I was right, I think. Judy’s Magic Cast-On is cousin german to the cat’s-cradle provisional cast-on, which yesterday I found easy-peasy. I have made a bold start on the mitered cardigan, and am half-way around the first corner. I’ll show you tomorrow.

Thank you for that most interesting and helpful comment, Catmum. I immediately ordered “Beyond Toes”, which will have to come from the US because Amazon.co.uk doesn’t have it. [I think it is terribly clever of Amazon to be able to recognise me and factor in international postage wherever I go. I have even ordered occasionally from Amazon.fr, feeling very grown-up.]

And your comment raises another question. I found myself coming over all princess-and-pea yesterday, having to use a metal circular after months of beloved KnitPro cubics (the same as KnitPicks, I’m pretty sure). I have never had a set of interchangeable circulars. What do you think of yours? Do they fall apart? How smooth is the join?

I was all set yesterday to order a single KnitPro circular from Meadow Yarn. I hesitated for the fairly absurd reason that the pattern says I may need a different needle for the st st part, without saying whether it would have to be larger or smaller. I feel very ignorant. I didn’t even know st st and garter st tended to have different stitch gauges. I know about the difference in row gauge, of course.

But if you (and others) are enthusiastic about the set, I’ll solve the problem by going for that. Ravelry isn’t much help although there are user groups for KnitPro/Knit Picks fans, some of whom have the set; that’s an encouraging start. Individual KnitPro circulars boast of the smoothness of the join.

I’m telling this story the wrong way around. I have plunged into the mitered cardigan with a reckless disregard of size and gauge. Glover is very prescriptive – get 6 sts to the inch, or die. Now I discover that there is an entire double-page spread, 102-3, devoted to a much more EZ kind of sizing: X=W times gauge, where W is the width of the garter stitch strip. That sort of thing.

I think I will do some measuring and calculating this morning, just to see what I’ve let myself in for. This is the yarn I used for my husband’s v-neck sleeveless earlier this year. I have not only kept the swatch, but also a note of what size needle I used. I had a little bit forgotten, in all these months of socks, how wonderful madelinetosh is.

Of socks, by the way: kristieinBC has knit arother pair of Longitudinals – gorgeous. I’m going to have to attempt them one day soon.

Internet connectivity has suddenly deserted me. I must go struggle with that problem. If you’re reading this, I must have succeeded.

My husband was shaken by his low-blood-sugar experience Saturday night, but is otherwise OK.

All went according to plan yesterday, knitting-wise. The Italian socks are finished. They are made from Candace Strick's book, "Strick-ly Socks". Those clumsy-looking heels are the basic ones, precisely identical to the toes. Candace goes on to offer pages of adaptations, including gussets and things. 

And the next ones have been cast-on:

I think I can say I have mastered Judy’s Magic Cast-On. The break-through moment, for me, lay in the instruction in my “Cast On, Bind Off” book to wrap the yarns around the needles “as if for a yarn-over”. I think what I was doing wrong was grabbing at the yarns with the needles, as I concentrated on top-yarn-bottom-needle and vice versa, in a way that wound them in the wrong direction.

Whatever, I’ve got it now.

I had some trouble as I started the actual knitting, including, on one attempt, the dread purl bumps. The answer to that one seems to be EZ’s maxim, look at your knitting. Those few little stitches, clinging valiantly to their needles, must be regarded as an incipient toe, to be knit around from the outside (not back and forth).

I also had trouble with a loose stitch at the far end of the circuit, so to speak – at the point where the casting-on had begun. Maybe I should start with a slip knot instead of just laying the yarn over the needles?

It is going to be hard to abandon the new socks, now that the agony is over. That’s a truly wonderful olive-green Crazy Zauberball you see above. But I mean to stick to the plan. The mitered cardigan begins with a provisional cast-on. I intend to use the one I regard as gold standard, that cat’s cradle affair. Surely it has a mystic affinity with Judy’s Magic Cast-On and I expect it to be easy, today.

Maybe.

Democratic National Convention

My nephew Theo is in charge of practical arrangements for the Convention, as you may know. When his parents, my sister and her husband, went to see him in February, he showed them the Convention Hall with its huge television screen.

All three of them are fans of the Strathardle Highland Gathering, and Theo’s father, in particular, is an expert at the Pillow Fight. None of us entered this year – it is a fairly savage affair. You sit on a log, suspended just high enough that your feet don't touch the ground, with one hand behind your back, and swing a heavy sack at the other player until one of you falls off. Roger’s secret is to let the other man swing first, and then clobber him while he is off balance.

In the upper left-hand panel of the big screen, you can see Roger in action, under the word TONIGHT!. What you can’t see, although I am assured it was there, is the banner reading “Coming Tomorrow: Tilt-the-Bucket”. Remember that, as you watch this week.

Two new followers!

My husband had a low-blood-sugar episode in the night, for no reason either of us can think of, and isn't going to attempt Mass this morning.

I think I can say that I made a little more progress with Life yesterday – some ironing, some picture-shifting, a walk in the afternoon. And, at least tentatively, a Knitting Plan.

