I think we’ll attempt Strathardle today. I’m somewhat better – and the big thing is, I’m not worse. I really worried a little bit yesterday about the possibility of being seriously, swine-flu-y ill, and stranding my husband in the country. He doesn’t drive any more, and would be hard put to it to walk as far as the village. And Alexander couldn’t get across country to help because a landslide at Rest and Be Thankful has cut him off from the outside world.

I knew that old folks didn’t seem to get swine flu as often or as badly as other people, but I didn’t know that we are supposed to have built up an immunity. Why are most of the people who have died of that truly dreadful thing, new-variant-CJD, so young? That's counter-intuitive. We oldies have been eating hamburger for many more decades.

And thanks for the reminders on dates. Of course the sequences I am so enjoying go on until 10/11/12 and 12/12/12. Then there’ll still be 11/12/13 and 12/13/14 (although we British won’t get that last one).

Angel, I’ll certainly take pictures of my vegetable crop. Don’t expect too much. And congratulations on the PhD -- Dr. Angel.

Knitting

I did wind a skein and cast on the February Lady Sweater yesterday. Thus are the good habits of the middle years swept aside in old age. I’m not getting gauge, too small, so what I did will have to be regarded as a large swatch. There are holes at either end of the buttonhole, anyway. As far as one can tell at this stage, and allowing for the fact that it's too small, the neckline seems all right.

The yarn is heaven to handle. (Yes, MaryJo – Araucania “Nature Wool”.) I remain uneasy about the colour. It’s a fine episcopal purple -- the spelling checker wants a capital E on “Episcopal”; it’s not often actually silly like that – in artificial light and even dim natural light, but rather alarmingly acid in good light.

It occurred to me that “nearly solid” colours in yarn must, until recently, have been regarded as a failure by the dyers. It was clever of somebody to see the potential. Just as it was clever of someone to realise that people would pay you to allow them to walk around wearing a shirt advertising your product.

I’ve heard from Beijing – James says he and his family can be in Strathardle (as well as Helen and hers) to coax my husband in for lunch during KnitCamp next summer. The organisers really couldn’t have chosen a better date or more convenient spot for me if they had had me in mind from the beginning.

Non-knit

Alexander sent this picture yesterday, with the remark “Count yourself lucky you don’t have to compete at Dalmally”. I suspect those aren’t his vegetables, although those are certainly his sons, James-the-Younger on the left, and his brother Thomas-the-Younger. Their costumes suggest that Strathardle had better weather than Dalmally on Games Day, anyway.

9/9/9

I have enjoyed the nine days similarly numbered since the turn of the millennium, even more than I like the 1/2/3's and 3/4/5's. Today is the last one.

The plan had been to go to Strathardle today, to get the harvest in. If I’m lucky, the tepee will be heavy with not-yet-entirely wooden-tasting beans. There are certainly potatoes and (small) carrots and beets, although the mice will have nibbled the beets where they mound up above the soil. Mara des Bois strawberries and autumn-bearing raspberries were poised on the edge a fortnight ago, but the birds have probably had them. Kale should be in good form, but we’ll save that for winter. I’ll net it this time, which should at least annoy the deer.

However, I’ve got a sore throat, and it got worse rather than better overnight. I think it might be wiser to wait a day and see how the cookie crumbles. Strathardle is no place to be ill – can’t phone for a takeaway, to begin with.

I’m not generally nervous about pandemics – we had a grand time in Beijing when SARS was at its worst. But swine flu scares me, probably because of its connection (H1N1) with the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. Sore throat is on the symptom list, but well down towards the end. I’m not feverish, and not coughing.

I am so used to taking care of my husband, and worrying about his sister – she has had repeated chest infections since May of last year, is constantly weak and breathless and cross at the NHS for being unable to find the underlying cause and cure her – so used to that, that I sometimes forget I’m pretty old myself.

So, knitting. About which there is little to report. I am within nine rows, I think it is, of finishing the first half of the Griswold stole. Yesterday I resisted the temptation to cast on the February Lady Sweater. I might not be so strong-minded today, if I feel I need coddling.

More non-knit

I finally despaired of ever seeing Jenni’s and Theo’s wedding pictures on their wedding website, and have learned that they are available on Facebook, if one can enrol among their friends. I am agitating for a more public display.

Where to begin, for sheer excitement?

Helen writes from Athens, a propos the prospect of looking after her father for a couple of days next summer while I gallivant about: “No prob at all. Anything for Franklin.” So as soon as booking opens for the KnitCamp, I’ll try to book my chosen classes – better to lose the money, if it turns out I can’t go, than to risk losing the chance.

And did you see that Donna Druchunas herself posted a comment here on Saturday? I feel greatly honoured. I know a teeny tiny bit about Japanese knitting (which she is going to teach at KnitCamp) because I went to a class at K1 Yarns not all that long ago with Mrs Habu herself. But I haven’t done anything about it, so the basic ideas need to be refreshed, and there is lots I want to know about what’s going on in Japan, not restricted to Habu.

Meanwhile I’m greatly enjoying Donna’s blog.

Here, I move forward with the Griswold. I may even reach the half-way point today, and cast on the second half. You can see what I mean about the diminishing size of the panels of repeats, and how hard it would be to add a section to increase the length. Unless one did it at the beginning. As it is, it will I think block to the designer’s specified size, 15” by 60”. It doesn’t look nearly as lacy as the prototype, but I think blocking will take care of that.

The yarn for the February Lady Sweater arrived just now. It’s plumier than I expected. (And fancy the spelling checker which so often annoys me, accepting “plumier”.) I submit pictures taken with and without the flash. Will pluminess suit me? It looks wonderful, whatever, and a nice warming colour for the dark days looming ahead.

