Stripes So Far

The latest Stripe Study is coming along. The colours are Well Water and Chambray, in Madelinetosh Merino Light. The yarn is finer and limper than the Wollmeise I used for the first one, but I'm still using 4mm needles. I swatched it and it firms up with washing.

 The Chambray is paler and less shaded than I expected, and it has a greenish cast. It's more like an infinitely pale celadon than a very pale blue. Never mind. It's still very good with the Well Water. I was going for a sort of weathered, watery look, sort of distressed New England. I wanted the blue of the Atlantic, and the white of weathered clapboard (yes, I can hear your eyes rolling).

The colours aren't quite right here. When it's finished I'll spend some time calibrating things so that I get a proper picture. I wonder if I will suddenly get very sick of this pattern if I knit too many. It has been a godsend, as I've been a iller than usual the last few weeks and haven't really been able to do anything more taxing, not even the little denim baby trousers that I want to finish. I did have a go at them, but I ended up with two identical legs instead of mirror-image legs, so I've put them aside for the moment.

I upgraded my iPod Touch this week. My inner Presbyterian is horrified, but my inner hedonist is delighted. This one has a camera but I don't think it's any truer with blues than my camera-which-is-only-a-camera, but we'll see. I toyed with the idea of getting an iPad but could think of no reason to justify the expense and rather a lot of reasons for not, so I did this instead.

At the weekend I watched all six episodes of The Shadow Line on iPlayer. I was completely baffled by what I thought was the last episode, but then I discovered there's a seventh on Thursday night. It's very good, and has more outstanding actors to the square inch than just about anything else I've seen recently. Rafe Spall is in it, playing nasty, and every time he appears I want to turn the television off and check that the front door is locked.

Stephen Rea is in too: I would have watched it sooner if I'd realized he was in it, because he doesn't do much television. He was the betrayed husband in The End of the Affair, but you will probably remember him as the surprised lover in The Crying Game. Everybody else in it is pretty fab too. Worth catching.