I have been feeling the teensiest bit tired of socks. Is it not time to knit that Dried Rose madelinetosh DK? Yesterday’s leap forward was the decision to use it, not for the Effortless, not for Vitamin D, not for that thing with the twisted front from a recent DK, but for the Mitred Cardigan in Knit One, Knit All. The one that Medrith Glover and Cully reconstructed from EZ’s sketchy notes.

We shall see. It sounds tricky, but I’ve done Round the Bend and the Adult Surprise, and endless baby ones. I love EZ’s mitres. I’ll have a go.

It begins with a wide garter stitch band which runs all the way around the body, starting at the lower edge, up the front and around the back of the neck, down the other front and around the back, finally meeting the cast-on end to which it is then grafted. Then the part in the middle is filled in with st st stitch and the sleeves somehow added.

Ravelry knitters seem happy with it. Someone said it’s not as difficult as it sounds, if you take it step by step. Someone else ran out of yarn and was perfectly happy with it as a vest. I had a wee bit of trouble finding it, by the way. “EZ mitred cardigan” produced only the Baby Surprise, but a search for “Knit One, Knit All” came up with a page of patterns and there it was, called “Mitred Cardigan”. Odd.

So last night I wound a skein of Dried Rose. Two moth breaks and one knot. It'll be all right while I'm knitting the garter stitch band, because joins can be kept at the inside edge.

I am not quite finished with the 2^nd Italian sock – about 1/3^rd of the way around with my non-tubular bind-off. I tried the first one on Hellie while I had her at the Games, and it fits fine. So tonight I will finish that, insh’Allah, and cast on the next pair of socks. That’s going to involve Judy’s Magic Cast-On again. I hope I can take a quiet half-hour in the afternoon to do it.

Then, once those socks are well started, I’ll put them in the emergency-and-waiting-room bag, where I always have a pair of socks on the go, and turn to madeleinetosh.

(I had nine of my surviving twelve grandchildren at the Games, and completely forgot to take a new “Various Grandchildren” pic for my sidebar. What an opportunity lost! I might have that many together on the shores of Loch Fyne at Christmas, and won’t let another chance go.)

Comments

Thank you for the encouragement on garlic-growing. And that is a good idea, Mary Lou, to scatter some papaver somniferum seed next year, just in case.

It’s good to be back, and I’ve missed you, too. This has got to be the year when I learn to reply to comments individually. Each one is always individually enjoyed.

I made a pretty good start on Life yesterday. In the afternoon we went to Dundas Street, to the Bourne Gallery, to see the Jock McFadyen exhibition. We recently bought a print of his. I can’t remember when we last walked to Dundas Street – it couldn’t have been all that long ago – and was struck with how weak and slow my husband seemed. How much weaker and slower than before.

Socks

I will probably finish the Italian socks today, and I find myself rather stuck. I’m ready for something new, different, wonderful. But since there has been no mental preparation, there is nothing for it but to start another pair.

Our niece liked her red socks, even if the judges didn’t. Thomas-the-Elder, who has a trained legal mind, said that if a pair of socks were judged to be the “Best Use of 100 gr of Yarn”, as they were; and if only one other competitor had entered socks (me); those socks should, logically, have come second. One sees the point, but that’s not how the judges think. They’re looking at the actual knitting.

Two years ago, on Games Day in the evening, Hellie’s lovely boyfriend Matt said that he wouldn’t mind a pair of socks. I knit him some for Christmas that year and have peered hopefully at his feet at all subsequent meetings. Here at last they are. Perhaps a bit too big.

Alexander and Ketki were wearing their husband-and-wife socks, the Van Gogh “Restaurant de la Sirene” and “Bedroom at Arles” from this year’s production.

Garden

Some oddities from this odd year:

I normally have lots of opium poppies, growing as weeds, and always allow some to mature and flower because I love them. None this year.

I’ve got some broccoli in the vegetable cage, doing all right. Usually any attempt by me at anything brassicacious is shredded by cabbage white caterpillars. None to speak of, this year.

The broad beans, pruned by deer, are producing a small, late crop. It looks to me as if a lot of flowers on their stems are not maturing into beans. That’s never happened before. Lack of pollinating insects?

On Sunday afternoon, my son-in-law Ed (one-time winner of the Webster Cup) wanted something to do. I set him to digging over and manuring the bit from which I had lifted potatoes. He found almost as many again as I had just harvested. He also cleared my future garlic patch – my perennial vegetable book says that garlic can be treated as a lift-and-replace. I then limed it. Garlic is said to like that.

He did more that afternoon than I would probably have achieved all winter.

First day of the rest of my life, and life presses. I'll say it with pictures, for today.

We took Archie to Merchiston yesterday. I liked the feel of the place, relaxed and organised. Helen is unpacking, Archie is admiring his wonderful new telephone.

The Games were good -- the weather less than perfect, but better than forecast. This is how it always begins, as the baronet marches across the bridge with drawn sword. The Once-in-Royal-David's-City moment on Games Day.

My snood took third place

But the red socks, entered in "Best Use of 100 grams of wool", were unplaced.

Here is the Webster Cup, awarded annually to the Best Light Athlete, photographed in our garden on the morning of Games Day with three previous holders, my son-in-law Ed in the middle, his son Thomas-the-Elder on the left, and his other son Joe (the 2011 winner) on the right.

