Hoarse Greetings of the Season

I had intended to leave a seasonal greeting here sooner, but I have been felled by one of the worst sore throats I've ever had. I can remember sitting in a hospital waiting room and asking my mother what E.N.T. DEPARTMENT meant, and she explained that it was the department for Ear, Nose and Throat conditions, so I go a long way back with these. I was one of those honking adenoidal children; when I wasn't honking, I was barking, and it's been like that again this week. Yesterday I sneezed so hard that I bit my tongue. Three times.

However, one of the comforts of these things is that you know they're just going to work through themselves and once the requisite number of days is past, it will be gone. I am recovering my appetite, which, given the date, is the main thing.

The Angora Triangle has been blocked and sent on its way. It's 12 repeats, 48 inches by 22.


I didn't dare block it very rigorously because the fibres pull apart quite easily, but it's very pretty.
I knitted a Felicity Hat. You know how you think you're sort of keeping abreast of what is going on on the knitweb, and then you click on something you've never seen before and discover that Everybody has been knitting it? That happened to me with Felicity. Now I've done a navy blue one with some of the Mirasol Miski that Spinning Fishwife led me to in November;

I've done a bluey greeny brown one with some Cherry Tree Hill Possum Paints Worsted;
I've started another in some terracotta Miski;
(why, yes, one of my dpns is a very long circ - have you never done that?) and I plan to do another dark blue Miski one.

I plan to do a black one and a purple one too. It's excellent Christmas knitting, because if you're talking, or watching films, or drinking, it doesn't matter too much if the odd stitch or row is missed or added. It's a wonderful shape: the only thing I would say is to use much larger needles than the pattern suggests and, if you're in any doubt at all about the size, add 7 stitches to the cast on. I used 4.5mm and 5.5mm for the first one, and 5mm and 6mm for all the subsequent ones.

I hope I can get photos of some of these on heads after everyone's opened their presents.

Jean and I managed to get together last week for lunch in between my sucumbing to this and that. We went to Vittoria, which is one of my favourite places ever - it's like going to Italy for lunch. I usually go there with one or another small children, who get made a great fuss of, and get spag bol everywhere, so it was bit strange to go with another adult and not get beamed at. The last time I went there with a small person, she ordered macaroni and cheese and when the waitress bought it she pointed at the broccoli garnish and said, 'I don't want that', to which the waitress said, 'Nobody ever does.' Jean and I ate everything on our plates, however, and drank everything in our cups and glasses. Model diners.

I've changed my blog photo, from one of me yelling my head off in my pram in Pilrig Park to one of me carefully choosing the right word on my Dad's typewriter. The biscuits, for those who need to know, are digestives and a Tunnock's Caramel Wafer.

I've been watching out for a seasonal LOLCAT to leave you with and this is my fave.



Merry Christmas to all of my readers, or any other sort of seasonal wish which makes sense to you, and I hope the next few days bring you good company and good cheer - or as much good cheer as is reasonable to expect in these changing times.

Fluff

Still not much knitting that I can show you. The angora Shetland Triangle is nearly done. I got 12 repeats of the chart out of the yarn and am now fretting that I could have got another. Someone on Ravelry only got 10 repeats but she doesn't say what size of needle she used. I'm not tempted to buy more yarn because it is so insanely warm; a little bit of it around the throat will be quite enough. Also, I suspect that a large one would shed so much that it would be like keeping a white long-haired cat around your shoulders. It doesn't shed as much as I expected, but it does shed a bit. I don't think she'll be wearing it with a black or navy blue coat very often.

I was drifting around the Borders site this morning, looking at knitting books for some unfathomable reason, and I came across one of those 'If you liked that...' lists which was all the usual knitting books and then this - Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the US Meat Industry, which startled me. Then I noticed that Upton Sinclair's Jungle was in the list too. I spent my working life organizing information and trying to make it easier for people to find what they were looking for, first in libraries and then on Tinternet, so I'm always intrigued when it goes wildly wrong. It wasn't described as a 'people who bought that, bought this' list: it's Borders' 'spookily accurate book suggestor'. Very mysterious; if anyone has any suggestions about how knitting is related to butchery, I'd be very interested to hear them.

And now, a cat playing the theremin.



