Anhinga At Last

You'll be relieved to hear that I've finished Anhinga. I unpicked the seam and re-did it, and I'm fairly happy with it. I have modelled it, Janet, but you'll have to go the Ravelry for that treat. I think in the end that I wasn't sufficiently experienced with the Rowan Bamboo Tape and I made mistakes with that, especially in the seaming, which have let the pattern down. Thanks for the suggestion about sewing it with a different yarn, Sea, but the principle of seaming with the same yarn is deeply ingrained in me. I want to knit it again in wool, maybe even in a semi-solid or slightly variegated yarn, and probably in the next size up. I would like to knit something else in the Tape too before too long.

I finished and blocked the off-blog project.

Susan wins a coconut because she correctly identified the Queen Anne's Lace Shawl. This was intended as a wedding veil but I've decided it's a christening shawl. No, the bride isn't pregnant :) It's just that I don't think she's keen and I'm backing off: brides have quite enough people contributing bright ideas about what they should wear / sing / say / do on their wedding days and I don't want to add to the clamour.


So I'll put it away for a year or two and I can produce it with a flourish when the time comes. I made her christening robe when she was a baby and I dare say it's been stashed away somewhere, so they'll make a good set.


I made it from Henry's Attic 20/2 Spun Silk: I bought 1000 yards and I've got 27 grams left - seriously, I used about three quarters of it. I used a 3mm Addi Lace circ. I bought special hand-made silver ring stitch markers from Spindle Cat Studio and they worked very well, didn't make holes at the pattern-joins and didn't catch on anything. It blocked to 35 inches wide.


The pattern is easy to follow and the massive task is chopped into very manageable chunks. The only thing I found confusing was that the charts omit plain rows, but I got round this by marking them in large red letters before I started. I couldn't actually see what I was doing, i.e. read the row below, until the last section, so I was quite relieved that a pattern emerged when it was blocked. When I'm making a triangular shawl I never start a row unless I'm sure I'll have time to finish it, but because of the spiral nature of this, I could pick it up and do a couple of segments any time, although in practice I usually did a few rows at a time because I was enjoying it so much.

I absolutely loved knitting this; I never regarded it as a chore. I abandoned things I should have been doing; I took my glassses off and ignored the television so that I could peer at it more intently; and I made the larger version so that I could work on it longer. I would knit it again tomorrow.

I have another navy blue project in mind, which I was about to start when I got swept off my feet by Anhinga, and I may cast that on soon, but meanwhile I got sidetracked by a skein of Kidsilk Haze. Oooooh, fluffy.


This is Sharon Miller's Pink Puzzle Wrap pattern, which Jean very generously gave me some time ago. I cast it on at the time, and then quietly put it away - the pattern is written as knitted lace and my poor brain shut down on the return rows. However, since then I have noticed that Sharon says you can do it with purl return rows and that's what I'm doing. It makes the diamond shapes much larger and I like the rhythm of Thinking and Not Thinking which it requires. It's Rowan Kidsilk Haze in Trance which is impossible to photograph but is a bluey green. Or perhaps it's a greeny blue. It depends.

I'm making the narrower version and it's 23 inches wide now. I expect it will block wider. It is quite insanely fluffy and floaty and it's for me.

I see there's a new version of Wuthering Heights coming up on ITV. I'm not a Bronte fan at the best of times, and I see Cathy Earnshaw has injected lips and carefully tended eyebrows


so I think I shall save my blood pressure and watch something else. He has to be the wettest Heathcliff I've seen for some time.

I shall stick to watching the episodes of Wallander from Swedish television which are being shown on BBC4 just now. In the episode Fotografen, Krister Henriksson turned in possibly the best bit of drunk acting I've ever seen (and the victim's husband was played by the chap from Poldark, which was distracting for those of us with an eye for trivia) and all of them are spellbinding. Perhaps the best thing on British television at the moment is Swedish televison. Or is that mean?

I'm so glad you liked Cinema Paradiso, Mary G. and even more that you left a comment. I sometimes pore over my Google stats and wonder just who those dots represent, so it's nice to put a name to a dot.

Speaking of Google, that thing they do of tracking what you're looking at and then posting ads that match is driving me nuts. Certain items that I've looked at online are now cropping up in endless permutations on other sites. I'm looking for an item of furniture just now - I won't name it here because that'll only make things worse - so I looked at examples on a certain website - ditto - and now, every time I go to IMDB or whatever, ads for those products start revolving around the periphery of the page - the items that I decided not to buy because they were the wrong size, or the wrong colour or because I didn't like them, are pursuing me in perpetuity. Aaargh. How do I make it stop?

