feel that such a shape is sometimes best served by drape and swirl and even asymmetricality – and certainly not by calling attention to the lost curves and waist-line. If I were going to start again and dress like Edith Sitwell, there are several things in this new VK I’d be interested in.

Ted, I’ve been thinking a lot about your question – why does your essay on “Why Knit” seem sad? Knitting has become for me, as other talents diminish, the one interest which can distract for a while from the approaching abyss. So it seems sad that you, with all your ability, could think of abandoning it, or cutting down. I have lots of people to knit for. So it seems sad that you feel you don’t.

Maybe – seriously – you should think of writing a book.

But I do agree about the feeling that one has too much stash – and that it’s a good idea to try to buy with a project in mind.

By the way, I enjoy none of the advantages you attribute to living with someone, except perhaps picture-hanging. Many of us who live in some sort of community or companionship, envy you your freedom to knit for another ten minutes if that’s what you want to do. One of my favourite New Yorker cartoons of all time is the man-with-martini, slumped over the bar, saying to the bartender, “The trouble is, either you’re married or you’re not.”

Joe was wondering the other day whether blogging actually affected one’s knitting. Yes, apparently, in his case: He finds himself knitting a bit more, or even buying yarn, in order to blog about it. Not so, with me. Although I spend a lot of mental time, while knitting, washing dishes, or just walking about, polishing my lapidary phrases for tomorrow.

Yesterday’s knitting: I’ve done about 40” of Earth Stripe by now. (I don’t have to talk in cm, just because the pattern does.) Out of 60”. It moves fairly briskly, thank goodness.

Today’s excitement: my friend with Chronic Knitting Syndrome is coming to coffee this afternoon. I had thought we might have a mutual support session, struggling with the Linked Rib scarf in “Knitting New Scarves”. But she has jumped the gun and figured it out – see her latest blog entry – so it will be more like a teach-in. I haven’t even chosen my yarn.

The winter IK turned up yesterday. (They tend to be much quicker than Knitter’s, in making their way across the seas.) The articles are first-rate, especially Mar's, but the patterns don’t thrill. All the sweaters – and it’s a heavily sweater-ly issue – seem to be designed for Eunny: cropped, snug-fitting. Not what I look for in a winter sweater.

[Which would be more like this. The Spinning Fishwife pointed me to this tempting pattern recently.]

Another thing I hope to do today is finish off my calendar and order some exemplars of the result. I still have the November page to compose – and I’ll add this one to July. It was taken on the 31st, but that counts: two of Helen’s Thessaloniki boys (Mungo on the left, I think; and Fergus) in the bath at Burnside.

And it’s even got some knitting: that green hot-water-bottle cover balanced precariously on the end of the bath is my work.

Here we are, very tired, but it was a successful week.

The ditch wasn’t running – bizarre, for November. Maybe somebody up the hill has diverted it for a water feature? Time will soon tell.

So instead of forking wadges of leaf from the depths, we were able to make bonfires of them in the dry channel, and cart others away in sacks. Still hard work, but much more fun.

I made a good start on the Araucania sweater. It’s perfect country knitting at this stage, as easy to do as a garter stitch scarf while one snoozes by the fire. Nice to handle, nice to look at.

It is shewn hanging on the remains of a damson tree. It never bore a single damson, and was getting far too big for the site. Pruning just seemed to encourage it. We'll have to get rid of the remains before spring, or it'll be at it again.

There was not much time for vegetable gardening, but I did a simple soil test and it came out a bit on the acid side, so I spread some lime. And made a good start on that happiest of gardening jobs, reading the seed catalogues and making lists.

Here’s what the garden looked like yesterday morning, as if God had been spreading lime..

Last night, back here, I tottered on with an Earth Stripe or two. I am wondering whether I’ll have time to knit Jared's hat in cashmere Koigu before Christmas, to go with the Shapely Shawlette. That’s the Koolhaus pattern in the IK Holiday Knits issue. Mel has finished his.

The first three Vogue Knitting Books, "hand bound into a folder", with covers removed, fetched a fancy price on eBay yesterday, but not nearly as fancy a one as they might have been expected to fetch separately, with their covers. I've got all three, so I didn't need to agonise over that one.

Strathardle today. Blogging should resume on Tuesday or Wednesday next week. Severe winds are forecast -- fun, until we lose electricity.