Non-knit

Here’s my tomato crop on the doorstep. I have never grown tomatoes before, thinking them beyond my capabilities. It’s interesting the way the fruit hangs on the plant for weeks and weeks and then, suddenly, decides to turn red and does it within a few days.

I am told I can ripen the ones which clearly won’t make it, by putting them in a bowl with an overripe banana. I’ll try that, and I’ve got a recipe for a sugarless green tomato chutney/salsa, which I will also try.

The Fishwife herself, who gave me the young plants, says that her own crop failed – the tomatoes caught blight from the potatoes in her allotment and had to be ripped up and thrown away. I think blight is getting worse, year by year. And a sodden summer like this one doesn’t help.

KnitCamp

Will it happen? It might. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying it in prospect, and in fantasy. Dawn and Mel and David, it’ll be great to meet you. Shall we do lunch?

I’ve printed out the schedule, and chosen a programme for myself. On Tuesday morning, it’ll be “Seamless Sweaters” with Jared. I can knit seamless sweaters already, and am brave enough to steek, but I’m sure he knows tricks I’ve never thought of. On Wednesday morning, “Photographing your Fibre” with Franklin. On Thursday, I can’t choose, so I’ll have to stay all day. “The Swedish North Halland Pullover” in the morning with Beth Brown-Reinsel, and “Explore Japanese Knitting” in the afternoon with Donna Druchunas.

Japanese knitting – and Japan is where it’s at, these days, I’m sure we all agree – is not a subject Druchunas has written about. That’s not necessarily a downer. The first such class I ever took was one on the Bavarian Travelling Stitch at Camp Stitches in ’99 with Candace Eisner Strick. She never wrote about that, either, nor even used it very much in her designs, but it was a subject she was (and I hope still is) seriously interested in, and it was a wonderful class.

I’ve added the Druchunas blog to my list of what I think might be called feeds. I’ve also, EJ, fixed that link (I hope) in yesterday’s entry. Sorry about that.

As for knitting, the Griswold stole is within hailing distance of the half-way point, where I start again from the other end. The jabot continues to be neglected. The yarn for the February Lady Sweater hasn’t yet arrived.

And our friends are here, and breakfast calls.

Great day, yesterday, despite unremitting rain.

The big news is that we are to have an American-style KnitCamp next summer right here in Scotland, on the Stirling University campus. Look at that: Franklin! Jared! Nancy Bush! Vivian Hoxbro! Annie herself! And more! Stirling is reachable as a day-trip from either Edinburgh or Strathardle and the dates are during the period when Greek Helen is usually here, who could hold the fort in my absence. Thank goodness I heard about it early enough – thanks to the Fishwife -- to lay long plans.

And the other news is that The Yarn Yard is soon to launch a wonderful new yarn, exclusive to her. I don’t want to tread on commercial toes so will say no more for now, but it’s great stuff (she had some with her). I’ll watch the website and report further when it’s available.

And, oh yes, Combination Knitting.

Annie Modesitt is wonderful, strong and energetic and patient and kind. We all learned a lot. The technique is one she hit upon while teaching herself to knit in an instructor-free void. She was delighted to learn, years later, that instead of being a solitary eccentric, she’s doing Combination Knitting. Shades of M. Jourdain’s discovery that he had been speaking prose all his life.

The technique is easy, and I think in my case it does provide a smoother fabric. The yarn goes under rather than over the needle in the purl rows, thus travelling a shorter distance and making knit and purl rows more harmonious with each other. My Strathardle knitting, long neglected at the moment, is being knit on circular needles up to the armpits. It might be worth switching to Combination Knitting when I divide the work.

The really fascinating part, however, was to watch Annie knit. She anchors the left-hand needle on her knee, and threads the yarn loosely between little finger and ring finger of her left hand. All the manipulation and yarn-feeding is done with the thumb and index finger of that hand. Wrists scarcely move, and fingers not much, and the speed is terrific.

Whereas I, equally self-taught but a good deal less bright, flail about in the clumsiest possible way. And continue to flail when attempting Combination Knitting – I simply couldn’t begin to do it Annie’s way, although I tried. It might be worth while to go on trying.

I bought her book, Confessions of a Knitting Heretic. It promises very well.

Gerry came in at the end, looking well. An unexpected bonus.

On this day 70 years ago we went swimming in the Great Salt Lake. My father told me to remember – not the swimming, so much, as September 3, 1939. By the time of Pearl Harbor I was eight, and didn’t need to be told.

I don’t think that funny business the other night was a computer virus, and I’m glad in a way to hear of your similar experience, Tamar. The multiple windows that kept popping up didn’t have time to download content, as I clicked frantically to close each one while battling my way down to the Start button. But I got the impression – perhaps they were pink -- that they were multiple copies of Stephanie’s blog which I had been reading.

I’ve got Norton, and it’s up to date. I did have a virus once, Klez H I think it was called, years ago on a different computer. The first thing it did – as you say, Sabrina – was to disable my virus protection, McAfee at the time and not entirely up to date. It then sent itself to all the people in my address book, enabling my sons to tell me I had a virus and to name it. It also sent messages to me from people on the list. I wish I had saved the one from “James Miles” telling me to click on the link provided to get rid of the Klez virus. There was something about the prose style which suggested that it had not been sent by the James Miles I know and love.

