Gross

As I was getting up from the sofa this evening, I saw what I thought was a loop of yarn that had fallen on the floor. Expecting to pick up a strand of pale pink cashmerino softness, I was disconcerted to find a wet clammy purl of spaghetti. Eeeuw, as they say.

Lots of vanilla knitting here. Dapper inches on.


Yes, those are my toes holding the bottom edge down. When I have learnt to take photographs with my feet, I shall hold edges down with my hands.

The stripy legwarmer has been returned and the second one begun. It was on pause for a couple of days because I had lost the darker blue required for the middle stripe, but that turned up this morning so it's on the move again.


The first pale pink ballet legwarmer is finished. I didn't buy enough yarn (or, I didn't think to weigh the first one and stop halfway through the ball, take your pick) so I'm waiting for the second one. Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino.


I made a headband out of the leftovers from the first, because it is a truth universally acknowledged that every little girl who needs ballet legwarmers, needs a headband too.




I woke up at three the other morning and realized that I had better do some prioritizing, so I chose a pattern for the Everest cowl and cast on today in the daylight. I kept on coming back to Vent d'est, vent d'ouest on Ravelry, and I expect there are winds from both of those directions on Mount Everest, so I've gone with that. It's a pull-up cowl, more of a wimple, which is what I was looking for after advice from the Spinning Fishwife. The yarn is delicious and I would happily knit on it non-stop, but it's different shades of dark so I'll stick with daylight for the moment.

All this vanilla knitting has meant lots of staring at the idiot's lantern. I think I've seen every episode of The Big Bang Theory now, and lots more West Wing. Then on Sunday afternoon I watched Coco Before Chanel, which I was watching really just so that I could tick it off the list but which I found quite engrossing. It's beautifully photographed, and I think the French do historical films very well, partly because of their attention to detail and partly because they just get on with showing how things were, rather than preaching or disapproving. Little Tatou is in almost every scene and I never got tired of her: she gives a good impression of the realistic and determined person Coco must have been. For me, there could have been more in the way of fabrics and cutting and sewing, but I'm probably in a minority. I think I'll have to get the DVD (I watched it on FilmFlex) and watch the extras to get that, but I wouldn't mind watching it again anyway.

Then I saw The September Issue, so it was quite a fashion-filled forty eight hours. I enjoyed that more than I expected too. Grace Coddington was a treat, and it's good to see some grown-up women, complete with wrinkles, doing high-powered jobs. People always make out fashion is purely frivolous, but it's a serious business which requires creative ability too. I thought The Devil Wears Prada was a very dull film which needed more jokes: this is much better.

Grace Coddington with an enormous cat, from Vogue

And Ian Carmichael died at the weekend, which is jolly hard cheese for all of us.