Strenuous exercise outdoors in the natural light does much to relieve seasonal gloom. I’d like to think I’ll be spending the time spreading manure on my dear vegetable patch, but the big job this time of year is clearing leaves out of the ditch that runs beside our driveway. It floods if we don’t. It’s my husband’s job, but he’s getting seriously worried about whether his strength will suffice, and I think I’d better help.

Do read Knitterguy's sad essay on the theme, why knit?

I got Ravelry up-to-date yesterday – sorry to see that quite a few of the pictures of my stash are “currently unavailable”. I trust they’ll reappear A fair amount of work went in to assembling that lot, and it is potentially useful to be able to be able to remind myself of what is lurking in the darkest corners without actually having to rummage there. Meanwhile, it’s delicious to be free to wander about looking to see what my friends are doing, and what other people’s Earth Stripe stoles look like.

And I proceeded happily yesterday with the ribbing on the new gansey. There’s no sign yet of the slight irregularities in the dye which are meant to relieve the baby-blue-ness.

Comments

Neither POK nor Montse Stanley seem to have anything about mending holes in knitting with what look like actual knit stitches, but I found it in Mary Thomas' Knitting Book, as did Vivienne. I wouldn't like to try to describe it, Meg, never having made the attempt. Essentially you set up vertical threads, two per stitch, as if to darn, and then do some clever things across them with yarn threaded into a needle. Any decent library should eventually cough up the book.

Earth Stripe is just endless stocking stitch.

My grandson Archie sent me this picture yesterday, which should cheer us all up. It’s called “creek” and was otherwise unidentified. My guess is Mt. Pelion. Archie says it’s cold in Greece.

The Earth Stripe stole is now about 98cm long – 2/3rds of the way home. There, for the moment, it will rest. We are going to Strathardle tomorrow, insh’Allah, and for today I mean to allow myself a bit of gansey-knitting.

I think Earth Stripes will be just the thing for your poor shoulder, MaryJoO. I was sorry to hear about that. I have had two broken arms in recent years, and neither time did I seem to have much treatment. The first, worse-r one, just spent some weeks in a sling. Last year’s, which looked worse to the innocent eye, with bone-ends going this way and that in the x-ray, had plaster for a while. Both have made excellent recoveries. It would be truly dreadful to have to cap all those weeks of pain and discomfort with surgery.

I spent some time in Ravelry yesterday, and am nearly up to date.

VKB#1

It’s here. My friend Helen received the Special Delivery yesterday, and came rushing round with it. It’s in tip top condition for a 75-year-old magazine. I will not have it subjected to the slightest stress, so I can’t scan any of it for you. I am happy to report that Feed the Children didn’t put pictures up on eBay, either, except for the cover.

It is designed as a stand-alone knitting instruction book, with pages of sage advice on swatching and such, followed by some pages of stitch patterns, before it gets started on actual Vogue-knitting.

It kicks off with a full-page photograph I’d love to scan for you. It would show you how to knit. She might be approaching 50 but dreadfully well-preserved, if so; immaculately coifed bobbed blonde hair, lots of pearls, silk blouse. The caption reads:

“This photograph shows you the correct position for knitting without tiring yourself. Seated on a chair without arms, the knitter rests her elbows on a cushion placed behind her back. The wool is passed over the index finger of the right hand, which, with a barely perceptible movement, glides it over the needle. The two hands are almost motionless. The thumb of the left hand moves forward with the stitches on the left needle. The work is held on the knees in a white cloth.”

It has long been a contention of mine that that paragraph we constantly read is an old one, ever-repeated: about how knitting has finally thrown off its grandmotherly connotations and moved on to the fashion stage. I am overjoyed to have confirmation in the very first paragraph of the very first Vogue Knitting: “We are very far from the days when hand-knitting was only used for warm but inelegant garments. Rejuvenated by a perfected technique and by new ways of using the resulting fabric, knitting now holds an important place in the mode.”

Written before many of today’s grandmothers were born!

There is an interesting two-page spread on how to mend knitting – how to darn a hole by re-creating knit stitches. Both st st and garter are illustrated. I’m not sure in all my extensive library that I’ve ever seen that before. Maybe Montse Stanley or POK? I’ll look.

I note yesterday’s advice about getting proper archive-quality sleeves for my babies, and will act on it.