My husband’s computer has a virus called Form which I am very fond of. It causes each keystroke to make a hollow, echoing sound on the 18th day of the month. It has no other effect whatsoever. And the effect only operates in DOS, so it doesn’t linger to irritate my husband once he has loaded Word Perfect. But whenever I carry a disk from his computer to mine, Norton makes a great song-and-dance about eliminating it.

Knitting

Old friends are coming to stay tomorrow, so yesterday was largely devoted to a thorough clean of the spare room and Downstairs Lavatory, much used by itinerant family during the summer. By knitting time I was too tired for anything but the nice, easy, deliciously soft Griswold.

I have formed a new resolution. Every time I yield to the temptation to buy yarn, I will give some away from stash to a charity in Alyth which knits for various good causes. Helen C.K.S. and I have provided it with a lot of material in recent years.

I’ve got more stash than I could possibly knit in my lifetime, even if I’m still knitting at 90, but it’s remarkably hard to find anything I can bear to part with. This time – when I ordered that Araucania for a February Lady Sweater the other day – I chose the Fyberspates Scrumptious DK I bought earlier this year to knit a Child’s Surprise as my Games entry. It’s good stuff, wonderful on the hand, but an unfortunate gloomy colour. An expensive mistake.

Tomorrow I will be able to tell you all about Combination Knitting, after my class with Annie Modesitt. She will certainly mention Edinburgh in her blog. I feel a bit as Alice did when she was told that she was only a figure in the Red King’s dream.

The computer went berserk last night.

I had just finished reading a favourite blog, and was closing the window, when windows started opening everywhere, like a mad new form of computer game. I struggled to regain control, as if with a skidding car or runaway horse, and when I succeeded, rebooted. Everything was then calm – except that I couldn’t connect to the internet at all, and had never before seen the error messages which an attempt produced.

I am still shaking, in retrospect. If I ever think of myself as calm and in control, I need to remember that everything depends on access to the universe. I’m having lunch tomorrow with the Fishwife, before our Combination Knitting class with Annie Modesitt. I don’t even know her – the Fishwife’s – telephone number. It’s been so long since I had serious trouble that I don’t have A Man who could be summoned to help. And what would you think if I wasn't here this morning?

But all was well last night before I went to bed. So it must (I guess) have been the ISP’s fault. I don’t have their telephone number either, but I’ll put that right.

Knitting

I am greatly encouraged by the number of you who have knit and subsequently worn the February Lady Sweater. If I still read something like the KnitList, I’d have heard of it long ago. And forewarned is forearmed – the great thing about top-down knitting is that I’ll be able to try that neckline right away. Shandy, I looked up “Knitting on Impulse”. What wonderful pictures! What a cheerful mother (wearing the FLS)! What a good colour! Her adjustments sound too complicated for me, but you never know. I don't think I have very good shoulders -- see the sidebar. But you never know about that, either.

As for my own knitting, I finished the ASJ swatch, although I haven’t done anything with it yet, and got this far with the Griswold Stole. It’s a very clever pattern, dead easy. It’s all done with offsets. It’s perfect post-Princess therapy, as you suspected, Cynthia. I think the bulges in the side edges will block out -- my first version had them, too.




I think it’s time for a jabot day, if I can bear to tear myself away.

Non-knit

Every year after the Games we take a group picture of Our Party, although I’ve never done anything with them. Tree pictures are carefully kept in my Tree Book. Here is this year’s. Alexander, second from the right, was the photographer. Everybody was there except Helen’s husband David. I, my husband, and Helen are the three white-haired figures in the back row – premature greyness runs in the family, and Helen has recently stopped dying her hair and given in to it. On her, grey looks like platinum blond. Ketki, towards the right, is wearing her Calcutta Cup sweater. Thomas-the-Younger is the one plahing football in front.

The two very welcome non-family-members are Thomas-the-Elder’s girlfriend Anna, towards the left, next to him and in front of James; and Hellie’s boyfriend Matt, towards the right, the tallest figure in the back row. He and Joe (next to him) entered the hay-bale-rolling competition. They were afraid they would disgrace themselves by not being able to get it moving, but in fact came a very creditable second in their heat.

A busy 24 hours with the credit card.

First of all, I downloaded the February Lady Sweater pattern – that was free. Then I googled around a bit and found that there is an Araucania yarn (which I already loved) called Nature Wool promising precisely the required gauge. I (gulp) ordered some from a place called Stash Fine Yarns which I had never heard of. Efficient website, good prices.

Judith, would I have done it if I had read your comment in time? The neck looks so innocent and easy. I want to pursue the adverse reactions you mention on Ravelry. Can you point me to any? And I will re-read with some care both the original EZ pattern and “Knitting From the Top”.

At some point in the past, I have knit the prototype baby sweater at least once. It’s easy and fun – that was part of the attraction. What I don’t remember is actually putting or even seeing it on a baby. Maybe he/she was dissatisfied with the neck and just didn’t tell me.

Then this morning I finally ordered acid-free tissue paper from Amazon, for putting the Princess away in; a double-ended crochet hook, inspired by your comment, Knitting08816; and finally (non-knit) an electronic key-finder, as I have had a couple of worrying and time-consuming searches recently for that valuable item.

I saw a double-ended hook in action once, wielded by a friend at Camp Stitches. She was demonstrating precisely what you mention, the retrieval of a mistake in garter stitch. It was impressive. I couldn’t find a UK source, except for a very expensive wooden set, so I have ordered one from the US.

As for actual knitting, I couldn’t keep my hands off the Griswold stole. Nothing else was done. I am now more or less back to the point where I gave up on the first version.

