Oh, dear – May. Here it is. I love it so much that I’m sorry to see it come. I’m far happier looking forward to it.  Although C. rightly points out that in a few days we can start seriously counting down to our 2020 cruise, which sets sail in early May next year.

Andrew and Andrea today, with the happy news that they now have enough patronage that he has given up his day job. The main interview was with Jillian Moreno, all about wool and its qualities and very interesting. At the end we had perhaps half-an-hour from this year’s EYF and I nearly wept. Probably never again, for me. It was almost too much for my strength this year, and next time – if there is one -- I’ll be nearly 88. Clearly the gap will be a big disappointment, too, for many of the exhibitors.

I have a small, private sorrow about that gap. I met one of you in the early-morning queue to get in, two years ago. She recognised me by a clue I had advertised here on the blog. She lives on Loch Fyne, not all that far from Alexander and Ketki. Last year we met by arrangement and had a sandwich lunch together,

This year, we had planned to go out for a proper lunch of serious soup in a restaurant she knew. We had to cancel because of bad news. But then we had better news, and rescheduled for 2020. Alas! it is not to be.

On a more cheerful note, I have made good progress with the scarf, and even wondered if I would know the pattern well enough by then to take it along to Lerwick. I think not – it will never be entirely suitable for knitting in company with strangers, because of having to pay attention, and it’s bulky and will become increasingly so. I’ll stick with the usual travel socks.

But how lucky I am to have hit on so suitable a yarn as I tottered feebly about the EYF marketplace!

I found a message from KD today in my Promotions file. A lot of it was about her Pabaigh pattern – a tee with a funnel neck, in Millarochy Tweed. What about just knitting that, with the stripes in st st? But, JennyS, I think my heart is with you – another Dathan hap, and it will be completely different and equally wonderful.

Compared to recent excitement – nothing.

Here’s Thomas’ scarf, so far:

You will see that I have allowed myself one extra column, beyond the central one, in the knitting of the Cup. That’s because I thought it would look better that way, and because, although we didn’t win, we left them chastened.

The question is, how badly is the Calcutta Cup bit going to bulge out, once the cables start pulling in? Time will tell. It’s more or less all right so far. I’m afraid I don’t entirely understand Gaughan’s “Stocking Stitch Equivalent” (SSE) scale, but however it works, cables are going to be narrower than st st.

Reading & Life

“North and South” is an excellent idea. It has been a very long time since I read (and enjoyed) it, and I’m pretty sure I’ve only read it once. I spent some time today with my new thriller, which is good enough to keep me reading, at least. Then I must certainly finish “No Name”. If I can finish “Daniel Deronda”, I can finish anything.

Archie and I planted some nicely chitted potatoes in a bag. There are two more bags to do, but it’s a rather tedious task, and not entirely straightforward;  just as well, therefore, to break it up.

What a week for knitting news! (at least, if you count today, improperly, as Seven rather than One).

There’s a blog post up from Kate Davies herself. She has had a tough time, and isn’t well yet. I think I had assumed – I’ve forgotten the details – that it was some unpleasantness on social media connected with racism in knitting which drove her to withdraw from the public eye. That may have been a factor, but it certainly wasn’t the whole story. (Needless I hope to say, she is not and never has been a racist.)

She says she’s getting better. We can only hope so. She’s still knitting and still walking.

I forgot to mention yesterday that there’s a new colour available of her Millarochy tweed yarn – a beautiful primrose yellow. Yellow had been rather conspicuously missing from the palate. I love my Dathan hap so much I am thinking a bit about knitting a pullover. I still don’t quite like the shape of the KD one, however. Maybe another hap, with some yellow in it.

As for my own knitting, I am now well advanced with the date and the half-Calcutta-Cup on Thomas M’s scarf. I have the same sense of surprise that happens every time I knit letters or numbers – can I express this idea properly? The knitting itself is utterly unrhythmical and seems senseless, but what emerges makes amazing sense.