Guy Fawkes

Little to report. I’ve finished the first repeat of the Earth Stripe stripe sequence – the repeat won’t look at all mechanical because I’ve moved the colours around a bit as I progressed and also, of course, because I’m more than half-way there so the second repeat won’t get finished.

MaryJo0, the Earth Stripe stole will be deliciously warm I think – it’s like knitting the cat. I may have said that before. It’s very light-weight for its size, but that’s not a bad thing: is that what you meant by “lighter”? Or were you talking about colour? My fear is that what with our warmer winters, my one won’t get much of an outing here in GB.

Your enthusiasm inspires me to think about Latvian mittens. They’d be a quick, fun project. I read someone on the Knitlist long ago who said she routinely knit single mittens, not pairs, and kept them in a basket by the door for family and visitors to employ as needed. That would work well at Burnside except that I’d have to knit a lot of them to get the show on the road. And it’s a bit late to get started, with everyone grown up and gone away and mostly visiting there only in the summer.

Thank you for the suggestions about VKB’s. I agree about not liking the idea of binding. I didn’t know about archival-quality sleeves, although it makes sense. At the moment I keep them in individual cheap plastic sleeves, in box files which must be pretty similar to standing pamphlet boxes. I like them like that.

No, Fishwife, I’ve never visited the Knitting and Crochet Guild. I’d love to. I’ve been a member for a long time. I tried to drop out once, because it seemed sort of expensive and the journal isn’t all that good, but I got a series of such pathetic letters saying why-haven’t-you-renewed that in the end I gave up.

Thanks to Helen for tracking down David Rudkin, the author of “No Title”. (She googled on “No Title Birmingham Rep”. I sent him a brief e-fan letter.) And for valuable off-comment suggestions about libraries as possible destinations for those VKBs.

We – by which I mean, this quadrant of Drummond Place – got no mail at all on Saturday. That’s no way to treat a woman expecting the winter IK. I take some comfort from the fact that Mar is waiting too – and she wrote the damn thing. And it also shows why I didn’t want VKB#1 simply to be entrusted to the ordinary mail.

No Title

Live and Learn Dep’t:

The Curmudgeon says that the reason Ravelry won’t show my blog, is that I don’t use titles. So I’ll try a few. Today’s is the name of an hysterically funny play that I saw at the B’ham Rep long ago with my sister and Alexander (and anyone else? Can’t remember). Can’t remember the name of the author, either. No hint of such a play in the first three pages of a Google on “’No Title’ play”. What a lot of good writing must sink unseen.

Life

I hitched the new PVR up successfully. It and the other two machines seem to work as normal, although we still have a lot to learn about the new one.

Thanks to everyone who wrote yesterday to congratulate me on my new eBay purchase. It has been dispatched Special Delivery to my friend Chronic Knitting Syndrome – because we’re going to Strathardle this week and I didn’t know when that would be, when I was making arrangements on auction-day – and should therefore arrive tomorrow.

Emma in France, that’s a good question, about what will happen to my VKB’s when I have popped my clogs. (Have I got that phrase right?) They are bound to be under-valued by the inheritance tax people -- Alexander is looking forward to releasing them back into eBay one at a time. No chance – I have left all knitting-related stuff to a dear knitting lawyer friend in the US. She will make wise decisions.

The library of the Knitting and Crochet Guild? They have some VKB’s, I know, because I added quite a few to my collection once when they were selling off duplicates. But do they have the set? The public library in Lerwick? I would welcome any suggestions. I suppose the thing to do, if/when I’ve got them all – first catch your hare – is to write around and see who sounds interested.

My husband thinks I should have them bound. The problem there might be that the VKB changed shape. It started off rather tall and rectangular, as you see from yesterday’s picture. Then at some point during the war it changed to a square-er format which it maintained to the end, except that the wartime ones were smaller, Honey-I-Shrank-the-Kids fashion. Smaller pages, smaller type. Soon after the war it expanded to its final size.

And finally, knitting

I’ve reached 75cm of Earth Stripes – halfway. Except that at the end it will have to be edged and (ugh) fringed. But I never suffer too much from finishing. Like any old horse headed home towards the paddock.



MaryJo0 -- always good to hear from Kazakhstan: I learned about Meg's "Armenian Knitting" from her twice-yearly "Woolgathering" to which I subscribe. Be warned: there's not much in it. The technique is to knit with two colours throughout, even in large passages where only one colour shows. Once that idea has been announced and described, the rest of the book consists of new patterns using this system. New patterns by the authors, not Armenian ones.