Joe defended the cup. It was so close they had to run an extra race to settle it -- I don't remember that ever happening before. But Joe lost.

 
 The big news of the day, however, is that we came JOINT FIRST in Tilt-the-Bucket. You have to throw the stick through that hole in the apparatus while being pushed rapidly forward in a wheelbarrow. If you fail, you get wet because there is a bucket of water above. Alexander pushed, Joe threw.

A brief log-in before we disappear for another week.

The second Candace-Strick-toe went very well. There were fewer stitches than there should have been when I got to the point of retrieving them from the provisional cast-on, but they were easily replaced and the join looks neater than I could have hoped. Will I now have to knit another pair of Candace’ socks to perfect the technique? I suppose what a Real Knitter would do would be just to practice, with no particular end in view. Sort of like swatching.

I re-read the instructions for a k2p2 tubular bind-off. I still don’t understand them (=they still sound too complicated to tempt me to try), but I think I can conclude that there is something better than treating k2p2 exactly the same as k1p1. Never mind: the result is acceptable.

We half-watched a television programme last night about Osborne, Queen Victoria’s beloved house on the Isle of Wight. In the “family room” where royal children were said to tumble on the floor while Victoria and Albert admired them, was a spinning wheel. Did the Queen spin? Or have the present curators put in it because it looks “Victorian”?

In lieu of the pictures you might have hoped for, of weeds and grandchildren, here at least is a picture of a sock:

Wren, your comment yesterday came at just the right moment. I google’d “tubular bind-off” and discovered that there is a description of a k2p2 bind off in “Knitting Tips and Trade Secrets” which I own and which, remarkably, I was able to find quickly.

(Knitting books have reached the stage where many are piled on the floor next to the shelves which no longer have room to deploy them. It makes retrieval difficult.)

But I couldn’t understand the instructions.

I went on google’ing and found this blogger and her utterly successful jacket. She says that the k2p2 bind-off is exactly the same – she italicizes the words – as the k1p1 one. So I just did that. I am not wholly persuaded, but the result is tidy and stretchy, if not very tubular.

I then cast on for the next sock…

…and I have achieved something, perhaps not quite what was intended. But the provisional stitches, such as they are, are undoubtedly on the circular needle. Candace starts at the point where toes join the foot, rather than at the very tip of the sock – if it turns out a bit untidy, I think it will be easier to fudge, there.

My conclusions, so far, are

(a)    that if I need a real provisional cast-on my only reliable resource is the crochet one – where you crochet the stitches onto the needle, not the crochet-chain one which I have yet to master. I learned it from Candace herself, in a mitered child’s-cardigan pattern which failed at the Games one year when “Child’s Cardigan” was one of the categories. My claque was indignant, but I think they were admiring Candace’ pattern whereas the judges were looking at the knitting.

(b)   that I must master Judy’s Magic cast-on. Magic it really is.

Life

We’ll go back to Strathardle tomorrow, insh’Allah. Helen and I have conferred on the cooking of tomorrow night’s supper. Her presence and support are beyond price.

I am grateful for your comments, Tamar, Anonymous and Shandy.  I don’t think my husband’s failure to sparkle in group conversation is related to hearing. So far, although we have accumulated a fair number of the possible afflictions of old age, we have both been spared significant hearing loss. That must be a very hard one to bear.

  

I think it is more that he can’t keep up (never having been very good at it) when thoughts and ideas are ping-pong’ing about. We plan to keep away from the group festivities in the village next weekend, and dine by ourselves at home. It may make the weekend less exhausting for him.

My hair looks much better, for the moment.

Knitting

I am nearly finished with the first Italian sock – a few more rounds of ribbing.

Candace recommends a tubular bind-off. I am perfectly happy with the Surprisingly Stretchy, which in addition I can now do without consulting a text. But the purpose of this project is to learn things, so perhaps I had better try. It sounds sort of like one-handed Kitchener stitch.

The drawback is that it is done on k1,p1 ribbing, not my style for a sock. My new “Cast On, Bind Off” book agrees. So I’ll have to do a round or two of k1,p1 at the top of the sock, on top of my usual k2,p2. How will that look?

And then the immediately-following excitement will be an attempt to do a provisional cast-on using the cord of a fine, short circular as the waste yarn. It will be a noteworthy achievement if I can master that.

If both of these procedures go smoothly, I should embark on the 2^nd sock today. I mustn’t try to rush it. I mustn’t settle for the tubular bind-off if the k1,p1 rib looks silly on top of k2,p2. There’s no hurry.

I think perhaps I had better cast on a plain-vanilla, top-down pair of socks to keep in the emergency bag. I wouldn’t like to spend the night in a&e trying to do a provisional cast-on.

I heard from Knit Purl this morning, as I do from time to time, singing the praises of Olgajazzy. I should have recognised the name – she’s been in IK, and the Twist Collective. Some very nice Japanese-y things, no one of which quite makes me want to fling away the current sock and start this afternoon.

Strathardle

I didn’t take any pictures for you. I'll do better next week.