Here’s the swatch:

The first third doesn’t count. That’s where I assumed, quite wrongly, that after the first cross-over everything would revert to the k2 p2 of the first row of its own accord.

Reading

I’m progressing well with Wilkie Collins’ “No Name”, although there’s still an awful long way to go. I'm afraid I have succumbed to the latest Simon Beckett, however -- "The Smell of Death". It's very well reviewed, and starts well, with a minimum of maggots.

Cookery

Mary Lou, I don’t trust myself as an arbiter of taste since I have lost my sense of smell – but I think you’ll be alright with those anchovies in that lamb stew (see yesterday). They sort of melt into the oil and contribute only saltiness.

The NHS in its new spirit of openness has sent me a three page report on my visit to a Doctor for the Elderly a couple of weeks ago, It seems a fair report of what I said. The doctor’s only conclusion is that less cider would be a good idea. Or none at all. Towards the end it says “She is 85 although she does look much younger than her age”. Not just “younger” – “much younger”.

It quite made my day.

Recovering from my Italian lesson always takes a while. Next week will be tricky, as we have moved the lesson to Friday morning because Rachel and Ed will be arriving for the weekend on Friday evening. (It is another holiday weekend. They come thick and fast, this time of year.) And my Personal Trainer comes on Friday morning, late. And I want a warming supper to be ready when the travellers arrive. (Gennaro Contaldo’s Classic Lamb Stew) I hope it will all work out.

But I have done no knitting yet today. The conclusion of the Italian lesson always leaves me feeling that I have the whole world to play with, and all the time I need for everything – and so I do nothing. That is the attitude that brings me to Friday evening with no Italian done.

There have been more posts in the hornet’s-nest of a thread I started in the EYF Ravelry group. Thank you, profoundly, to those of you who posted in my defence.

Tired, tired.

Nothing much has happened today, except that I had a heart scan. “Nothing to worry about, in there,” he said, but by the time I had got there, and got back, and disarranged my simple meals, and…. I was prostrate. No Italian homework tonight, and I think I already know how to say “I’m sorry, I haven’t done my homework.” Maybe I’ll get up at 6 tomorrow. The Skype lesson is at 8.

EYF

When I heard the news, I rushed off to Ravelry and started a new thread and said what I said here yesterday. But I must have said it wrong, for a moderator has come down on me hard, on the assumption that I don’t know how much work Jo and Mica have put into it.

I’ve never been to an event so well-organised. That obviously isn’t easy. I am sorry to have implied otherwise.

However, my point here is that the EYF is a brilliant success, not only in the world of knitting but also in Edinburgh and beyond that, in Scottish tourism (although I suspect they don’t appreciate it). And I would like to see it put on a firm footing. Every-other-year would be fine. But not-next-year-because-we’re-exhausted, although absolutely understandable, is not fine. I feel there must be some way forward involving, perhaps,  more staff and a more formal structure.

(My thread in the Ravelry EYF group is called “EYF 2020” if you want to go look, There’s not much there.)

Otherwise, not much knitting. I have been worrying about the shape of my scarf. I started with k2, p2 rib, and obviously it will expand a bit as I move into the ss rows with the “2019” and the half-Calcutta Cup. Gaughan has a most ingenious “SSE” measure with each of her patterns, meaning “stocking stitch equivalent”. I am sure that if I were a designer, it would be invaluable, but as it is, I don’t quite grasp the mathematics.

But I find myself uncharacteristically relaxed. If the current attempt bulges in and out in an unseemly way, it will just have to be reclassified as Swatch No. Two.

Well, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. There’s not going to be an EYF next year. Jo and Mica are exhausted (understandably) and want some time off.

I think it’s a mistake to stop when you’re on a roll. This might be the moment to think out a sustainable plan for the future, including staff to take some of the weight from their shoulders. Or the moment to sell out to Vogue, who knows? But no EYF!!!!!!!

Gardening

The baby strawberry plants I mentioned yesterday turned up this morning bright and early. Archie came somewhat later, and we got them planted. I’m very pleased with them:

The big pot on the right contains a very small apple tree, with a single burst of flower. In the back row is a pot of salad leaves (nothing above ground yet) and a clematis which turned up on the doorstep one day like a stray kitten.