The (somewhat over-exposed) pictures arrived from London yesterday. Here is Rachel with her new KF socks:

and her husband Ed in his old KF Tumbling Blocks vest:

I think Lizzie who took the picture was more interested in her father than in knitting.

I won.

There was an unusual amount of small-beer bidding during the day. We came down to the last ten minutes with the price at £32. Four new bidders, including me, then appeared in the final seconds. My bid was one that couldn’t fail – appropriately, on the day the papers were reporting the death of the pilot of Enola Gay. My hand was steady enough that the others didn’t have time to improve their offers. And, Emily, I took your advice: I bid £ ??1.07.

(How come you’ve got the new IK in B’ham and it hasn’t reached Edinburgh yet?)

Fishwife, I looked at esnipe, as you suggested in yesterday’s comment. I could have used it free. But I decided (as SisterHelen suggests in the next comment) that my nerves couldn’t stand watching the final seconds and not being absolutely totally positively sure – since I was new to sniping -- that my bid would go in.

I added something to my Paypal payment so that Feed the Children will (I think) get the whole purchase price, after the depredations of eBay and Paypal. It’s the most I’ve ever paid for a VKB, by quite a margin, but it’s still only half what the American No. 1 fetched in September.

I’ll tell you all about it when I’ve got it. The great thing is, I now have a real, substantial hope of completing the set. I’ve got the first five. So I’m pleased.

For actual knitting yesterday, I did some more figgerin’ and cast on the cashmere gansey. I’ll revert to Earth Stripes today, and keep this for Occasionally, but we’re on our way.

The postman brought me Meg’s “Armenian Knitting” (it was a day of event). I’m going to have to spend enough time with it to decide whether the technique described is the same as the two-handed knitting one does for Fair Isle. I’m pretty sure that the method presented, with both colours in one hand, is beyond me. But I ought to try. Maybe the hat. Meanwhile, of course, I happily added it to LibraryThing.

And we bought – non-knit here – a Personal Video Recorder, one of those neat boxes that records on a hard disk and eliminates the need for tapes all over the place. We do a lot of what I think is called time-shifting. Today’s job is to hitch it up in a serial arrangement with our old VHS recorder and new television. I’m terrified, but it must be attempted.

Bidding has started on the ur-VKB – it has spiralled up to a dizzying £2.19. But there are 118 hits on the counter, and I think we’ll see more action before the story is told. My impression is that British bidders are more inclined than American ones to keep their powder dry. I check nervously every few minutes to make sure I’ve got the time right – it closes at 19:14:48 and I have been known to confuse “17” and “19” when trying to think in 24-hour-clock.

The history of Vogue Knitting Books has taken another interesting lurch. Interesting to me. The story of the American edition is not as I had supposed.

I went through the American eBay list this morning, ought to do it more often, and found someone selling the “fourth edition, copyright 1939” (120178708642). My British number four was published in the spring of 1934 and is definitely not the same. Someone else (160173660127) is selling the 5th American edition, 1944. The illustrations of these two items are each completely consistent with the dates claimed.

There was always a considerable, perhaps total, overlap of patterns between the opposite shores of the Atlantic. Maybe when the war broke out over here, editorial cooperation became too difficult for a while? No email, no fax, telephone contact very difficult, think of it.

Knitting

I did another three inches or so of Earth Stripes. The current plan is to keep doggedly on, but to allow myself a day or two a week – including perhaps today – of gansey-knitting. Rather than the other way around, which would rapidly lead to the total abandonment of earth stripes.

That and that

Kaffe’s new book isn’t very interesting, but I didn’t expect much of it so that’s all right. Anyway, these days, the whole point of buying a new book is to enter it in LibraryThing. I have two others out there in orbit. I’ll report as they arrive.

Amongst the detritus on the hall floor as we fought our way in on Tuesday evening was, to my surprise, the fall Knitter’s. Surprise, because I’m really pretty sure I never got Spring or Summer this year, and had just about decided to forget the whole thing. What is it about Knitter’s? There’s nothing I want to knit, despite a mild flutter of interest in the Sowerby fichu. I don’t care about Perri Klass’s cruise. (I’m normally a big fan of hers.) I couldn’t get through the article about younger generations taking over yarn-spinners and XRX. But it remains the magazine, of them all, that makes me feel I’m In Touch. Why?

