Just a Quick Shag

Knitting
I bought a couple of balls of Rowan's Tapestry some time ago, and could never decide what to do with it. Too fine for this, too thick for that. Then I was wandering round Ravelry last week when I came across this (hi, Judith!), the wonderful Shag pattern from Knitting New Scarves, knitted in that very yarn. It's not stealing if you steal from the best, so I cast on right away.


I'm nearly half-way through the second skein now and this time I'm managing without a row counter thingy and am counting the purl ridges instead. It's got three of my favourite colours - light grey, mid grey and dark grey - and I love it. I think it's the sixth of these I've knitted.

I did another little coat for my new friend, in Debbie Bliss Pure Cashmere - before you faint, it was the leftovers from my Felicity Hat.

I've picked up Lara again and she's looking beautiful. All the colours have settled the way I wanted them in the collar, no huge swathes of loud green near my face, which was entirely down to good luck. I did change the order of the colours one night when I was knitting in a bad light, but I ripped it the next morning and put it back the way it would have been if I hadn't interfered. The Noro colour master, he knows best.


I've made a jigsaw of this - lots of stripes in the floor and in the colours - see the sidebar.

It occurs to me that everything I've got on the needles just now is something I've knitted before - Shag, Lara and a Forest Canopy Shawl. I must do something about this soon.

Graham Norton Show
If you follow the Yarn Harlot, you'll know that she (or at least her voice) was on the Graham Norton Show recently, when Greg Kinnear was a guest. Then last week, or it might have been the week before - I record it and watch it later - Graham was talking about the German knitting grannies at NetGranny (they're Swiss, but I think he said they were German) and he spoke to one of them, this one. And, I remember a while ago he had Carol Meldrum on the show - not as a guest, but in the front row of the audience. It was when her Knitted Icons book came out and she showed some of them. So, and sorry if I've been a long time getting here, there must be a researcher on the show who's really into knitting. Who will we see next, I wonder?

Photo Blogs
When I'm not peering at other people's knitting, I sometimes peer at their photographs. I discovered the Big Picture earlier this year and have been stunned at regular intervals since. Click on this one to see it full size.

A U.S. Marine patrols with an opium poppy flower on his helmet on March 19, 2009 near Baqwa in Farah province of southwest Afghanistan. (John Moore/Getty Images)

This is from a recent selection on Signs of Spring, and have a look at these for Earth Hour: you can turn the lights on and off in the photos. Cool.

Fuzzarelly, who has a fibre blog, also has a photo blog called Back Roads of Harrison County. All her pictures can be embiggened and some of them have a lovely, lost quality, sort of Andrew Wyeth-y.

Ospreys
The osprey mum is back at the nest. You can see her on the webcam. No, really, you can sometimes. I saw her yesterday, honest. They don't seem to have the sound turned on; I used to like listening to the wind, but maybe they'll turn it on if and when there are chicks to listen to.