That leaves only the mint pot to do – I’ve ordered new mint, and mean to turn the pot out altogether and start again. And there are still the potatoes to plant. We’ll have to go back to Homebase for another bag of compost. I hope to get it all done before setting sail for Lerwick.

Knitting

Thank you very much indeed for help and advice. I have gone with the wider scarf. Weavinfool, the scarf is knit flat, with a pattern which Gaughan recommends as looking good on both sides (and she’s right). Yes, I could just widen the edging, but I think it will look neater with a narrow one. I visualise this as a big cosy scarf which a young man might wrap twice around his neck and wear instead of a coat, at least to rugby matches when it isn’t actually snowing.

I should start on the intarsia part of the design tomorrow. Charting numbers is easy these days – they’re all on-line. And for the cup, I can just use half of an image I have used before. Recently! at that.

The weather is deteriorating, as forecast. I've ordered some strawberry plants for my strawberry pot -- they are said to have pretty little double red flowers, as well as strawberries, The nursery says they're on the way. I'll have to plant them myself -- not a good idea to keep them until Archie reappears next week,

I’ve been having a great time with Gaughan’s Pattern 100. Goodness, she’s clever. It’s called “Distant Share Lattice” which doesn’t tell us much. It turns out that the rows without cables, the ones in which you knit-the-knits and purl-the-purls, are very easy. At first I thought I might have to write out the row in explicit knits and purls. Then I grasped that the rhythm is always 2-2-2-1. As it might be, k2 p2 k2 k1, with the other side in reverse.

Sort of like doing the rumba.

I’ve finished the swatch. I’ll photograph it the next time we get some strong sunlight. It doesn’t show up tremendously well, which I think may be a plus.

I’ve also charted “2019” and a half-Calcutta Cup. The only remaining problem is, how wide to make the scarf. I think my swatch looks a bit narrow. Adding one more repeat, 14 stitches, produces a number of stitches which fits the chart perfectly. But is the scarf now too wide? It would be perfectly possible to knit the narrower version with the Cup and the date above and below each other, instead of side by side.

I’ll let that one rest overnight.

The yarn is called  “Croft”. I bought it from Jamieson & Smith at the EYF, but the label doesn't suggest that it's exclusive to them. It's Shetland Island wool, spun in Yorkshire. It’s lovely. What will happen to that and thousands of other business arrangements when Ms Sturgeon gets her way on independence, and we have another border to worry about?

Reading

I’m moving forward in Wilkie Collins’ “No Name” and continuing to enjoy it.

I’ve been feeling a bit flat today. Missing the structure of Lent, perhaps. The weather has been good, but not great. Apple blossom in Drummond Place, as promised, but you may have to peer a bit:

I’ve started knitting a swatch for Thomas’ Calcutta Cup scarf, and it’s a good thing I did. All is not straightforward.

The pattern starts off, as many a cable before it, with a few rows of k2, p2. There’s a slightly unexpected p1 at the beginning and end of the row, but hey! ho! that’s what designers throw in.

Then one gets to the first cable row – and it begins by slipping four stitches onto a cable needle. That means, obviously, that the k2, p2 ribs are broken. OK, I can handle that. If one follows the row carefully across, it comes out right.

The following row, however, says to knit the knits and purl the purls. One has heard that before. The yarn is a dark blue, for Scotland. It’s not entirely easy for aged eyes to see what’s what, especially where the stitches are tortured into cables. But I can assure you that simply knitting that next row the way it was knitted before, won’t work. I’ll return to the problem tomorrow, with fresher eyes, and glad (for once) that this is only a swatch.

Isn’t knitting fun!!

Reading

I finished “Cousin Henry”. It resembles “Lady Anna” in that there is a central and not uninteresting problem, un-alleviated by distractions. And the characters involved in the problem, are not all that nice. Whereas in HKHWR, the central problem is equally burdensome and the characters involved in it, equally unappetising – but the whole is lifted by a lot of subsidiary characters with lots of interesting problems and amours.