I learnt everything I know about the theremin from watching the DVD extras on that most fabulous of movies, Ed Wood. Now there's a man who knows how to wear angora.

Live Squirrels and Dead Cats

The squirrel warning in the previous post has reminded me of an episode from the past. One night during my schooldays, my mother found a dead cat outside our house. It had been hit by a car and cast into the gutter. (In Edinburgh, the gutter is the dip between the road and the pavement (sidewalk) where water gathers before draining away. I mention this because I've noticed that this part of the streetscape has different names in different places and you might be imagining something else. Likewise, the actual drain has lots of different names: in Edinburgh it's a siver and in Glasgow it's a stank - some places they just call it a drain, which is a bit disappointing.)

It wasn't bin night in our street, and my mother didn't want a dead cat lying in our dustbin for a couple of days, but it was bin night round the corner in the next street. Ever thoughtful, my mother didn't want to just chuck a dead cat in someone else's dustbin and besides she didn't think it would be very nice for the binmen if they found it, so she got some brown paper and string and made a parcel out of it.

It then occurred to her that someone finding a parcel in a bin might think it contained something interesting (I think I've just realized where I get my over-developed planning bump from), so she wrote clearly on the parcel, 'This is a dead cat.'

Do you think anyone who found that would believe it? Do you think they would they be able to resist opening it?

I imagine something similar happened with the squirrel bin. Someone accidentally encountered the squirrel (and had the living daylights scared out of them, I expect) and considerately thought they would save someone else from the same experience, so they made the sign (they had to go home to do that, and use the pc, the printer and the laminator) and after consideration, decided to use a very simple and direct warning rather than an explanation. It's grammatically correct, apart from the absence of a full stop, which makes it almost unique in the world of signs.

And it arouses the same terrible temptation, just to stick your hand a little bit inside, just to see if there is a squirrel.

Warning

No knitting to be seen here, but this brightened my day and I thought it might brighten yours.



It really raises more questions than it answers, doesn't it?

Blue, Blue, More Blue and a Little Green

The Habu lesson on Monday was very good. I'm glad I went. I got a little ball of Kasuri Bamboo Tape which I think I will be able to use with the Shosenshi paper, and I am fired to have another go at the Kusha Kusha scarf before I give it up. The workshop gave the necessary clues to deciphering a Japanese pattern, so I should have a better chance of understanding the Setsuko Torii book I bought at the beginning of the year.

I also, quite unintentionally, bought a skein of Old Maiden Aunt's merino sock yarn. It's called Pine, but the greenness reminds me of something else that I can't put my finger on. Terrible photograph.

I didn't mean to buy it, just as I don't intend to knit any more Xmas presents this year, but this just has somebody's name all over it. There's a smidgeon of navy blue on it which made me think of dark blue beads and a little Forest Canopy Shawl, but since then I've been thinking of fingerless gloves rather a lot. Or a cowl? A Forest Canopy Cowl with beads?

The Pinwheel is finished and has been despatched to my friend, the baby's great-aunt. I blocked it with very slight points at the YOs, just enough to give it a bit of movement.
It turns out that this baby isn't Australian as I thought: it's English and is due in December, and is having an Australian cousin in January.
So I may be knitting another Pinwheel for the cousin. It won't be Lorna's Laces Worsted, because the price of anything brought from the US has gone up by 50% since I bought the Hawaii. I have been looking for another superwash 100% wool in the right weight and it isn't easy, but I've found a couple and await a choice being made.

I've been wearing a lot of black this week - no special reason, just feeling dramatic - so I haven't done any fluffy white angora knitting.

I bought a cone of Colourmart cashmere from one of my favourite eBay sellers, cossetter, and swatched a little bit.I've photographed it so close up that it looks like Aran weight, but it's very fine, 4 ply (2/13). I'm not sure what it's for but it's nice to have it.

I also got some laceweight merino from her in the palest pale blue. It's even finer, 2/28,and it's like knitting with a spider's web.
It's not at all a babyish or sweet blue; it's very cool and icy. She has more of it here, and in white too here and here. I'm not sure why I'm telling you this as I want to buy some of the white myself.

The swatches are both Forest Canopy: I wouldn't use such a fine yarn as these for that but I can swatch it now without getting off the sofa and looking for the pattern so that's what I did.