Non-knit

It turns out that Rachel herself took yesterday’s picture of her four children and the Ogden tree. Here is another Ogden picture, Rachel and Ed setting out for a Bollywood party last week on their 28th wedding anniversary. How did that happen? I have scarcely been married that long myself. Ketki provided Rachel’s costume -- how easy-to-wear and flattering it looks, as well as beautiful; Ed bought his in Tooting.

It was the right thing to do….

I shall adopt your excellent suggestion, Cynthia, and refer to it as the Florence Griswold Stole henceforth. I now love the process of knitting it, and the pattern (interlocking Griswolds?) is crisp and clear.

The original attempt was beautiful, and would have made a classy stole, and no one would have noticed the wonky stems. But it wasn’t fun to do. I will remember what you said yesterday, Ron: “If you are not happy with the stole now, you will not be happy with it in a week.”

So today I’ll go on with that – for pure pleasure, knitting with alpaca-and-silk is hard to beat. But first I’ll finish the ASJ swatch – with a blunter needle and perhaps greater caution, in the hopes of splitting fewer stitches. I can’t change the yarn, Fishwife. It’s non-negotiable, as I believe Prince Charles once said of Mrs Parker Bowles. It’s my recent purchase of blogger’s yarns – Franklin’s Panopticon and Amy’s Vintage Office and the Modesitt one I think of as Gerry’s Roadkill although that’s not quite what it’s called, plus other beautiful yarns with evocative names.

With the swatch finished, I’ll have my data and can work on the maths.

Reading What Housework? this morningI discovered the February Lady Sweater, the last knitter in the universe to do so. I went straight to Ravelry and queued it. I think maybe enthusiasm is returning.

Non-knit

Rachel sent me this yesterday, although I think Helen must have taken it. It shows the Ogden children with the Ogden tree, the abies koreana. Now that’s what a Games Day tree picture should look like. Is it so good because the early evening light is better than morning glare? Or do I need a new camera or (more likely) a few lessons?

From left to right we have Hellie, a recent graduate of Newcastle University now carving a path for herself in the difficult world of publishing; Joe, going in to his second year at Nottingham University, reading politics; Lizzie, going in to the 6th form – she’s just received good GCSE results; and Thomas-the-Elder, our barrister. A fine set – and the tree has grown well, too.

Fuzzarelly, I think it’s wonderful that you’ve got a Dawn Redwood a.k.a. metasequoia glyptostroboides, just like us. I’ve been reading about it in Wikipedia; interesting, as that source often is. The name “metasequoia”, I believe, refers to the fact that the leaflets are opposite each other on the stem, as an illustration in the Wikipedia entry shows. On other sequoias, they alternate. If I’m right. I have a half-memory that the man who initially described the fossils said he would have called it something snappier had he suspected that such trees still grew.

Another restless day, knitting-wise. I decided during the course of it that maybe the thing to do was to start on my Adult Surprise with my lovely new Lorna’s Laces sock yarn. Overturning the laboriously-acquired-over-decades one-WIP-at-a-time discipline of recent years, as I have no intention of abandoning either the jabot or the Thistle Stole.

So when knitting time came, I wound a skein of Amy’s Vintage Office and got started on a swatch. Splendid yarn. I’m going to enjoy this.

Two anxieties, though. I plan to start with an inch or so of solid charcoal before I let rip with colour. That’s going to make the vital centering of the decreases even harder. I’ll just have to be careful. The other is, that I notice a couple of split stitches in the still-very-small swatch. I think EZ says somewhere that that’s the one mistake in knitting which can’t be disguised as a Feature. And laddering down to fix one is next to impossible (for me) to do neatly in garter stitch.

Try a blunter needle? I’m using one of those fancy-schmancy made-from-musical-instruments ebony ones, and it’s heaven to hold and wield. But I can’t wear a jacket full of split stitches.

It’ll take a while to work out exactly what size I’m going to aim at, and the whole point of swatching is to get this right. I don’t want it slipping about off the shoulders, nor yet straining at the bosom.

As promised, I also worked on at the Thistle stole, and discontent seized me there, too. I am having trouble seeing exactly what is happening, what with the fine, dark yarn and working in garter stitch. The stitch count keeps being a bit wrong. I’m afraid the current batch of thistle stems aren’t straight.

Should I save this beautiful yarn for something I can actually do with it, and go back and knit the Thistle Stole in the yarn Cynthia and Sue intended for it when they made me the gift? It’s called Buckingham, from the Bristol Yarn Gallery. It’s Peruvian, baby alpaca and silk. It’s slightly heavier, so I would knit the stole as the pattern is written – fewer stitches than I’ve got at the moment, and st st which makes patterns easier to see. It feels wonderful, inviting one to imagine cuddling oneself in it.

It’s a nice gentle alpaca brown, representing thistles hit by glysophate, perhaps. I think I’ll do that.

Holly, those leads on jabot design you posted yesterday were enormously interesting and potentially useful. Stacey, yours too.

I don’t think there’s any difference between a man’s and a woman’s jabot. I saw some attached to women’s blouses – and gorgeous they were – at Kinloch Anderson that day.

I spent yesterday’s knitting time, despite intentions, fiddling with the jabot. My corner-to-corner lace square, full of mistakes, is now declining towards completion. The lace strip, meanwhile, is currently off the needle, stitches well-secured. That let me play with it on the newly-tea-dyed jabot, and I think that maybe after all I could make something of it.

But I’ll finish the square and see how it looks with something else underneath. I’ve got the Christine Duchrow incomplete jabot I knit a while ago, to fill that role temporarily.

Today I really will knit the stole, though.

I felt very restless, knit-wise, this morning. The fall Knitty doesn’t seem to be up. I went to Ravelry and found that other people are missing Franklin and that a post in a lace-for-boys group mentions my jabot! So I’ve got to persevere.