We all went to a matinee of J.M. Barrie’s “Dear Brutus” at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre on Wednesday, and enjoyed it very much. We used to go often when our children were young – 40 years ago, indeed, we saw “Dear Brutus” which I remember fondly. In those days the theatre was in a tent, and of necessity simpler and smaller than it is now. The programme included more high-brow elements then, and the audience was younger and poorer than the third millennium crowd. 

Amazon let me download the text free, so I did, and was interested to see that Pitlochry had sweetened the ending. Or is it always played like that? Perhaps in 1917, when it was first produced, too many people had lost too many sons to believe in happy endings. 

Here we successfully are, re-grouping and enjoying a brief respite from the mud. I’ll have my hair done today. No chance for a new clo.

The garden is so bad that the only thing to do is to concentrate on the few successes. I had thought the potatoes would be one of them. But foliage has begun to die – blight? And when I start digging, it turns out very few potatoes are to be found. The foliage of the Picasso's still looks good—maybe I’ll do better there.

The vegetable cage has been a distinct success – no rabbits or deer in there. I shall hope to use its protection to better effect next year. Sorrel soup continues to please, and Good King Henry has figured as saag in another curry. I still haven’t decided whether it actually adds a useful piquant note – or is it just that the spices conceal the bitterness of the vegetable? At least it gets from garden to table.

Bunching onions are looking very good, especially the ones Harriet gave me recently. I have cautiously divided a couple of the bunches. We should be in business seriously next year if the deer don’t pull them all up in the winter. The mange tout peas, all of eight inches high, have bravely come into flower. We may get a plateful after all. Usually in August I can’t keep up with them.

And there will be a late crop of broad beans.

Oddly, the parsley is ebullient. I would have thought the deer would enjoy that.

And the gooseberry bushes, in other years stripped bare by caterpillars, are looking quite cheerful. We had no crop at all this year, presumably because potential flower-buds were stripped along with leaves last year. So I entertain some hope there.

My husband’s frailty continues to be a cause of anxiety. Helen has alerted a neighbour whom we may call on for help – some comfort. I remember that my mother, perfectly alert into her 90’s, dropped out of group conversation long before then. My husband seems to be at an equivalent stage, drooping silently over the supper table but fine in one-to-one conversation.

Helen’s eldest son Archie is about to start life as a schoolboy at Merchiston, here in Edinburgh. The plan is that Helen will come back from Greece at the end of September to be here for his first exeat – when he is allowed out on leave for a long weekend. We can all go to Strathardle then.

(Her husband David, a worrier after my own heart, is afraid that Marchiston’s emphasis on rugby will make Archie’s life hell, and equally worried that Archie will love rugby and spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.)

Knitting

I took the Italian socks along, but didn’t get much done. My fingers don’t seem to work as well without a television set droning on in the corner. I have nearly reached the ribbing of the first sock. It would be nice if I could press on and get the second one finished next week, when the recipient will be with us for the Games.

Speaking of which, I am entering those red socks in the “Best Use of 100gr Wool” class, as well as the snood in the Snood class.

Here we go – although we’ll be back some time next week to touch base and regroup before the Games. I must have my hair done – can’t go to the Games looking like this – and would like a wander through M&S in search of a new shirt, if circumstances allow. And five young Ogdens and their followers will be sleeping here the night before. I must lay out beds and bedding for them.

Rachel says that her son Joe will not be defending the Webster Cup – he has been injured in some unspecified way. He and his brother Thomas, a former holder, are two of the five who will be in Edinburgh on the Friday night, so I had despaired of taking a picture of the cup with its three Ogden winners. (Rachel’s husband Ed also won it once.)

But Rachel says the cup is ours until the baronet (with drawn sword) leads the pipe band over the bridge at 12:45 on Games Day, so we will take the picture mid-morning when the Edinburgh contingent arrives, and only then go down to the field and hand it back. One of the things I must do is polish it.

Lisa, you shall have pictures of children’s entries and vegetables. We probably won’t be competing in either category this year although who knows? perhaps I will find a cornucopia of vegetables when we arrive this afternoon. “Selection of four vegetables” is one of the possible categories, and the entries aren’t in yet.

The 2007 video of the Games (beginning with the baronet and his sword and the pipe band) is still available on YouTube. We were there in vast quantity that year and did brilliantly in a number of respects, none of which appear in the video except for a brief appearance from Sam the Ram, winner of the Glenisla Shield.

Knitting

The Italian yarn is producing a very jolly little sock. You must be right about it, Anonymous (comment yesterday). I thought I bought it from a flags-of-all-the-nations selection, but it includes both grey and a dark green, neither of which figure, I think, in the Italian flag. I am very tempted to take it along. Sock-knitting is peculiarly comforting in times of stress. And its wearer will be there and I could check for size…

Until next week.

A new follower! You can't imagine how the heart leaps!

I finished the red socks – the 8^th pair this year, so we’re proceeding at the fairly leisurely pace of one-a-month. There was time off, of course, for the madelinetosh sleeveless for my husband, and for the Games-entry snood.

I’ll wash them, or at least soak them in warm water, a couple of times to ensure, if possible, that they won’t turn our niece's underwear pink.

And I started some Italian flag socks (Regia) for Rachel’s daughter Hellie, using Candace Strick’s system. As I suspected, I didn’t like snipping the Channel Island cast-on out stitch by stitch. Not one bit. The result is satisfactory enough, after a bit of fudging, but the process was not satisfying.