I, too, have started “No Name” (Wilkie Collins), which starts brilliantly. Mary Lou, I was one degree stingier than you were, and got it for free as a Penguin Classic. So far, so good – no coal miners wandering about with candies in their hats, as in “Daniel Deronda”. And, quite apart from the transcription, the book begins splendidly: lively characters, well delineated.

I’m awfully glad to hear about your asparagus. I have now made hollandaise sauce three times to pour over English asparagus from the supermarket, so far without disaster. It’s no wonder I haven’t lost any weight to speak of, in Lent.

The weather here has been sublime, a rare coincidence with a major holiday. (The English take Easter tremendously seriously, although not particularly religiously. It’s the first big bank holiday break after the long winter. Scotland doesn’t get quite so excited about it.) Archie and I got some gardening done on the front step this morning – a “patio courgette” sown, and some lettuce, and the quince tree manured. Slower and harder work than it sounds. And the sun was warm on my shoulders.

And it’s apple blossom time in Drummond Place. I meant to take some pictures for you – hope to do it tomorrow.

I had a very pleasant Easter, too, yesterday, with Helen and Archie and Fergus and a seriously delicious free-range chicken. I can’t easily figure out how to enable the Greek alphabet in order to show you the traditional Easter greeting which Helen and I exchanged. Except that the Greek Easter is still nearly a week away.

It was the Queen’s birthday yesterday. She’s 93. My husband, had he lived, would have been 94 in November.

I’ve finished knitting the jumper-weight edging for my Shetland hap class, and very much prefer it to my first attempt in lace-weight. I don’t know whether to bind it off or not. For the moment I will lay such thoughts aside and get started on a swatch for Thomas Miles’ Calcutta Cup ’19 scarf. It will be the first time (and almost certainly the last) in which I have been called on for Calcutta Cup knitting in an odd-numbered year.

Reading

I’ve whizzed through a thriller recommended by the Financial Times: Simon Beckett, “The Chemistry of Death”. Good, but I don’t think I’ll go on with him. Too many maggots. I must get back to “Cousin Henry” and to thinking about Wilkie Collins.

Not much tonight. Lent is over. This is the day, under the old dispensation, when Evelyn Waugh would walk happily about smoking his first cigar. Happy Easter, Happy Passover, happy pleasant weekend to all, as appropriate.

Mary Lou (and others interested), the note from Sharon Miller referred to yesterday is (I think) the footnote on page 36 of Heirloom Knitting, in which she says that “with these finer yarns [cobweb-weight and lace-weight] both these decreases [/ and \] could be simply and traditionally worked as ‘knit 2 together’, without affecting the finished appearance after dressing.”

So I am not at liberty to substitute SSK for 2tog, knitting as I am with jumper-weight. I’m nearly finished, and continue to like the look of things.

The weather has suddenly turned wonderful, just in time for the Easter weekend. La Primavera, quando Flora da fiori adorna il mondo.

Laura – in her comment, Wednesday -- has found an archive containing Franklin’s “Ten Knitters”. That was clever of her, and a most useful resource. It’s still every bit as good as it used to be.

I did re-knit the lace edging in jumper-weight – at least, I am well along with doing so. I like it much better this way. The needles I have been using, for both attempts, are making rather heavy weather of k2tog. I might have a look at Sharon Miller’s Etsy page to see what she sells for lace knitting.

One of the big surprises in the history of my discovery of knitting, was Sharon’s remark, in the magisterial “Heirloom Knitting”, that directional decreases don't matter in garter stitch. Or was it, in lace knitting generally? That ought to mean that I could be using ssk all along, and it might be easier. I’ll try.

Reading

I’m not much enjoying “Cousin Henry” because none of the characters are very nice, not even the heroine who is sought in marriage by a young clergyman. At least it’s not very long.