However, for here and for now, I’ll talk about Strathardle.

Lisa, we use the word “commonty” just to mean “land-held-in-common”. Which it isn’t, any more. Our house and its three fields used to be a croft, supporting a numerous family. The fields are now tenanted by sheep. In addition, there is a strip of land down by the burn (and occasionally flooded by it) --– I think it would qualify as a haugh -- which was once held in common by three proprietors. Well before we bought our house, it had been formally divided. We had the first bit, nearest the house.

We immediately bought the next section, allowing the former owner to continue pasturing his cows there in perpetuity rent-free. I wish we had pursued an attempt to secure the third with equal energy. The cows and their owner are long gone and our four specimen trees stand in that part. “Down the commonty” is part of the mysterious family vocabulary which incomers (such as the people our children marry) find so difficult at first, although all have mastered it by now.

I’m glad to hear there are metasequoias in America. It is an easy-going, fast-growing deciduous conifer, also known as a Dawn Redwood. The real-life modern ones in China were matched to the fossil shortly after the war, and thereafter widely distributed. It likes to have its feet wet, and our mistake was to plant it on a slight slope. If it had been a few yards further forward, nearer the burn, it would have been much happier. It even suffered this year in that freak drought of the early summer which carried off my seedbed roll. I thought it was big enough to look after itself, and didn’t go down the commonty to water it as I have in many another summer.

The other two trees are a pinus nigra, the Black Pine, planted in memory of Helen and David’s eldest son Oliver, who died at six weeks. Helen wanted a big tree. We put it in the winter of Oliver’s birth and death, and have never had a tree which hit the ground running with such enthusiasm. Here is this year’s poor picture, with Oliver's three brothers.

The fourth is an abies koreana, whose party trick is blue fir cones. It was planted for Rachel and Ed’s 40th birthdays, more than a decade ago now. It doesn’t always do its trick, but it did this year. Helen took its 2009 picture, with the young Ogdens. I’ll post it when she sends it to me.

Tea it was, and very successful, I think. At first, I thought I had Gone Too Far, and would have to dye the yarn pale brown. But I rinsed the jabot, and it lightened as it dried, and now I think it’s fine. Many thanks.

Having got that far, I spent yesterday’s knitting time on jabot-thinking and indeed jabot-doing. I am less and less confident of my ability to make a suitable object out of a strip of lace, so yesterday I went back to Christine Duchrow. No need to rush things. James can start wearing it (if at all) on St Andrews Night in ’10.

The Duchrow jabot I previously attempted is a single object: that won’t do. We need layers, froths of lace. I found one that looks plausible – a square of lace, attached to the neck at one corner, with a plain rectangle underneath, both edged with the same pretty little edging.

There would be no absolute need to make the rectangle plain, either.

I completely failed to understand the simplest thing about the instructions. You start by casting on two stitches. Alternate rows are plain. Then you begin to increase. One stitch appears at each end of alternate rows. Where do they come from? Reading German, for me, is like trying to view the world through my Retinal-Vein-Occluded eye. It’s there, all right. I can make some sort of sense of it. But I can’t really get to grips with it.

(And actually, I don’t think the notes around the pattern explained the point, anyway. Maybe somewhere else.)

I fiddled around a bit, and found Maureen Egan Emlet’s “Mediterranean Lace” in A Gathering of Lace. I’m attempting four panels from the very bottom of that shawl – again, beginning with two stitches -- only this time I can see where the increases come from. I can’t quite see, at the moment, how I will manage the decreases, when I get to the maximum point. It should theoretically be easy.

It’s a rose trellis lace. I used something like it for the centre of a shawl once. I could do the same for the rectangle. Or try Hazel Carter’s jabot, which started this whole train of thought. That’s a rectangle, and it has a thistle on it, which is a nice touch.

And perhaps go back to Duchrow for the edging. We shall see.

But today I will switch back to the stole, from roses to thistles. Tamar, I think they sort of interlock in a way that won’t (theoretically) allow for another panel in the centre. Starting from each end, the sets of thistles have progressively shorter stems. I thought of adding a whole extra section at each end with stems one step longer than the longest, but decided (laziness?) that that might make it too long altogether.

Non-knit

Every year on Games Day I take pictures of the specimen conifers we have planted down the commonty, with associated grandchildren. This year, we had all the grandchildren and I had the right ones stand by the right tree. I don’t always insist on that. My Drake picture isn’t very good on children, and the Ogdens (London) weren’t there yet so someone else took that one in the evening, and James-the-Younger wasn’t feeling well so that one, too, was repeated in the evening with a different photographer when he was better.

Here’s what I got – Thomas-the-Younger with our deodar, a Himalayan tree. We put it in only recently. It comes from the Ardkinglas nursery, near where they live on Loch Fyne. It's growing fast.

And the Beijing Mileses with the metasequoia. That’s a tree which was identified and named from a fossil and later turned up growing peacefully in China. We planted ours when James and Cathy married, and it has struggled in the dry soil of the commonty, but is at last growing faster than the children. You have to peer a bit, but it's there, above Rachel-the-Younger in the middle.

Now, knitting.

Very little was done while we were away – a few rows of jabot. I did get into Blairgowrie, though, to discuss the problem with Piob Mohr. (I don’t know what it means, or how to pronounce it.) They were, as before, very kind, and they have sold me a lace-less jabot:

However, as I feared, and as I found out for sure when I laid it out this morning to photograph, it is a stark white which combines poorly with the antique-lace look of the gossamer merino I’m using. Is Cashsilk whiter? I could go back to that, or I could dig out the DMC cotton I bought to attempt the Princess in. Today’s job.