Today’s big news is that the ur-VKB is coming up on eBay tomorrow.

To recapitulate: The first Vogue Knitting, this one, was published both in the US and in Britain in the fall of 1932. It must have bombed in Biloxi, because there were no more American issues until some time during the war. But the British went steadfastly on from '32, two a year, right through the war. Publication ended in the 60’s. And I am collecting them.

The current 25th anniversary issue of the current incarnation of Vogue Knitting conveniently includes a little picture of the first issue. Until I saw it, I didn’t even know whether it claimed in its title to be the first. It doesn’t. It’s just called “Vogue’s Book of Knitting and Crochet”.

The ur-American one came up on eBay.com in early September, and sold for $430, not to me. (The difference between the two is that in America it cost 35c, whereas here it went for 1/6; the price is on the cover. But presumably there are also different ads inside.)

So now I’ve got to decide what to bid. It is being sold by a charity called Feed the Children, new to me but very worthy-sounding. They’ll get the whole purchase price. There are no bids yet – they are in for a pleasant surprise tomorrow, I suspect. Presumably some old dear tottered in to a charity shop with it, and someone else had the wit to put it aside in the eBay pile.

If I get it – and I’ve GOT to – I will lack only seven, dated between spring ’35 and fall ’41.

Watch this space.

Back to real-life knitting…

No pictures from Lizzie in London yet. I’ll nag her today – if she doesn’t send them pretty soon, her half-term will be over and she’ll be too busy.

I don’t know what to do about the Earth Stripe Wrap. I’m not enjoying it, which is perhaps a reason to forge ahead and get it finished before tackling Theo’s gansey. It would be a useful Xmas present, too. I’ve done 60cm; 148 are required. More than 1/3rd, less than half.

Knitting is slow. The mohair yarn is sort of sticky; one has to be very careful with every stitch to ensure that the needle goes under both of the fine strands; and the constant pauses for colour change don’t help either.

A week is a long time in knitting.

You will remember that I cast on the second KF sock the day before we left. I set myself to finish the ribbing before we got to Newcastle – and achieved it. After that, the wonderful yarn knit itself. I finished the socks. Rachel wore them to work yesterday. Fraternal stripes look fine, I thought. I didn’t have a camera, but Rachel’s daughter Lizzie took pictures and I hope they will turn up here soon.

Ed wore a KF vest on Sunday which I made him years ago, couldn’t be fewer than 15, back in the days when Rowan used to put designs up in kits and sell them cheap in the January sales. This one is in dark colours with a fair amount of silk, and looks great. He probably only wears it when I’m around. I hope he will wear it to my funeral. Lizzie took a picture of that, too.

Then I cast on the next pair of KF socks – man’s size, this time, so slower. I thought I had bought more stripes in a different colourway, but it turns out I had the same colourway, “Earth”, in the other mode, Mirage instead of Landscape. (There’s a good illustration of the difference here.) I made good progress, despite dozing quite a bit on the north-bound train yesterday. I’m about 2/3rds of the way down the leg.

Photographed on the doorstep for the sake of the light. The effect is rather artistic.

While in London I bought “Knitting New Scarves” by Lynne Barr (and rushed straight back to enter it in LibraryThing from Rachel’s computer). Everybody is recommending this book, and everybody is right to do so. I try to insulate myself as far as possible from the movements of fashion, but I happen to have walked past a couple of racks of scarves “Just In” lately, and I can tell you that three-dimensional, as in the book, is what they’re selling this year. By which I don’t mean fun fur.

See Chronic Knitting Syndrome's blog entry for October 24. She makes me want to knit Shag, for which I have Just the Thing in my stash. I love Linked Rib but I’m not sure I’m good enough. There are many others. But it’s time to start Theo’s cashmere gansey.

And “Kaffe Knits Again” has just – at last! – fallen through the letter-box.

London today. Blogging should resume next Wednesday, the 31st.

KF Socks

Our doctor’s appointment system is too good to allow for much knitting these days, but at least I got the second sock cast on and joined into a circle while I waited to see if the flu injection would prove fatal. I’m ready to get cracking this morning as the train pulls out of Waverley Station.