I’m not sure, now that we get down to the knitty gritty, that I haven’t read “The Moonstone” after all. As bedtime reading. We kept a list (with a few gaps) of our bedtime books, extending over many decades. I might have a look. The order is completely haphazard. There seems to be plenty more Collins for me to read anyway, although there’s probably a good reason why the famous two are famous.

(In many ways, our most successful bedtime book of all time was “Ulysses”. I was very dubious when my husband proposed it. But it turns out that it’s absolutely meant to be read out loud.)

I think I’ve done enough Italian homework, for once, that I can allow myself an early night.

Cat, I’d love to have Franklin’s “Ten Knitters You Meet in Hell”. How prudent of you to save it! I’ll print it and keep it in one of his books. I think it would be possible (and easy) to attach it to this blog as a permanent page, like Queer Joe’s “100 Things About Me”  -- but that, of course, would be a violation of copyright. I email Franklin every year to ask him to come and be a teacher at the EYF but he never answers, so is unlikely to respond to a request for a waiver of copyright.

Anyway, he seems to be in Paris at the moment. But isn’t he just back from Rome? Wouldn’t it have been easier to go directly from one to the other?

I’m nearly finished (one more bump) with the edging for my mini-hap in Donna Smith’s class at the Shetland Wool Adventure. It has imperfections. I would almost say it is too easy to knit accurately. I used lace-weight yarn. I am seriously tempted to try again in Shetland jumper-weight. The instructions leave the question open. Jumper-weight is common enough for haps.

Maureen, I was terribly encouraged to learn that yours, too, wasn’t very bumpy on the outside edge.

I also got the yarn out, and a skein of it wound, for Thomas’ Calcutta Cup scarf. I think I’ll even knit a swatch. My plan is to use Pattern No. 100 in Gaughan’s Knitted Cable Sourcebook. It’s one of the ones she recommends for looking good on both sides. It’s fascinating to compare the photograph with the chart. The former looks as if you’d be struggling to twist every stitch. The latter looks easy-peasy.

Anybody who has the book: what would you guess is the edging she uses on the samples? I thought I’d try knitting the first stitch, and then doing three stitches in seed stitch, but I doubt if that’s right.

Reading

I finished Ruth Rendell’s “Portobello”. It’s far from her best – but awfully good, compared to almost anybody else. I have sunk down gratefully with Trollope’s “Cousin Henry” which I already had in Kindle format.

I got an ad today from Amazon for Wilkie Collins. I haven’t read him for many, many years – and maybe, even then, nothing but “Woman in White”. It’s not a bad idea, and he’s very cheap, being classic. He was named after the artist David Wilkie, but I don’t know why – was his father a mate of the artist’s?

Forward. Here’s the baby sweater, blocked:

(I rotated the image but couldn't figure out how to save it in its new orientation. They keep changing the rules.)

And I’m about half way through the edging for my hap class in Shetland. It’s as simple as it could possibly be: a six row pattern, action on both sides, up and down from seven stitches to ten and back.

The outer edge doesn’t look as bumpy as I would like. Should I actually block it? Or would that be too Goody-Two-Shoes?

(Thinking along those lines reminds me that I went in search of Franklin’s essay on “The Ten Knitters You Meet in Hell” the other day, and discovered that it seems to have disappeared – presumably swept away with the Twist Collective in which it appeared. That’s a considerable loss to knitting literature. I hope it will re-surface one day.)

Whatever I decide about blocking, it will be finished soon. I had better get the knitting graph paper out and start on half-Calcutta-Cups.

Mary Lou, (comment yesterday), some of Kaffe’s early patterns, notably “Tumbling Blocks” and its later derivatives (from “Glorious Knitting”, which I think may have been called something else in the U.S.) -- succeed in getting some flow even into intarsia. Knit them with yard-long lengths of yarn which you just pull through the tangle, as he recommends.

Reading

I must be near the end of Rendell’s “Portobello”. I’m still enjoying it. Trollope next.

Alexander came over from Glasgow and we tottered around the garden together. Helen will come tomorrow (not that I can’t do it alone). Otherwise, it was a day of unexpected endings.