Meanwhile, I’m moving steadily forward with Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer’s Thistle Lace Stole. There are problems, as ever -- including those extra-big holes, dead centre.

I’ve inserted two extra pattern repeats to compensate for the fine yarn I’m using. That’s OK. The width looks good, and the rows aren’t uncomfortably long.

But I discover – for as always, I have rushed forward first only to make discoveries later – that this stole, unlike any other in the world, is planned as a whole, and doesn’t seem to have a section anywhere which can be extended to provide extra length. As may prove necessary.

And to make matters worse, I am knitting it in garter stitch, contrary to instructions. That will presumably shorten it somewhat further.

It is knit from each end, joined in the middle. So I have decided to finish the first half and then consider the problem. Maybe it will be long enough, if blocked with length primarily in mind. Failing that, I will have to add something somehow, risking asymmetry.

I am feeling autumnal, in need of Something Wonderful to knit, like Helen CKS’s Anhinga. But what? And anyway, when current projects are finished, I am supposed to knit an Adult Surprise with the Lorna’s Laces yarns I bought recently. That’s pretty wonderful. Is it enough?

Both the new VK (a.k.a. Designer Knitting, in GB) and – wow! – Jared’s book “Made in Brooklyn”, Gerri’s kind gift to me, were waiting on the mat when we got back here on Monday. Both have got good things; nothing quite lifts me out of my seat. Jared’s cover piece and Elizabeth Lavold’s pattern in VK both attract. Do I want a long, sleeveless cardigan? Why not?

I love Jared’s “Seneca” pattern, with the magic cables on the yoke. I love the mittens in travelling stitch. That’s a technique I keep resolving to get back to.

Next week’s excitement is a class with Annie Modesitt on Combination Knitting. Maybe that will incidentally provide some sort of answer to my restlessness.

It’s all over, and this will be a poor report.

I wasn’t feeling very snappy on Games Day, and thus lack the pictures I need: of the knitting, especially the cardigans that beat mine; and of the Collections of Four Vegetables, where the winners all entered great big cabbages.

The saddest photographic miss of all didn’t involve me – the winning entry in the Knitted Hat section (deserving of the Glenisla Shield for the best handicraft entry, although I don’t know whether the knitter got it) was done from Katherine Misegades’ “Picture Hat” pattern on page 142 of a Gathering of Lace. Or if not that, a near-identical rip-off. Spectacular.

The winning cardigans were beautifully knit, with cables 'n' things 'n' buttons 'n' bows. Mine may have been more wearable, and indeed fits the intended recipient well and she loves it. My consolation in the vegetable section was that no one else entered runner beans – as I’ve said, they’re not easy in Strathardle and I’ve never before had them ready so early.

I made a Collection of Four Vegetable soup the next day, and very tasty it was.

Our triumph was Alistair Miles of Beijing’s First Prize in the “bookends” category. His entry was based on a split log which he had been sanding and varnishing for days. He has left it behind, so I can produce a picture of it next time.

I didn’t even get new “Grandchildren” or “Rachel, Alexander, James and Helen” pictures taken for the sidebar. It could have been done, it should have been. Everybody was there. We had a good time. The weather was amazing: it had been as rotten an August as anyone could remember – here we are all rushing out the back door to see a rainbow, only the day before – but Games Day was fair.

Earlier in the week, we had a chain saw session to cut up wood for the winter. My husband says we haven’t done enough, but it’s a good start. James worked the chain saw, I steadied the logs, the children took turns handing me the next log. Then we formed a chain gang to stack it all up in the byre. Those are the Beijing Mileses on the left, the Athens Drakes on the right.


Then my husband, inspired at the idea that the chain saw was in action, with James on hand to wield it, decided to take out a sycamore tree (they’re weeds) which was overtopping a favourite chestnut. Here he is, with his sons, working on it. Alexander, on the left, is wearing a KF creation from a Rowan kit, dating from the days when Rowan made kits. I rotated the pattern somehow, I seem to remember.

Sunday was overshadowed by the news of the fires near Athens. Helen and her family now live in a northern suburb of that city, adjacent to Agios Stephanos where the fires were bad. Her husband (who had been weedending on Mt Pelion) went to the house with a list Helen had drawn up of the things she wanted him to take in the car if it was necessary to evacuate. She felt rather sorry, as things calmed down, not to have the chance, after all, to start life fresh.

James set himself yesterday to modify the wifi setup at the house in Kirkmichael, with the thought of preventing his son Alistair from spending all day on on-line computer games. The inevitable result was that he cut us off from all contact with the outside world. Service was eventually resumed after a titanic struggle.

This morning, I can’t get on-line from this computer, totally different system, different ISP, miles away. It must mean that demon.co.uk is having a bad moment, but it’s hard not to blame James.

Yesterday was tough. My husband had a CT scan at the Royal Infirmary. We had a hellish drive there through Festival traffic, and then a bad time driving around that nightmare place past parking lots with SPACES but no visible way in; parking lots with SPACES reserved for hospital staff; and parking lots with NO SPACES and little queues of cars waiting.

That problem resolved, the scan itself wasn’t very pleasant, nor was the radiography department. Then we thought we’d drive home a different way, over by Holyrood, along the foot of Arthur’s Seat. My husband has known Edinburgh all his life, but didn’t reckon on new buildings and new No Right Turn signs not to mention the infamous tram works. So the return journey took even longer than the outward one.

One of those days.

And now I can’t get on-line.