Raveller found this link on the Scottish Screen site to a clip of a Shetland woman blocking a shawl. I can't embed it, but do follow the link. She runs a strand of yarn around the points with a curved needle and then stretches it over wooden pegs in the ground which look as if they are fixtures, outdoors with snow on the ground and a strong wind blowing. The shawl would have been wet and cold too. Her poor cold red hands. I'll think of her next time I'm pinning out a shawl in my heated bedroom.

Some blue sheep have been created for St Andrew's Day.

It's a pity they aren't Blue Faced Leicesters.




For those of you who are already feeling jaded by the downside of Christmas, and fans of the Number 11 Bus, here's a seasonal roundup of Edinburgh scenes.

Scottish Joke

I came across this on LOLCATS tonight and it reminded me of something.



There was a television series some years ago called Scotland on Film which consisted of clips from the Scottish Screen Achive interspersed with clips of people talking about the themes covered. They had tracked down some of the people who were in the clips as children, and got them to talk about what they remembered. It was very interesting and also sometimes very funny.

One woman was reminiscing about a gossip in her town who was the butcher's wife, in the days when game used to hang outside butchers' shop windows, pheasants and droopy rabbits. She said that the wife had a grand view from the shop of everything that was going on - 'keekin' oot atween the rabbits' erses'.

I expect the rest of you can do the translation.

It's worth going to the Archive link and searching on 'knitting' and so on. This is a film from 1939 about rooing, this has a moment of knitting at the beginning, and this is a lovely ad about the virtues of the Knitmaster knitting machine - the women don't sound very Scottish to me, or if they are, they're awfy genteel.

Babies and Brides

I've finished the Pinwheel but this photograph was taken while I was doing the picot bind-off.
I put off starting the bind-off because I was worried that I'd hate it like the first effort and would have to keep looking, but I think it suits the yarn and the pattern very well. I'd forgotten how much I like to do a picot bind-off; it's a very satisfying rhythm and I even manage to count up to 3 and 4 successfully most of the time. I was quite sorry to finish it.

I haven't blocked it yet and will take another photograph when I have. There was quite a bit of yarn left over and I even toyed with the idea of ripping the picot and doing another couple of rows, but then I thought, 'Hat!' If I remember correctly,this is another Antipodean baby so it will need a woolly hat when it's five or six months old, so I did that sort of size instead of a newborn's. It should make a nice set for sitting in a buggy.

Back in the realm of lace, I mentioned to the bride's mother that I could knit the wedding veil and there was a bit of a silence on the telephone, no doubt while she pictured something made in dishcloth cotton, so I shall do some swatches to give her the idea. I know I'm not up to doing something stupendous like the Princess or the Cap Shawl from Victorian Lace Today, but while I was finishing the Pinwheel it occurred to me that it might make a good pattern for a bridal veil, if one used a fine enough silk and a good border. I checked and something like it is on Ravelry, a pattern from Knitter's Magazine.

I also came across lots of Pi Shawls knitted in silk so I shall think about that too. The bride is a gardener so I could probably find some patterns that are fitting; the groom is an accountant so I'm less likely to find anything to represent him. If the bride doesn't want anything lacey knitted for the day, I can always just make her a pretty shawl anyway.

Spinning Fishwife directed me to this lovely find, the Forest Canopy Cowl. I'm pretty sure I see one in my future, possibly even from stash. Yes, of course I've already bought the pattern.

The Barbara Walker Treasury that I bought off eBay arrived; it's the first one so I have stopped fretting about having Volume Two without Volume One. I wonder how long it will be before I absolutely have to have Volume Three.

The Shetland Triangle is coming along too. I put in a lifeline and did one more repeat, but it looks to me as if I can still squeeze in another before I do the border. I'll put in another lifeline first. It's shedding more now that it's grown.

Because I have this Habu event coming up on Monday, I picked up the Kusha Kusha Scarf again, but I'm afraid I also put it back down again too. I'm going to give it one more try on different needles, and if that doesn't work I'm going to give up on this effort. Maybe I should try again using the stainless steel with some Kidsilk Haze: I think that was one of my swatches. I still have a huge skein of grey Shosenshi, so perhaps I'll get moving with that after Monday.