Here is the baby sweater, as yet unblocked:

I finished it while watching Andrew and Andrea. A good episode, as almost always, with Woolly Wormhead the principal guest. I took her class at the EYF maybe three years ago, and can remember but little of it. Her hats are most inventive, however, and she is an attractive character. I wasn’t so keen on the other designer, and I hope Andrea won’t really make Andrew learn to do complicated intarsia pictures in double knitting.

But that left me with the question of what to knit right now. I can’t cast on the Calcutta Cup scarf without first charting the half-cup and “2019” to see how many stitches I need. I think the thing to do is to print the simple pattern for that Shetland edging required for my Wool Adventure, and look out yarn and needles. Do that at the energetic beginning of the day. Start knitting in front of Pointless.

Fortunately I did at least have a pair of Emergency Socks. I knit them.

The other thing I finished was the book by Tessa Hadley. I don’t think I’ll go on with her. Top of the pile amongst my downloaded Kindle books was Ruth Rendell’s “Portobello” so I started that. I’m not absolutely sure I haven’t read it at some point in the past. But not recently, because Amazon won’t let me buy a book for the Kindle a second time. I’ve often tried. This must be a recent purchase, to be there on top.

She does make one feel that one has trusted one’s valuable leisure into the safe hands of a master. But I must plan the next step soon, so that the end doesn’t take me by surprise again.

Here is a picture of my cats. Notice that the younger one, who is something of a bully, has got the blanket to sleep on, and the spot at the warmer end of the Aga.

A  fairly productive day. Archie comes around a couple of times a week, as you may have gathered, to help me with heavy things, and with the sorting of the endless piles of paper – he’s good at that – and doorstep gardening and going for walks. His presence often provokes me into doing paper-work-y things which I have been postponing. It was too cold for comfortable gardening today but we got a lot of other things done.

Including finding (amongst my emails) and printing my ferry reservations from Aberdeen to Lerwick and back, for the Wool Adventure on Shetland, now about a month away.

There’s some homework for the Adventure. It will take a while to knit a very simple edging for the hap we are going to learn about. In the class, the rest of it will be knit inwards, Amedro-fashion. I had better do that as soon as the baby sweater is finished (which won’t be long now), rather than leaving it to do on the ferry in my usual fashion.

After we finished our morning’s work, Archie’s brother Mungo came around and cooked lunch. Then they both cleaned up the kitchen. Mungo is going back to Oxford tomorrow. He’s the one who’s studying Arabic.

I’ve now got it in writing that the Perth County Council has removed the 100% surcharge on the property tax for our house in Strathardle. And today Archie and I applied for a 25% reduction of my Edinburgh property tax – I’m due that because I live here alone. I only recently found out about that one.

Courgettes

Kate, I meant to answer your comment yesterday. I do have a spiralizer, and love making courgette-spaghetti. When Greek Helen and I were putting the kitchen back together after last year's upheaval, she said as she put it in a drawer, There's one thing you'll never use. But she was wrong. Mindful Chef is very health-conscious, and often has me spiralizing things, especially courgettes

Again, there is little to report. I am well embarked on the second baby-sweater sleeve. I have bought and downloaded the Spring Shawl pattern from Sharon Miller, and printed as much of it as I need to start off with. (It’s 23 pages in all, and I don’t entirely know how to load new paper into my printer.)

It came with a nice little note from Sharon. Boilerplate? It didn’t sound like it. Anyway, I replied.

Maureen, yours is beyond beautiful.

I’m not terribly keen on Tessa Hadley’s “Master Bedroom”, as I progress, but I think I’ll finish it. Then another Trollope.

Thank you for all your help with courgette-growing (and cooking). I’ll go for it – although there is little space left on the step as it is, and the potatoes, currently set to chit in the kitchen, are still to be put out there.  I’ll keep you posted. The weather has turned cold.