I didn’t get much knitting done. I started the Thistle Shawl again on smaller needles and more stitches. That works well, and is going to produce a good fabric, but the particular needle I’m using still isn’t right. The eternal lace-knitter’s problem (on circulars) of the stitches not wanting to leave the cord and slip with any ease onto the straight bit.

No replies – the last time I was able to look -- from the AllotmentsUK group about my seedbed roll query. I’ll try the on-line readers’ forum at Kitchen Garden Magazine. That’s where I heard about it in the first place.

The world has come back to my computer screen, so I can post this and start the pre-Strathardle bustle. We’ll be away until the 25th or so. If you’re going to be in central Perthshire on the 22nd, come and join us at the Games.

Here’s a curious note for you on the vegetable-growing front:

Remember that “seedbed roll” in which I invested and with which I totally failed? Due, I think, to an uncharacteristic spring drought. Well, yesterday I set out to find how other people had fared. Googling produced pages of advertisements, and a few bloggers who posted in the spring that they were going to try it – including one who had my idea that maybe the upper plastic level would offer protection from rabbits.

But no results. I persevered until page five, where the entries seemed to be wandering from the point.

So I went to my AllotmentsUK Yahoo group and posted the question. No replies, in 24 hours.

I don’t know what I conclude. I think maybe it means that results were less than sensationally wonderful, but the argumentum a silentio is notoriously unreliable.

Knitting

It’s done. Now all I must do is remember to take it along when we go back to Strathardle tomorrow. We nearly forgot to send our entries in at all – but recovered in time; the deadline is Monday.

I left the jabot in Strathardle, so I set forward last night on the Scotch Thistle Lace Stole, Cynthia’s and Sue’s gift to me that happy day in CT. Most of the rest of last night's knitting-time was spent winding a skein of beautiful Fiesta Ballerina.

The pattern wants 550 yards of fingering yarn, to be knit on 4mm needles giving a blocked gauge of 5½ stitches per inch. The yarn seems finer than that – lace weight or below. The ball band says there are 925 yards which will give 7 stitches to the inch on size 3.75mm needles (size 5).

We lace knitters don’t worry too much about such details. I started casting on, on 5’s, after winding the 925 yards, with the thought of adding one 10-stitch pattern repeat. The needle feels uncomfortably large. I may go down a size or two, and add two or more pattern repeats.

The other big knitting news that is that Gerri has sent me Jared’s book, from St Paul, MN, out of sheer kindness. It’s on its way. I’ll report fully when it turns up. He has been blogging lately about some of the patterns, in a most enticing fashion.

Non-knit

An unconscionable number of people will be sleeping in this house in our absence the night of August 21st – cricket-lovers, mostly, who have stayed behind in England to watch a day of the final test match at the Oval and are coming to the Games at the last minute. So today I must make some beds.

The Glorious Twelfth

What a wise dispensation of Providence that hungry people come to Kirkmichael just when my garden is at its most productive. There is a glut of courgettes, a real glut. All in all, it’s been a good year – I think it was you, Angel, who said that it might turn out so, when I was sunk in gloom at the results of that spring drought.

The really exciting news, horticulturally – although it will be difficult to enthuse any readers with this one – is that I shall have some runner beans to enter in the “collection of four vegetables” class at the Games next week.

I always grow runner beans, because they look so pretty climbing up their tepee. Victorian gardeners, I have read, originally grew them for the flowers and only later discovered the beans. In England, they’re a garden staple. The books of advice tell you to keep picking even if you have to throw them away, in order to keep them coming.

There’s no danger of that in Strathardle, with our brief interval between the Last Frost of spring and the First Frost of autumn. I often get a reasonable crop in September, but so far that’s all I’ve ever achieved. This year they will be not just reasonable but abundant – and a few, down at the bottom, are ready now. That’s never happened before, so early.

I spent happy hours weeding. This is the time of year when the vegetables, if they have succeeded at all (and there’s still no salsola soda) can pretty well stand up to the weeds, and things tend to get neglected. But this year, with the responsibility for grass-cutting off my back, I have been able to keep at it. Everything looks unconscionably tidy, and I kept reflecting that the more I can keep on top of things now, the easier it will all be next spring.


You can just see the tip of the runner bean tepee, sticking up at the back above the abundant growth of mange-tout peas.

We had a nice time with family, and there’s more to come. James is planning a camping trip off into the wilderness, to a loch I can’t even find on Google Maps. Helen is in London with her three fierce boys, but will be back on Friday.

I did very little knitting, but last night and this morning, back in Edinburgh, I finished the knitting of the Child’s Cardigan. There’s plenty of tidying still to do – thank goodness I knit it in one piece to the armpits. Last night, in a flash of brilliance or idleness, or both, I decided that since I hate buttons in all their aspects, I would put on only one. So I’ve done that – one vertical buttonhole at the top. Vertical, perforce, since the band was being knit sideways. Today, insh'Allah, I'll buy a button and sew it on, and finish the tidying, and maybe even block it.

A quick, picture-less touchdown this morning – we’re off to Strathardle. We’ll be back for at least a couple of nights next week, as my husband has a hospital appt for a scan a week today.

After that it’s all systems go for the Games. At present, it looks like a near full-house. Helen's husband David may be the only absentee. I can take a complete Grandchildren picture for the sidebar, if so. I chose my menu yesterday (I am responsible for the tailgate picnic) -- simplicity is to be the note. Piles of sausages and barbecued chicken legs as usual. The three salads will be Claire Macdonald's tomato, from last Saturday's Scotsman; and a green bean and a chick-pea-and-feta one from Jamie Oliver. Lots of beer and cider and potato crisps can be taken as read.