I had a look at my new “Cast On Bind Off” book, mentioned here recently (Leslie Ann Bestor, Storey Publishing, spiral-bound). She includes the standard provisional cast-on’s, of course – with the sensational idea (I think) of using the cable of a circular needle as the “waste yarn” in that cast-on that is sort of like a cat’s cradle.

It’s also sort of like Judy’s Magic Cast-On, in fact, except that only one needle is involved – a similar up-down movement, first one yarn and then the other. I have done it successfully once, in the distant past. It was fun. Now I am determined to do it again. I have a very short, fine-gauge circular which will be perfect for the purpose. If I can master this one, I will have made a great leap forward.

Essentially what Candace has done here is start at the point where toes join foot, with a provisional cast-on of half the final number of stitches. You then knit down, decreasing as you go, to the point of the sock, and then back up again, increasing by picking up a stitch at the end of each row from the initial wedge, forming a nice little pocket. Then re-claim the provisional stitches and on you go.

(I can’t quite visualise it myself, even though I did it yesterday. Three-dimensional geometry is where mathematics and I parted company.)

It’s a good deal less fiddly – except for the Channel-Island-cast-on business – than other toe-up’s. Even when a Turkish cast-on, or a Judy’s Magic if I’m lucky, has been executed successfully, the succeeding few rounds are pretty agonising.

Real Life

I got most of the books into the dining-room bookcase yesterday. They are mostly mine, a motley collection from the enthusiasms of my middle years, a bit disconcerting now. Today’s ambition is to do a bit of hoovering and then replace the three rugs, between dining-room door and front door, which were removed to facilitate the tramping back and forth of workmen.

Alexander turned up on the doorstep yesterday, a totally unexpected treat. He had come to Edinburgh to see an old friend and had an hour to spare. We’ll see him next at the Games.

Our plan is to go to Strathardle tomorrow – Helen and family will join us on Thursday. We need to be there in advance to get the beds made. Ten days ago, we and the Beijing Mileses left on the same morning, stripping the beds as we went.

Thanks, guys! Of course I was watching tennis yesterday, and I can tell you that k2p2 rib is a pretty difficult stitch to execute while Murray is playing Federer.

I am sure Mr Murray would have preferred it to happen a month ago, and win him the Wimbledon trophy. But winning an Olympic gold medal is a good deal better than not winning an Olympic gold medal, and defeating Mr Djokovic and Mr Federer in successive matches without losing a set is something, too. Surely Murray will win one of the big titles? But it has to be soon – he is 25 and the clock is ticking.

I learned in my on-line magazine reading this morning that the American Olympic Committee pays $25,000 for a gold, and pro rata for other medals. Presumably many other nations do the same. And here I thought the one thing to be said for this whole rather tedious business was that the athletes were competing for glory (and future sponsorship money), not for cash on the barrel-head.

In 1948 my father was Sports Editor of the Associated Press. He met the woman for whom he left us, while he was covering the Olympics in London that year. She was married, too. I assumed when I was young that she was already divorced when she and my father met, but I don’t know that. Her husband may have been equally betrayed. She and my father lived happilyeverafter for many years.

So I start out with a bias against the London Olympics.

Little to report, as far as actual knitting is concerned. The red socks are now within a few rounds of completion – due less to tennis-knitting than to subsequent peaceful television-watching.  I hope to cast on for Candace Strick’s socks today.

Dining-room: the bookcase has all its shelves, and I think it has been shored up from below to my husband’s satisfaction, although I am not quite sure about that. He is always very cross during any such operation – it occurred to me years ago that that ensures a flow of adrenalin. One does not err through inattention while hanging a picture or shoring up a bookcase with my husband. I hope today to start filling it with books.

Miscellaneous: while they were in Strathardle recently, the Beijing Mileses went camping in Glenderby (pronounced "Glen-DAR-by"). There is a ruined bothy there, perhaps an hour’s walk from our village. They all went up for a campfire supper, then Cathy and Alistair came home to sleep in beds, the cowards, while James and the girls remained.

The elder daughter, Rachel-the-Younger, is a keen and skilful photographer. She was eager to have a chance to photograph deer, and succeeded. I downloaded this from her Facebook page just now: 

Two points of interest.

Notice the albino deer. I have never seen such a thing.

Notice the quantity. I have not been up Glenderby myself for a good many years, but when I used to go, I never saw deer in anything like that number. Half a dozen would have been a lot, in my day. What chance have my vegetables got? 

We moved the bookcase back into the dining room yesterday – there is only one. We are well advanced with bracing it from beneath, for levelness and security; and replacing the shelves. Neither task entirely easy, both underlining yet again how weak we have become.

Still, with a favouring wind, that job may be finished today and I may be able to start replacing the books – which will have the highly-desirable result of reducing the number of boxes piled elsewhere in the house.

Rachel phoned last night. She’s having a wonderful time in Olympic London. It does sound as if the whole thing was, after all, rather well organised.

She was making sure I knew that five young people – three of them her children – will be here in Drummond Place the night before the Games, having their annual quick look at the Festival. Two of them, Joe and Thomas, have, in their day, won the Dan Webster Cup for the Best Light Athlete. Rachel’s husband Ed won it once, too, and I had hoped to take a picture of all three of them with the cup before handing it back to the organisers on Games Day.