I'm still glued to Between the Lines. They show it on on Sunday and Monday nights, so I have a binge on Tuesday and watch them one after another. The cops aren't smoking so much but the technology is almost as diverting. The lady cop recently opened up her briefcase and took out an enormous mobile phone, about the size of two bricks, and Tony was seen working last week on a - not a laptop because he would have cut off the circulation to his feet if he'd put it on his knee, but a portable computer. I remember we had one at work: it was portable in that it had a handle on it but it weighed a ton because of the battery. I think that was in pre-Windows days and I used to use Wordperfect on it in DOS. I was allowed to get a taxi when I had it because it was too heavy for me to carry to the bus stop.

Steady Progress

I unravelled the edging on the Pinwheel and I'm now knitting it on four circs. This makes it seem bigger in some weird way and I'm thinking of putting it back on one. You can't really see the edging here, unless you click, but it's some garter stitch and I'll finish with a picot bind-off.

Does anyone have a rule of thumb for the yardage for a picot bind-off? Eight times the distance to be cast off? Ten? I'll just be doing a 2 x 4, casting on 2 and casting off 4.

I ripped the angora Shetland Triangle back completely and started all over again. It's very pretty, and delightful to work with. I thought it would make me cough and sneeze, but it hasn't at all. It sheds a bit but that's less of a problem when I'm not wearing a dark purple tee-shirt.


I'm keeping it in a poly bag most of the time but it doesn't seem to pick up dirt very readily. I suppose rabbits don't get dirty easily, so that shouldn't be a surprise. This Raveller got 10 repeats out of the same yarn, so I'm hoping to manage without buying a second ball. Does angora grow much when it's blocked?

The blue and black yarn is Mirasol Miski, Gretchen, and it's 100% baby llama. Five Valleys Fabrics has it at a very good price just now. They have Sulka too. Their shipping charges are extremely reasonable and as I discovered when I bought the first Barbara Walker Treasury off an American eBayer last night, the pound has dropped sharply against the dollar, so if you're in the U.S. you'll get an even better price. I still got a good deal on the Barbara Walker, but not as good as it would have been a couple of weeks ago. 'Sno fair.

I didn't knit my friend's wedding dress, Moorecat. I used to sew a lot and I made wedding dresses for, I think, three of my friends over the years. Two of them were 'proper' wedding dresses, with miles of fabric and hugely complicated interlinings and arcane haberdashery: this one had a long, very full skirt which required 6 metres of horsehair braid around the hem, an item I haven't used since. It was made with two Liberty Tana lawn prints and I remember the fabric cost about 25 pounds, which was nearly a week's salary for me at that time, 1976. Checking the website now, I see that a single metre of Tana Lawn costs £19.95.

I still smoked then and I can remember taking the trouble to keep the ashtray away from the miles of fabric, although I probably puffed while I was doing the hand-sewing. When I made the most recent wedding dress, I no longer smoked, but the bride did and I made her an elegant little matching bag to carry her cigarettes and her hypodermic (she's diabetic).

I'm very flattered that I've got you knitting, Sea. I think knitting hats on two needles is under-rated, and good luck with the ear flaps.

There was a television series here in the early 'nineties called Between the Lines. It was about the cops who snoop on other cops and it was popularly known as 'Between the Sheets' because of the extra-curricular activities of one of the characters, played by Neil Pearson. I didn't watch it - it was on on a night when I was out (remember when you had to be at home and in front of the television in order to watch something?) or I had an irrational dislike of one of the actors, I don't remember, but it's being repeated now on Alibi and I'm hooked. The grittiness of the series is often conveyed through the incessant smoking and almost incessant drinking that goes on; it makes you realize how hard it must have been for actors to learn to do without these props and how they must have had to find other ways of conveying tension.

You've Bought More Yarn?

I didn't get much knitting done on Tuesday night, although I stayed up unconscionably late. I think I couldn't take my eyes off the screen long enough to look at the needles.I watched mostly the BBC, as the CNN coverage required a better knowledge of American geography than I aspire to. The BBC had some good guests; poor Simon Schama was on with the rudest man in the world, who was also in a fury because his side was losing. Being British, I always expect diplomats to be well, diplomatic, but he'd obviously missed the lessons. He reminded me of the Falklands era, when the American Secretary of State said that Lord Carrington was 'a duplicitous b*st*rd', apparently not realizing that that was Lord C's job.