But two out-of-the-blue disasters have hit Rachel and her family in the last five days: a burnt-out clutch which is going to be very expensive, and a diagnosis of breast cancer in her husband's family. So I am sad and worried, and edgier than ever about chicken-counting.

I spoke to James yesterday. They’re in Cheltenham, with Cathy’s family, so at least they get a bit of a head start on the long drive north on Friday.

Helen, from Strathardle, reports that there are so many courgettes that she is making soup. I have never achieved a glut, or even near-glut, before, and am pretty excited about this. The Fishwife gave me a book last year, “What Will I Do With All Those Courgettes?”, which so far I have not had real occasion to use. It’s a slim vol – Helen may not have spotted it in the cookery book shelf.

I finished the neck band for the Children’s Cardigan and picked up the stitches for the button band. I’ll have to take a textbook along to help with the buttonholes.

I’ll also take the jabot, as far as I’ve got. When the moment comes – probably not this week; they won’t want me pestering them at the weekend – I’ll thread it onto waste yarn and take it in to the Blairgowrie kiltmaker to discuss whether they can sell me a bib-and-collar and perhaps consider construction techniques, if they’re feeling chatty. At the moment I don’t see how it is to be folded back on itself to make successive layers. That may become clearer as I proceed. I would be embarrassed to go back to Kinloch Anderson to have another look.

Yes, Tamar, oddly, I have read of spray starch being used on woollen lace shawls. I can’t remember the context. That’s a possibility to keep in mind.

I suddenly feel a new sprightliness, quite unexpected – as if I could see beyond the Games to the invigorating shores of September.

We’ve heard from the Beijing Mileses. They’ve been in DC lately, but last night returned from the US to London, and will drive to Strathardle on Friday. So we’ll go up tomorrow. Vegetables! Helen and her boys are there, although they’ll leave on Friday for a brief trip to London. It’s all go around here.

Every summer I get some seed-sprouting equipment to do with the children, and every summer I fail. This year it is to be micro-plants, grown in vermiculite. We are told that Top Restaurants use them in salads for concentrated flavour. We should get there in time tomorrow to launch a tray-full with the Drake boys, and then I can start some more over the weekend with the Mileses.

I knocked off a few more lace edging repeats for the jabot yesterday, and then stiffened my sinews and got back to the Child’s Cardigan. It is now completely assembled, and a fair number of the loose ends (the stripe-knitter’s bane) have been dealt with. I’ve picked up the stitches for the neck edging and am happily ribbing.

When I get to the Adult Surprise, I’ll have to deal with loose ends as I go along. The alternative is unthinkable.

Wedding

I got some pictures yesterday. Sister Helen had done a brilliant job of assembling family: there never has been such a gathering. Her husband Roger, my brother-in-law, is distinctly short of relatives, but the other three strands that go to make up the new family were there in abundance: Theo’s mother’s relatives, who are also mine since she's my sister, and both sides of Jenni’s family.

Here are bride and groom with my first cousin Trinkie, my father's brother's daughter.

Here’s the bride with the Beijing Miles girls. Rachel, on the right, is the one for whom the Child’s Cardigan is intended. Kirsty, on the left, is the fail-safe.

Onwards.

I think I’ve got what I want for the jabot – at least, I’ve got something to be going on with. It’s the “traditional peaked shawl edging” on p. 76 of Heirloom Knitting. Sharon rates it at the second level of difficulty, but it is in fact dead easy. It’s a 10-row’er, too, so it’s possible to snatch a moment and sit down and knock out a pattern repeat.

I didn’t think when I embarked on this project that it would be a matter of knitting yards of edging, but here we are.

Needles: I was having some trouble with white-on-knitting-needle-grey yesterday, so switched to a Knit Picks needle in size 2 mm. The business ends are shiny metal – that works much better.

The yarn is Gossamer Merino, left over from the Princess. Dawn asks what yarn the Kinloch Anderson jabot was made of – cotton, I think. Something fairly stiffish. I don’t think Gossamer Merino will be itchy – and I can see that that could be a problem. The piper I consulted at the Drummond Place Garden Party in June said he had given up jabot-wearing because of itchiness. The merino may be too flabby – we’ll face that later on. I hate knitting with cotton.

Miscellaneous

Deneise wrote to point out that the Lorna’s Laces colourway “Amy’s Vintage Office” was devised by Amy Singer, not by the Curmudgeon as I had claimed. She’s absolutely right. Here’s a link to a good account of its evolution. I can’t imagine why I associated the Curmudgeon with it.

Jared is about to publish a book of patterns with Classic Elite. I don’t often buy books of patterns any more, but for this an exception must be made. The Classic Elite website suggests that international postage and packing will cost more than the book itself, so I’m going to have to wait until it is actually published and look around.

The Fall IK turned up yesterday, sooner than I dared hope. I think I’m coming to approve of Eunny as editor. I like Connie Chang Chinchio’s cardigan, and I think I might like the Every Way Wrap if I understood exactly what you’re meant to do with it.

Non-knit

No more wedding photographs yet. The young LeComptes -- Jenni is taking Theo's name -- should be back in Washington by now after their brief honeymoon, so I hope we won't have long to wait.

I spoke to Alexander yesterday, a first-rate photographer. But he said he let his son Thomas do most of the picture-taking in CT, and they’ve come home with a good range of shots of people’s shoes, and little else. He (Alexander) is happy to be reunited with his vegetables, and with Scottish weather. Plans are still fuzzy here about when I will see my own vegetables. They’re eating courgettes and digging potatoes up there, I know.