Joe is the current holder. Thomas wasn’t at the Games last year so the picture couldn’t be taken then.

It looks as if our only hope for that picture is for Joe to win it again.

Knitting

I am well advanced with the final ribbing. I broke one of my beloved Cubic needles last night. Never, never, ever leave knitting on the floor. When will I learn?

I mentioned that I have been buying knitting books. One of them is Arne and Carlos’ “Knitted Dolls”. I can’t imagine knitting a doll. But a year ago, would I have imagined knitting a Christmas tree ornament? I love Arne and Carlos, that’s the thing. Surely their next book will be Scandinavian sweaters. That’s the one we’re waiting for.

I’ve also got “Cast on Bind Off” which seems to have lots of good things, including some good pages on Judy’s Magic Cast-On.

Sue, I did go back to the article in Knitty the last time I was struggling. It didn’t click. What happens with me again and again is that I think I’m sailing along, wrapping the top yarn around the bottom needle and vice versa, getting up a nice rhythm – and then discover that the two needles are unattached to each other. I have cast on a hole. And I still don’t know what I do differently, when I finally get it right. This needs more work.

The dining room furniture has been successfully retrieved. It was a stressful morning. The furniture-store men were not particularly skilled or respectful furniture-handlers. I feared both for the objects and for my husband’s temper. We had a bad passage about getting the carpet reasonably straight – it is ferociously heavy; my husband and I couldn’t have managed on our own, and anyway it couldn’t be done once the table was in the room.

Trampling on the uneven parts was not the way to set about things, as my husband told them with some asperity.

They declined to attempt to put the mirror back in place, and I was very happy to let them off. It is fragile. We have contracted with a nice man to restore the top of the sideboard, badly water damaged, and two chairs, likewise. He is tall and strong and pleasant and not at all limp-wristed and will have to bring someone with him to get the sideboard. I figure they can put the mirror up and add it to the bill.

As soon as yesterday’s men were out the door, I rang up the restorer. He is on holiday for the next fortnight. That means he will be back at work the week of the Games. So it drags on.

We got some other little things done yesterday, too – sending  a cheque to the man who cuts the grass for us in Strathardle and a birthday card to someone else; requesting repeat prescriptions to get us through August; getting some pages photocopied from the 14^th edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Better than some days.

Knitting

Here is a picture from the Scotsman I have been meaning to show you. From Shetland.

AnnP, yes, I’ve done a couple of Turkish cast-ons, when I started toe-up knitting and failed at my first attempt with Judy’s Magic. Someone famous – Fleegle? – says that’s the one she uses all the time. It’s slightly loose, compared to Judy’s, but otherwise simple and good. I think I would classify Judy’s Magic as a brilliant variation of it.

I was horrified, looking at my notes just now, to see that I haven’t kept a complete record of which cast-on and which heel were employed for which sock, among the ones I have done this year. I know which of each I’ve done, but haven’t entirely recorded which socks they were employed in. Careless.

I should reach the final ribbing of the current pair today. Next will be Candace Strick’s “revolutionary” socks, for another small-footed grandchild. I’ve got to return to Judy’s Magic Cast-On until I have thoroughly mastered it. I’m thinking of knitting my husband a pair of toe-ups, trying them as we go the way the books suggest, to see if  I can achieve socks for him that really fit. This sock-knitting project looks endless.

This morning our dining room furniture is due to come back from storage. It’s lovely to have the room like this, all clean and empty. I am reluctant to resume responsibility for all those things.

Both VK and IK turned up in yesterday’s post. I don’t think anything stirs the blood in either, although I need to spend more time with them.

I liked Mary Kaiser’s article in IK. I had a hopeful look at her blog but she writes rarely and briefly. She says in the article that she thought of having a Year of Old Shale but then remembered a tax collector in Flaubert “whose hobby is churning out thousands of napkin rings in his little home workshop ‘in one of those states of utter bliss…which divert the mind with easy challenges and gratify it with the most utter and complete success.’”

So Kaiser eschewed the too-easy challenge.

And I thought, oh dear, what about me and all these socks? But then I cheered up. Judy’s Magic Cast-On, at the very least, is not an easy challenge. And I have no doubt that (unlike thousands of napkin rings) people really do like socks. It’s not just that they wear them when I am around – they do that, and they know I like to see it. But they also bring them to me from time to time for darning – you can’t fake that.

I am progressing nicely up the leg of the second sock of the current pair.

Franklin has an article in VK about knitting resources in Iceland. Interesting, but I’m sorry he didn’t include the picture he posted in his blog, of the yarn section in the supermarket.

Termessos

Thank you for the link to the discovery of the Hittite statue in SE Turkey, Lisa. What a lot of interesting things there are in the world! I especially love the remains of the later Roman Empire which litter the west and south coasts of Turkey, all rather irrelevant to the Turks who came from further east. Rose Macaulay’s “The Towers of Trebizond” is the book to read, if you haven’t.

I Google’d her just now, to check the spelling, and found her wearing this rather choice sweater.

I’ve done the second Sweet Tomato Heel, and very nice it is.