Anyway, all I did was this.
It's the lace border for the lace edged cardigan in Debbie Bliss's Cotton Denim Aran book. I bought an old copy of this off eBay recently and I'm glad I didn't pay the full price for it: it's really badly designed with only one photo of each item and no name on the photo page, or anything that tells you what page the pattern is on. Lovely patterns, though. I immediately went through it with a ballpoint, cross-referencing the pattern and photo pages - nobody at the publisher's could do that? And of course, there are no schematics. I mean, why would you want to know the shape of the piece you're knitting? I know I always complain about DB's books, but it's because I like her designs so much and I Want to Knit Them. I still want to knit this cardi.

Speaking of schematics, I've knitted all the pieces for the little bolero cardi but the sleeves don't fit onto the bodies. I've knitted this twice before with no problems, so it can't be the pattern's fault. I thought of hiding the sleeves I've done and knitting a new one by following the instructions faithfully, but I'm worried that I'll end up with three sleeves that don't fit, sigh. I don't really see what else I can do though.


The reason for the swatch was that I thought I was going to use this border on the Pinwheel, but I've done it a stretch of it and I don't like it.
The lace is completely lost in the colours. So I've ripped it and I'll do something plainer.

This is the Christmas present I'm working on, a Shetland triangle in Orkney Angora.
I've made a substantial booboo already, so I'll have to rip it back to the beginning of the second chart. No, I didn't have a lifeline; I've knitted this before, so I didn't need one, did I? No sniggering at the back, thank you.

Fyberspates is having a sale because she's moving website and home. One of the cool things she's offering is mixed sets of undyed yarn for people who want to play, and there's some lovely lace too.

My copy of Franklin's book of cartoons arrived on Wednesday, when I was trying to come back down to earth. I didn't manage to read it until Thursday, but it's very good: there's a lovely one that has a picture of 'Mr Fassett's sheep'. Make sure you get one in your Christmas stocking. Also, I suppose you've already read it, but just in case not, here's Franklin's priceless account of his opportuning a woman whose baby was wearing a February sweater.

The other thing the postman brought was this.
The colour isn't a plain dark blue, it's dark blue and black, very rich. It's not a for a Forest Canopy, Fishwife, 'cos I didn't buy enough, but I think it might be best knitted up as something quite plain, a 3x3 rib scarf perhaps. If I can just stop rubbing it over my face.

My god-daughter got engaged last week, so I am hoping to be able to indulge in some lace knitting for her. I made her mother's wedding dress (I'll try and dig out a photo) so it would have been lovely if I could make hers, but I'm not really up to it these days and will have to be satisfied with lace. She's allergic to everything under the sun, so it will have to be silk. I don't think she's allergic to that. Perhaps I could make her veil? That would be nice.

Tuesday

I don't know what I'm going to do after Tuesday. For a start, I'll have to go to News Rehab and learn how to live without checking Huff Post incessantly.

I'll have to stop reading Alaskan blogs - except for Kathy's.



I'll have to stop checking YouTube for the latest campaign clips and the latest campaign fun.

I'll have to stop watching news programmes.



No, sorry, I mean I'll have to stop watching SNL.

Things wouldn't be the way they are in Iraq without your Mr B. and our Mr B., so what happens on Tuesday will have repercussions for us too.



I'll have to start taking an interest in British politics again, especially the by-election that we have coming up on Thursday,which is important to Scotland in a way that Westminster by-elections often aren't.

The BBC has actually sent someone up from London to tell us about it.

I'm going to have to get back down to earth. But first of all, I have to decide, should I stay up all night, or get up early on Wednesday morning?

Actually, given the time difference, I could probably get up quite late on Wednesday morning, but I think I'll find it difficult to wait. I remember, in the 1997 UK election, I kept going to bed and getting up again because I couldn't sleep and I had to get just one more news fix. And some of the states with earliest poll closing times of 7 p.m. EST are key battlegrounds - Indiana, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky. That's only 2 a.m. here (I think; I always get muddled when the clocks change).



Back on Earth
Spinning Fishwife corrupted me badly on the weekend by linking to some Mirasol bargains and I'm breathlessly awaiting the arrival of four skeins of dark blue Miski, the baby llama yarn.

