Kauni Started

I bet you thought I'd stuffed the Kauni down the back of the couch because I couldn't decide on the first pattern row. Well, I didn't. I did spend a long time trying to decide where to start the two yarns, which colours I wanted to line up with one another. This is my notebook with ROYGBIV lined up in a variety of ways: did I want Green with Blue, even if it meant also having Yellow with Indigo?

I looked at quite a lot of Kauni cardigans on the web too, but decided that the lighting and the photographs introduced too many variables and I eventually just decided to get started.

A friend recently lent me her copy of Anna Zilboorg's Fancy Feet, which has a lot of two-colour patterns which she recommends you try with the colours reversed, so I've started with one of those - no. 17, Heart Crook. It's a sort of sideways-Rorshach or Escher pattern, where the colours mirror one another. I'm not doing a very good job of explaining this but it will become clearer the next time I photograph it.

I keep the balls of yarn in plastic bags (a.k.a. 'yarn holders') marked '1' and '2', so that I will be able to keep track of what I'm doing once the colours change, but I expect I will get muddled anyway.

I had two rows of one colour while I was watching a film the other night, and I skated past the end-of-row marker and have got to take it back a bit now. I was watching Broken Trail, which I rented before it won all the Emmys but hadn't actually watched. I'm not usually a Western fan, but in my snotty way thought this one might be worth watching for its historical value which it is. Robert Duvall is always excellent and it was good to see Thomas Haden Church in something so different from Sideways. The women looked real, which is something of a novelty for a Hollywood production - well, Greta Scacchi's teeth were far too good, but I'm prepared to overlook that.

The autumnal cotton from the mystical yarn company has never turned up; I'm fairly sure this is Royal Mail's fault as there are a few other things which have evaporated, including a parcel that they left me a postcard for but are now unable to lay their hands on. I can't decide whether to get some more autumnal cotton from somewhere, or just wait until the babe is born and knit a BSJ in boy or girl shades. After all, the mother-to-be doesn't know I was planning to knit a coat to go with the Pumpkin Hat, so she won't miss it. And I had better write a cross letter to Royal Mail, which I know is a waste of time but one has to make a stand. Their Customer Service section writes the most amazingly unhelpful letters; they should really be called the Customer Disservice section.