The heel consists of three wedges, stacked on top of each other. Each is done, knitting back and forth, by stopping two stitches short of where you stopped last time, turning, slipping the first stitch, and knitting or purling back. No tedious wrapping.

When you come to knit across the whole row, the stitches will present themselves in little bunches of two. One of the two you just knit; for the other, you lift the stitch from the row below onto the left-hand needle, and knit it together with the stitch already there.

Watching the video again yesterday, I finally made explicit to myself the fact that the stitch on which you perform the operation just described, is the one that was slipped. I don’t think Cat Bordhi ever says so, in so many words. Her video suffers a bit from cuteness, talking of mother stitches and daughter stitches and horseback-riding. Her attempt to teach me Judy’s Magic Cast-On had the same fault – never mind “tick tock”, I need to knew exactly how the yarns wrap around the needles.

Which is not to detract in the slightest from the brilliance of the Sweet Tomato Heel.

So I’ve done my best one yet. I had failed to write down, however, the numbers which I deemed to be two-thirds and one-third of 56 on the first sock; or how many stitches I left undone in the middle of the wedge. So this heel is slightly different, I feel, from its friend. Not a fatal error.

I have been buying knitting books as if they were hog futures, and I should tell you about them, but instead I will write about

Termessos.

My husband’s sister – C., who died last year – and I went to Turkey together, oh, perhaps 30 years ago. Part of the holiday took place on the south coast. Excursions were offered, including one to Termessos, but no one was interested except me. So the only way to get there would have been to hire a car and driver. The exchange was absurdly in our favour in those days – it would have cost very little. But C. didn’t want to go. She said she’d go along, but would insist on paying half.

An Offer I Couldn’t Accept, as she knew. (We were better off than she was.)

So I have never been there. But just lately, Greek Helen and her family have been touring western Turkey. Go to Termessos, I kept telling them. I recently had this email from her:

 "I never made it. Something terrible had happened to my back and I could scarcely move, Fergus was fraught with exhaustion and Archie refused to move, so David and Mungo went alone. They said it was like coming across an Inca city in the jungle. Astonishing and silent. Next time I'll go on a stretcher if need be."

Here is a picture of Mungo in Termessos:

It is wonderful to know that it is as wonderful as I have always imagined, and that it still doesn’t have a car park full of tour busses.

We’ve got on dining room back. I’ll show you tomorrow.

The papering of the dining room went well yesterday – will they actually finish today? The paper is somewhat understated compared to our expectations, but it looks fine, and goes well with the old paper at the points where they abut. See yesterday’s pic.

And I’m ready to start the next sweet tomato heel. I watched the video again this morning, which seemed a slow way of acquiring information by now but was perhaps useful. I should have these socks finished to give to our niece when we see her at the Games.

My husband had a podiatry appt yesterday. I took the current sock along, of course, for my waiting time, and also Candace Strick’s book. I’m not entirely looking forward to attempting her system – to begin with, the cast-on (Channel Island) is not what I would call “provisional” in that it can’t be unzipped but must be snipped and picked out stitch by stitch. But it is no use buying a book and then complaining about it before I even try.

I also paid my first visit to the new local LYS, Kathy’s Knits. I liked what I saw. She is concentrating on Scottish yarns. I hadn’t even known that wool was spun at New Lanark. Kathy has also got Jeanette Sloan’s yarns, she who used to have her own shop in Bruntsfield and now writes for Knitting magazine.

And I left without buying anything, without feel embarrassed. Do drop in if you get a chance.

Another thing I found out about yesterday (from The Knitter) is Shetland Wool Week. One to dream about. Kate Davies is going to be there.

This is beginning to sound like one of those chatty advertising columns (I love them!) in the local free newspaper. 

All went well yesterday. The paint on the dining room woodwork is now definitely grey (as wanted), not blue. It’s lighter than the old paint, but appears to be the same shade (if I’ve got my terms right). Today we should see some paper on the walls. Is the end in sight?

Our flat, at some point in the past, expanded to take in two rooms and a bathroom from next door. One end of our present dining room was partitioned off, to make a way through. (That's the door to the dining room, on the left, half-way along.) The one time we voluntarily embarked on decoration for that room, we treated the passage as part of the room, as I think one must. So the old paint and the old wallpaper are still there. I have no memory at all of the horrors which must have been involved in moving those books.

This picture is wholly misleading, except for the layout. The old paint, to the right, is in real life appreciably darker than the new paint, to the left. Goodness, how lucky we are to live in this house.

Strathardle

Thank you for your comments. Greenmtngirl, yours in particular crystallised thought. Of course we must keep on going there, as long as we physically can. Energetic and resourceful Helen will be here soon. She can think of stratagems. What we lack (and once had, until death intervened) is a close and reliable friend nearby who can be summoned in a real emergency. Our house is out of sight of any other, although not all that remote. The footpath along the burn past our garden seems to be less and less used.

Knitting

Here is the first of the current pair of socks. Is it not truly zauberlich, the way the yarn arranges the dark bits to coincide with toe, heel, and ribbing? Needless to say, the same thing isn’t happening on the second sock, and probably wouldn’t have even if I had wound on to a dark bit to start with (since Zauberballs don’t repeat).