Franklin's book of knitting cartoons, It Itches, is now available on Amazon UK and a copy is speeding on its way to me. Between cartoons and baby llamas, the postman will be lucky not to get ambushed tomorrow morning.

And what of the Pinwheel, you ask? Thanks very much for all your helpful suggestions, which I am still considering - although I should decide soon because the border would be a good occupation for sitting up late on Tuesday night...

Exponentially Expanding Information

As if I weren't feeling indecisive enough, I came across a couple more pages of Pinwheels.

Stitch Marker, who is one of the authors of Knitalong, has this page, and this gallery which leads to other blogs.

I've also realized that if I'm going to increase the number of stitches by very much, I'll have to make a serious effort to find my 60" circ.

ADDED: And as Martin, the other author of Knitalong, has pointed out, there's the Flickr group too. I may never make up my mind.

Decision Time

I'm still rolling along here: I keep meaning to pick up something else, but somehow I keep getting back on the hamster wheel and pedalling round.

I'm at the end of the second skein.

Elephant Man shot

I have to choose a border now. Thanks, Judith, for being so emphatic about needing vast quantities of yarn for the border; I suspected that but I probably would have done something silly if you hadn't confirmed it for me. My predictions have worked out quite well, and the diameter is now about 30 inches, which seems OK. I'll do one more round, and then I'll have 50 stitches in each section, 500 in all.

I've been going through the Ravelry pinwheels which actually discuss the border, and peering at the pictures.

The simplest borders are garter stitch or moss stitch (seed stitch): I'd like to do something more interesting than garter stitch, and my moss stitch never works very well. It tends to be saggy and baggy. I could do garter stitch with some YOs to make little holes, but that doesn't seem interesting enough - I'm not saying it's never interesting, I just don't think it's right for this yarn. I think the holes would disappear among all the white.

I thought of making a ruffle by increasing every second stitch, but I thought if I did that twice it might not be deep enough and I might be insane by then, gibbering of stitches and YOs - like I used to get when I was knitting curly whirlies.

A knitted-on-sideways border would be good with the variegated yarn, of course, since the stripes would be at right angles to the existing ones. That would be nice.

I could take the opportunity to learn to crochet and do a crocheted border, but I don't really think should practise with rather expensive yarn on something which is intended as a gift.

Some people have used a Nicky Epstein frill called Belle Epoque, which is in Knitting on the Edge. It's like the bell-shaped frill on the Mrs Beeton Wrist Warmers: I made a pair of these and the frill was a bit insane-making, but very worth it. You increase by 10 stitches over every 8 stitches, which I think means 1,125 stitches before you do the picot cast off. Eeeek. But it does look lovely.

I bought a copy of Greetings from Knit Café recently. When it came out, I thought I could live without it but I keep seeing the Slouchy Cardigan on Ravelry and decided I couldn't. I love unstructured, geometric clothes and I have just the yarn...



although I must finish the Noro Lara first. I couldn't knit that in the hot weather, but that's not a problem any more.

I've been thinking for a while about what to do with the Sulka Scarf I knitted a year ago. I've never worn it and although it's cosy and beautiful, I don't think I will. I might rip it and knit a neckwarmer for my cousin. He lives in Indiana and likes to ride his motorcycle to work, even in the winter.
This is him some years ago, with his Dad's motorbike (and his Mum). I thought something simple, which exploits its warmth, but is sufficiently manly. Maybe this is my chance to learn Fisherman's Rib.

Pinwheeling Along

I've finished the first skein of Hawaii (of 3 in total). The radius is 10 inches, so that gives me an area so far of 314 square inches: I'm hoping this information will help me work out where to start the edging.

I've been thinking about a picot bind-off, Judith and I'm tempted by some sort of frill, but on the other hand, I don't want to end up with an insane number of stitches on the last row. But it's fun going through Ravelry looking at them all. Someone did one which is yellow in the middle, and then white, so it looks like a giant fried egg.



I realized tonight that these are the Suffragette colours, which would be fitting if the baby's a girl.






One of the nice things about the Pinwheel pattern, Cinders, is that you can make it any size at all, by varying the yarn and needles, and you can just stop when you like, so a cushion could be very quickly and easily done.

Another photograph arrived from Australia, showing Jessica going home from hospital in her Forest Canopy Shawl.