I have hired the Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man” from Google, on one of those deals where I have to finish watching it within 48 hours. I think it’s a great film. It faces up to the same problems as are addressed in the Book of Job, and comes away equally baffled. I was sent back to it, so to speak, by hearing this morning of a Jewish friend-of-a-friend who went to hear a madrigal choir singing St John’s Passion and came home saying that he “hated that 2^nd century religious propaganda”. His is a perfectly reasonable point of view, but…

I woke up this morning to hear the nice lady on the radio give the time in Greenwich Mean, just as my cable television did yesterday. Unnerving. Had she been right, I could have stayed in bed another hour before Skype-ing to Rome. 

I’ve just been looking back at this blog in April, 2009. That was the year of my nephew Theo’s wedding. That was also the year in which I figured out that my lamentable tendency to eat chocolate in Lent was a substitute for the carbohydrate in cider. That year I cut out both, and lost an agreeable amount of weight. I’m pretty sure I adopted a cut-down version of cider drinking after Easter, and tried to avoid refined sugar altogether, and went on losing weight. I was quite svelte at the wedding.

I hoped the blog might tell me exactly what that reduced-cider regime was, but no. It’s all about knitting the Princess shawl, and growing vegetables. This year, I've only lost 3 or 4 pounds.

Thank you for your help with my shawl-search. Mary Lou, I think I may have your hap book: Sharon Miller published a paper-bound large-pamphlet-style essay on the subject, which I’ve got. Laura, I’ve had a look on Ravelry, too. It works better there if I limit the search to “Shetland lace”. Not without interest. Cat, I think I’ve got the “Queen Susan” pattern. Challenging, as you say!

The more I wander, the more I think I might attempt Sharon’s “Spring” shawl. I do like the triangular shape. It might even be possible to reduce it in size slightly. I probably won’t live to finish it, but so what. It was encouraging to see how much I found to say about the Princess-in-progress, back in 2009.

I also found a reference to a variety of courgette marketed as suitable for container-growing on one’s patio. I wonder if that’s still available. Courgettes (=zucchini) are great fun to grow although a bit boring to eat.

No knitting yet today, not much reading, a pleasant Italian lesson. Shandy, I found HKHWR and watched a bit of it. And enjoyed it. But I don’t think I’ll go on. The thing to do is to read another Trollope.

My cable television seems to have reverted to Greenwich Mean Time – i.e., the programmes being shown just now should have appeared an hour ago. I hope “Pointless” hasn’t been squeezed out altogether.

But without it (so far), I haven’t done much knitting. I’ve finished the decreases on the first sleeve of the baby sweater, and am knitting the final 8 rounds of garter stitch.

I have also done some more thinking about a final wedding shawl. There is nothing in “A Gathering of Lace” which is quite right, although I hesitate over the Mediterranean shawl. There is nothing – no finished project, just-do-this-and-don’t-worry – quite right in “Heirloom Knitting” either. I very much like the idea, presented towards the end, of a “frame” around the centre of a square shawl, but I don’t feel up to the effort of planning one for myself.

Maybe I’ll just have to buy and print Sharon Miller’s “Spring Shawl”, take it to Lerwick with me, and see what happens.

Non-knit

I attempted “Daniel Deronda” on Netflix but I don’t think I’ll go on with it. Andrew Davies (the adapter) at his best actually illuminates a novel, but that isn’t happening this time. Also, Hugh Bonneville is cast as the Baddie, Mr. Grandcourt (wonderful name). I love him – not for Downton Abbey but for “Twenty Twelve” and “W1A” (in both of which he is a bewildered BBC executive) and for “Notting Hill”. He is a perfectly good actor, but I simply cannot believe in his badness. Gwendolen would be lucky to get him.

And, Shandy, I cannot persuade Netflix to come across with HKHWR. I can get Masterpiece Theatre, all right. Is there something I should know?

(Sure enough, I got my “Pointless”, an hour late. I finished the first baby sweater sleeve, and made a small beginning at picking up stitches for the second.)

After a bit of floundering around, I have settled down (I think) with Tessa Hadley and “The Master Bedroom” for my next read.  I don’t think I’ve read her before. “Edith’s Diary” was disturbing at one point – the account of a disturbed child – and all the other characters were boring, at least to start off with.