Thank you for your help with the Magic Cast-On. I am particularly interested by your comment, Pamela, and will certainly make my next attempt sitting at a table. But not moving the left hand? We shall see. The videos all go on and on about top-needle-bottom-yarn, and vice versa. Again and again I thought I was doing that, with great style – only to find that the top and bottom needles were completely unconnected with each other.

My problem was (is) a failure to understand how the yarns lock together.

Catmum, I think what I did this time – when I had finally succeeded in casting on – was to knit into the back of the stitches on the first needle. That’s a small problem, compared to the basic one. I’ll crack it eventually.

FiberQat, I will remember – how could I forgot? – your offer that I skype with Judy Becker. Me? That will remain the ultimate threat, and promise.

Next, however, I’m going to turn to Candace Strick and “Strick-ly Socks”. Perhaps the Italian flag, yarn-wise, for Hellie Ogden, Rachel’s daughter?

The decorators are here.

I am grateful for your messages – I’ve missed you too.

Thank you for the suggestions about managing life in Strathardle. We’re due for a routine hospital appt in August and I can discuss some of them – including the blood sugar monitor you mention, Kristie. James has made some notes for us, too (he is a Type I diabetic himself).

So here we are back in the real world  = grappling with the dining room. The first of the decorators has already presented himself on the doorstep.

But I promised some pictures. Here is a summer pudding in posse

in fieri

And in esse.

(That middle phrase is a coinage of my own, meant to mean, by analogy with the other two, “in the process of becoming”. Notice the weight on top of the bowl.)

Every year on Games Weekend I take pictures of grandchildren with the trees we have planted down the commonty, each tree associated in one way or another with one of the four families. Since the Beijing Mileses weren’t going to be here on Games Day, I took this one in advance:

The tree – I must have mentioned this before – is a metasequoia glyptostroboides. One of those tales of a fossil described in a learned article, and after WWII when such things became again widely circulated, the Chinese said, oh, yes, we’ve got one of those at the bottom of the garden.

Our one was planted to commemorate James’ and Cathy’s wedding and struggled at first for being planted on a slope. It is a water-loving tree, and our soil is basically very sandy, and there were a couple of Sicilian summers in its early years. All seems to be well, now, and it is at last taller than the children.

Knitting

Here is Alexander, trying on his Bedroom at Arles socks.

I finished the first sock last night, of the current pair I am knitting for our niece,  and have succeeded in casting on (Judy’s Magic) the second. It was a titanic struggle.

I’ll have to carry on with this. I don’t understand what I did right. And I didn’t do it entirely right, at that –- there is a little row of purl bumps. Did I not execute the turn at the end properly?

I watched several videos as I struggled, nearly in tears. (I don’t have time for this.) Usually, that is the solution that makes all clear. Not this time. In the end, it was Wendy Johnson’s “Socks from the Toe Up” that did the trick, as I think was the case with the first sock. But what did I do differently, that time, to make the top and bottom stitches lock together? Perhaps the solution will be to take an afternoon, like Kristie – but where am I to get one of those? – and cast on the Longitudinal socks from Knitty.

Safely back.

Little gardening got done, less knitting. We had a good time. The weather was fairly kind, considering what 2012 has been up to so far. St Swithin is trying.

My vegetables appeared worse than ever – the deer had been back. Their pretty legs, sinking into soft soil, make footprints which the most obtuse naturalist could not confuse with slugs or rabbits. They have even eaten the growing tops off the autumn raspberries.

By the end, I felt a bit better. If the weather stays clement and the deer stay away – two major suppositions – the mange-tout peas might manage a late crop. Alexander and his family came over last weekend, to see James and his family. Alexander says my vegetables look better than his (hard to believe) and that he is ready to give up and just grow fruit.

I am going to stick to my plan of perennial vegetables. Jerusalem artichokes (the gift of the Fishwife, now in their third season), Good King Henry (repulsive alike to slugs, rabbits, deer, and people), and sorrel are doing fine. Harriet’s gift of Welsh onions and garlic chives have settled in happily. I planted the Babington leeks she gave me (sources vary as to how many “B’s”) in a large flower pot so that I can keep a close maternal eye on their early stages.

And the summer pudding bush produced an astonishing crop. I had netted it very carefully, pegging the netting down all around. We must have picked close to six pounds of berries. The pudding was delicious, and I have frozen more than enough to make another one for Helen’s family. The white current bushes, on the other hand, which birds have previously ignored, were nearly stripped before I got to them. They’ll have to be netted next year.

Good King Henry made another appearance as “saag” in a curry, and again acquitted itself well. The potatoes look fine. The vegetable cage has resisted attack.

But I am increasingly anxious about the prospect of being there alone with my husband. He is nearly 87; no joke. We had a low-blood-sugar episode which was almost trivial because James was there. Next month we’ll have Helen. But after that…

Knitting

I gave Alexander his Bedroom at Arles socks. Ketki was wearing her Restaurant de la Sirene ones. I knit a few long rows of the Japenese shirt.

Here, I am binding off the first of our niece’s socks. I find I can (I think) do the Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off without looking it up again. So today I’ll have to do another Magic Cast-On.

Pictures of many of the excitements just mentioned will be on view soon.