She suits it, doesn't she? She should have her pink hats by the end of the week.

Was David Crichton a War Hero?

The title of this post is the heading from an email I keep getting from Genes Reunited. A few years ago I added some of my late family members to the site, but then a couple of years later, I decided to take them off. I discovered that you can't delete entries from Genes (or at least I couldn't) but you can change the names. So I changed the names, and now I get emails about people I made up. The bitter twist of fate is that my grandfather was very far from being a war hero, so the question, had they got his name right, would have been pretty hilarious, at least for those of my living relations who know the story. He was a very brave and strongminded man, in his own way, but it was always in his own way rather than anyone else's.

Anyway. I started the Pinwheel again on 4mm needles but I haven't ripped the first one yet just in case I decide to go back to 5mm needles.
I'm quite a bit further on now from when I took this picture. At first I didn't need markers because it's so easy to se where you should do a YO, but now that the spaces between the YOs are getting longer, it's easy to forget while staring at the television screen.

I watched The Music Box, Judith, and thought it was very good. Thanks for the recommendation. One of the things I liked about it was that the heroine wasn't very sympathetic, or at least I didn't think so. Her repeated hostilities towards the prosecution lawyer seemed ill-advised. But she did the right thing in the end, showing that you don't always have to be likeable to be a good person.

Jessica Lange doesn't seem to make many movies, but I dare say if I lived with Sam Shepard on a ranch in Montana, I wouldn't be very interested in going to Hollywood either.

I also watched Married Life. I don't know if this got a cinema release in the UK, and I don't think it got a UK release on DVD because I watched it on a Region 1 DVD, but it's well worth watching. I got my wires crossed and I thought it was going to be a fairly serious film, perhaps about the end of a marriage, an Ordinary People or a Squid and the Whale - although I was hoping it wouldn't be as painful as Squid, which left me squirming for days. In fact it's a Hitchcockian drama, done as an hommage to Hitch and Douglas Sirk. I liked it better than Far from Heaven, which I found anachronistic, self-important and dull.

It's about a man who wants to leave his wife for his girlfriend but thinks that might be too much for her to bear, so out of kindness he decides to kill her instead. They are Chris Cooper and Patricia Clarkson: Pierce Brosnan and Rachel McAdams are in it too. There is a delicious moment when you realize that nobody in it is telling the truth to anyone else, ever. After that, it's great fun. Chris Cooper is wonderful (but I probably didn't need to tell you that, because he always is) and everybody else is too. At first I thought Pierce Brosnan was being a bit stodgy but then I decided that was deliberate and it fits perfectly with the film.

Mentioning Patricia Clarkson reminds me, I saw Lars and the Real Girl recently and I liked that a lot too. If you tell somebody what it's about, they start to look at you oddly, so I won't, but what it's really about is acceptance, and letting people work things out at their own rate, an antidote to the culture of 'moving on'. A very moving film, which stayed with me as long as Squid, but much more happily.

Here's a new puzzle. Even I could do this one.

More Baby Knitting Than I Had Anticipated

I've done a litle pink hat for the new baby. It's the Daisy hat from Itty Bitty Hats.

I think this is the fifth one of these I've made. The new baby's cousin has one: she's almost exactly one year older and she lived in the U.S. until recently. Now she lives in Dubai - very well travelled, my hats.

I also ran up this little number, in All Seasons Cotton. I keep wanting to knit warm hats, but for the moment this baby will need sun hats more than cosy ones. I'm very tempted to knit Miss Dashwood, maybe in Summer Tweed, but I think that for the brim not to flop, it would need to be knitted very tightly, and I don't fancy cotton yarn and small needles.

The friend that I knitted Mavis for was interested to hear about the handspun baby shawl because she has a new relation due in January, and we had a long talk at cross-purposes which ended with my saying, 'Oh you mean a baby blanket, not a baby shawl.' There was a short pause at the end of the line, and a sharp intake of breath. I can't really blame her.