Now for some Grammatica Avanzata, an hour later and tireder than I should be.

Archie came round and we did some doorstep gardening. I made good progress with the first sleeve of the baby sweater. I am shortening the sleeve just a little – decreases every 5^th round instead of every 6^th. I think I’ve said before that sleeves were always too long when I was knitting for my own babies.

Another “Pointless” should see the first sleeve done.

And I thought a bit about Shetland lace, without getting very forrad’er. I’m not sure that I don’t find the Sheelagh shawl a bit boring.

Thank you for your help with my struggles with “Kafkaesque”. I’ll go into Settings and tell my iPad to shut up, Mary Lou. I think my favourite one in “Daniel Deronda” was the description of a coal-mining area where men went about with candies in their hats.

Jenny (comment, day before yesterday), I was delighted to see your reference to “Kirrie dumplings”. Needless to say, I have never before seen the phrase written down. Your version sounds a good deal right-er than my “curry”. I think your guess is right, too, that England is a bit too dry for them. I used to grow them in our English gardens, and was always astonished when we got to Strathardle to see how big and cabbage-like the Scottish ones were.

They grow almost like weeds. Our soil is acid – I think that’s right, although I tend to get the terms confused. The sort of soil that rhododendrons like.

Helen came bursting in yesterday evening with an armload of home-grown daffodils, fresh from Strathardle. Here is a picture she sent from there on Wednesday morning.

I’ve finished “Black Mischief” – far from his best, but time spent with Basil Seal is never entirely wasted. What next? I am attempting Patricia Highsmith’s “Edith’s Diary”, with some misgivings. It’s a Virago Modern Classic, at least. After that I think I will allow myself to return to Trollope.

The dr couldn’t find anything wrong with me, indeed seemed to think I was doing rather well for 85 except that I should cut back on Weston’s Vintage Cider. I am trying to think of a post-Lenten discipline which I might be able to stick to. I am to have scans of liver and heart.

So perhaps I should just rise above weakness. I have looked out my knitting belt and long needles, to take to Shetland to be instructed in their use. It took a while to find them. I have got every knitting-associated gadget in Christendom, including a whole set of those two-headed crochet hooks. Under it all was the belt.

I’ve finished the front and back of the baby sweater, pinned the shoulders, and picked up the stitches for the first sleeve. And I’ve been thinking about fine lace. Hellie’s shawl – the one Archie and I blocked recently – has been safely conveyed to London and is now in the hands of this year’s bride. She has sent me an email of extravagant thanks, prompting me again to wonder if I have the oomph for one more. Amedro’s Sheelagh shawl might be a bit easier than Sharon Miller’s Spring Shawl which seems to be a mini-Princess. Not very mini, at that. On the other hand, a huge triangle (Spring shawl) is probably a more useful shape for a wedding shawl than a big square.

And I’ve finished “Daniel Deronda”, thank goodness. I need something now with few words, and no machine transcription. I’ve gone for “Black Mischief”. I haven’t read that for a while.

I tried to send an email to some of my children this morning containing the word “Kafka-esque”. The iPad was determined not to let me, and kept supplying more and more preposterous corrections, changing the word I had typed. I think my Kindle DD suffered from that sort of thing – the scanner getting things wrong, and a spell-checker making them wronger.

My email was about Perth County Council, which has put a 100% “unoccupied” surcharge on the property taxes for our house in Strathardle. There are clearly-worded government websites which make it clear that a “second home”, if used for 30 nights a year, doesn’t qualify as “unoccupied”.

I wrote them a letter when I got the original bill, about a month ago, enclosing a copy of an electricity bill in evidence that the house is well-used. They didn’t reply, and took the full (= doubled) instalment on the 1^st of April, the beginning of the Council Tax year. So today I struggled through a Kafka-esque telephone call and they have agreed that I am right. We’ll see.

Shandy, you’re right about Compton McKenzie.