What follows may be either (a) entirely wrong or (b) something that everybody else figured out in childhood. I’m not really very good at this kind of thinking.

It occurred to me that if I had started my KF socks with the second ball – there was a 50/50 chance – I wouldn’t have needed to unwind nearly so much of the first ball, to match the stripes, as I would need now, doing it the other way around.

If that’s right, it may mean that if you’re keen on matching the stripes, it would be a good idea to unroll a few yards from both balls before starting, and see if you can find an economical starting place. And perhaps mark the spot for the initial slipknot on both balls, to ensure utter identicality. Maybe I’ll try that, when I embark on the other colorway.

Miscellaneous

The Yarn Yard October Sock Club selection arrived yesterday (more beautiful than ever). Natalie couldn’t post it until the postal strike was over – and when she did, it took a full eight days, first class post, to get to me from a starting point just outside Edinburgh. The postmark is unusually clear.

Fishwife, the yarn at Jenner’s is good, and there was a lot of it on Monday, but nothing to make the pulse race. I would have left empty-handed if I hadn’t gone in search of something specific, that extra KidSilk Haze. I think maybe you should save your breath, unless you have a particular project in mind. That is an interesting idea, that they are going to replace their own department with an in-store concession, but I bet it’ll be Rowan.

The scenario was played out, rather more rapidly, at Rackham’s in Birmingham in the mid-'90’s. Move yarn dep’t upstairs, replace with a little Rowan shop, close down altogether. We shall see, as I said yesterday.

Of course, if it’s not going to be Rowan, that’s another story.

Since Blogger has got its act together at last, here is the long-promised Araucania swatch. It's nice, isn't it?

Flu injection day, early appointment. Brevity required here.

Still no picture of my Araucania swatch, but this morning Blogger says "We are aware of this problem and working on a fix". I should hope so, too.

I got to Jenner’s. Sure enough, 50% off everything, including books. I bought some KidSilk Haze. I asked as I was paying if this meant the yarn dep’t was closing, and she denied it, as happened to you, Mogs. They are just making room for new stock. It certainly felt like a closing-down sale to me. We shall see.

The Earth Stripe Stole is up to 15”. It looks nice. There are errors, including, I discovered to my horror yesterday, a wedge-shaped stripe which must mean that I turned around in mid-row. Even my grandson Alistair, knitting his first scarf last summer, managed to avoid that one. I’m leaving it.

I’ve updated projects in Ravelry, and I’ve figured out – or they’ve improved the system; things change fast, over there – how to replace a WIP picture with an FO one on the Projects page, without going to the length of deleting the former. I’ve still to update stash.

Comments

Mar, I’m always flattered when you stop by here, like those fans at Rhinebeck who were too shy to talk to you. We’ll see soon how KF socks look if knit fraternally, so to speak. I think I might actually like them that way, although I agree with you that the broad stripes make it risky.

Tamar (on swifts): you’re right, there are drawbacks to mine. Even with waxing, the cages don’t turn quite as easily as I’d like. I always ensure, as do we all, that yarn isn’t wound too tightly, so what I have to do is pull out a length with my left hand, and then wind it, and then repeat. A modern swift would be much faster.

I finished my swatch. I love the look and the feel of this stuff, and am eager to get started. I’ll run the new gauge through Garment Styler today, and pack everything up nicely for our next trip to Strathardle. I've got a picture ready to show you, but Blogger doesn't like pictures this morning.

Having done that, I added a few rows to The Earth Stripe Wrap. I heard from the Spinning Fishwife this morning that Jenner’s is closing its yarn dept – 50% off everything, including Rowan. There is one colour of KidSilk Haze which will clearly need replenishing, and others which I might like to top up. I’ll try to schedule a visit.

Maureen in Fargo, fraternal it will be, for the KF socks. I realised yesterday that the subsequent pair, for Alexander, in the other colorway I bought that day, will have to be fraternal, because in recent years I have at last hit upon one economy I can practice in the yarn-buying area: I now buy only 100 grams for gents’ socks, and finish off the toes with something from the oddball bag. So I won't have enough to allow myself the luxury of unwinding yards and yards in search of the second starting-point.

I have an appointment to get my flu jab tomorrow. As I remember, one is required to sit quietly for a few minutes afterwards. I should get Rachel’s second sock cast on, at least.

And now to update Ravelry on my recent activities…