The mother-to-be is apparently incapable of washing wool properly, so I proposed Lorna's Laces, as it's superwash. I also proposed the worsted weight, as I couldn't face knitting something this size in sock yarn, but it occurred to me later that it would be warmer in worsted, so I've stopped feeling guilty about that.
It took us a long time to choose the shade, especially since it wasn't to be too blue or too pink. The finalists were Child's Play, which is a sort of pastel rainbow; Daffodil, which is yes, yellow, but with lots of green and a bit of blue too; and Hawaii. Those of you who carry a Lorna's Laces shade card in your head will recognize this instantly as Hawaii. I've wanted to use this for something for ages because jade green and purple is one of my favourite combinations. It has a lot of white in too, which makes it very fresh and more babyish.

It's the Pinwheel Baby Blanket, of course. I started it last night on 5mm needles, and I can't decide whether to go down to a 4.5mm. I don't have a set of 4.5mm dpns, or I probably would have done it by now.

I bought the yarn on eBay, as I couldn't find a UK stockist who had this colour in this weight. While I was waiting for it to arrive, I cast on for the only Christmas present that I'm planning to knit this year. I'll show you when there's a bit more of it.

Nancym, I'm sorry I didn't answer you sooner about the Forest Canopy - I did 19 repeats this time. It's ended up being the same size as one that I did in heavier yarn and 15 repeats. An earlier one that I made in sock yarn was 15 repeats, and it was only just big enough - it's a scarf more than a shawl - but the nylon in the sock yarn probably means that it doesn't stretch so much in the blocking. Good luck!

This Just In

I've just received this photo. Her dad says she's just as beautiful as her mum.

New Baby

The Australian baby has arrived, a couple of weeks early. She's a girl, and she's called Jessica. The parcel I sent should arrive before she gets home from hospital, I think. I had told my aunt, the great-granny, about the hat and it turns out that she told the mum, so that's the surprise blown, not that it matters. Never tell a 90-year-old a secret is the moral of that, I suppose, even if she's a very sharp-witted 90-year-old.

I'm not sure how much wear she's going to get out of a football hat and scarf, so I ordered a ball of pink Handknit DK from Jannette for a daisy hat. That will arrive tomorrow, because Jannette has some sort of supernatural power over the Post Office and everything she sends arrives at once. I couldn't resist getting something else at the same time: she has this unreleased shade of Kidsilk Haze, called Daffodil.
Isn't it beautiful? I got two balls, and no, I don't know what I'm going to with it. You can get it here.

I knitted Jessica a washcloth yesterday, the one with baby feet on it, but it's white and I can't get a decent photo. I'll try again later if the sun comes out.

The crocussy yarn, Knitting Linguist and Cinders, is this. It was a Yarn Yard club yarn, but it's available now from time to time. The link I posted before stopped working when it sold out. I'm sure if you nagged her nicely, Natalie would conjure some up for you. She does hand-dyed fibre as well as yarn, so I think you owe it to yourself to keep a regular eye on the site.

Apparently this has been watched 83,697 times.


I think I must have been responsible for the 97.

In the last post, some pictures would embiggen and some wouldn't, although they were all uploaded the same way, but the mysterious technical issues I was having seem to have cleared up now. I'm composing this in Firefox and it all seems to be OK. Famous last words.

Forest the Fifth

I thought this would be a little bit bigger. Still, I'm happy with it and I'm still taking little peeks at the colours because I like them so much. 

You're right, Knitting Linguist, it's the colours of irises, the yellow ones and the purpley blue ones. 

I used the wires again and this time I remembered to use them for the points, but in the end I took them out of the points and did those by hand. I find it easier to stretch and re-stretch the individual points one at a time.

After blocking, it's 68 inches wide by 34.

I've cast this on. It's the Flutter Scarf by Mim Felton, who also designed Icarus. I've had my eye on it for a while: I particularly like the bell shape at the ends. It has a provisional cast on and then you knit out to each end. 

I cast on late last night and then spent an hour trying to knit an unfamiliar chart with fine black yarn in a bad light. Not very clever, but I seem to have got away with it. I'm not sure that this is the best time of year  to start knitting with fine black yarn. I really must do something about getting a better light by my seat.

It's Kidsilk Night of course, in Starry Night, the sootiest black. It's already 14 inches wide.

Joan, I've reserved My Life Without Me, and Judith, I've got The Music Box and I'm going to watch it tomorrow.

If you haven't had enough above, here's some more.

I couldn't do it and just clicked on Auto Solve, but perhaps you have more patience than I do.