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.

Progress

Wow, that was a long silence. Sorry. I had quite a wobbly week, and then I had a worse than usual paroxysm of indecision over knitting, if you can imagine such a thing. It was about baby hats. 

But first of all, let's have a drumroll for the Icarus. 

I used wires to block the long edge and I'm very happy with the result. My shawls are usually quite wavy along the top, if not positively A-shaped and this one isn't at all. The top took three wires. 

Why didn't I use wires for the pointed edges? Well, I forgot. I think I got sidetracked by the pleasures of pinning out pointy bits, which are many. 

I love the way it feels after blocking; it's just a cloud.

 I think it was a mistake to use the variegated yarn for the pattern, but I don't really care: I know it's there. I would be quite happy to knit this again anyway. It wasn't as difficult as I expected, or as I think the final result looks, because each change of pattern sits quite neatly on top of the previous row.

The beads hardly show but I like them like that. This is unusual for me because I don't usually do understated - it has often been said of my earrings that you can see them from the other side of the room, but this time I'm happy with it. In the photos the twinkles in the edging rows of Kidsilk Night show up better than the beads, but the beads show more in reality.

I'm pretty sure that my next project will be in the Kidsilk Night, but as usual I take no responsibility for any decisions which may subsequently be revoked in these pages.

Here's some proper pictures of the baby shawl, unpinned. 

I must do something about my shawl-photographing skills.  

It will look a lot better when it has a baby in it: 

it's a pity you can't feel the yarn, but do click to embiggen and get a flavour of its creamy softness. Again, thanks to Heike for creating such deliciousness. It's half merino from Australia, and half bfl from Northumberland: the baby is an Australian / Northumbrian mix too. 

I posted it today, so we can still reasonably hope that it will arrive before Baby does.

And here's the Newcastle United FC hat and scarf. I just did the scarf in stocking stitch so it's curling like mad, in spite of intensive blocking, but it's not as if Baby is going to wear it for any longer than a photo shoot. I'm not mad about Baby Cashmerino to knit with, but it does make a beautiful fabric,the sort that makes you look like a better knitter.

Yes, Gretchen, a girl baby could wear the Newcastle hat, but I sort of feel that she should be able to make her own choice about that, or at least that her mother can make it meanwhile on her behalf. 

Jetlady726, here's a foto of the hat with the top undone.

 There's a pattern for an umbilical hat in Stitch'n'Bitch, but I made this one up asI went along: I started the decreases as usual and when it looked about right I stopped decreasing and carried on with the same number of stitches for another while; decreased and then continued again; decreased to 5 stitches and knitted i-cord for a while; cut off the yarn and threaded it back through the stitches, pulled it tight and drew it back down through the cord on a blunt needle. I think the only important thing is to make it a bit longer than you think it needs to be.

I then got totally paralysed about what other hat I was going to make to fill up the parcel. I don't have enough of the merino / bfl left for a hat, or I would have done that. In the end, everything seemd too boyish or too girlish, although they probably weren't. I have now settled on sending the parcel off as is, and knitting a further hat or hats when I know whether baby is a Bruce or a Sheila. If I had had some pink Rowan Handknit DK cotton, I would have made a Daisy Hat regardless, but I don't so I haven't. 

Meanwhile of course, I had to keep my hands busy. I was expecting to pick up the Kidsilk Haze, but instead I got sidetracked into another Forest Canopy Shawl. There was a complicated reason for doing this, but it relates to a blog post that has been taken down, so I will save you the long story. The yarn is a sock yarn from The Yarn Yard: I think it might be this one.  I made a scarf from this for a friend, but I still had most of two skeins and some of a matching yarn intended for heel-and-toes. 

The colours are those of a spring window box full of pansies, or a lawn covered with crocuses. The final rows will be the colour of lobelia flowers. The second skein is a bit lighter than the first, but it doesn't matter. As it happens, somebody on Ravelry has done exactly the same shawl, except that she used 5mm needles and I've used 4mm. I've done 19 repeats and I'm on the border. I love this yarn and we know I love this pattern, so I've been a very happy piglet. I've already bought a chambray shirt to go with it and I can't wait to see it blocked. I hope it's huge. 

I resurrected the little pink bolero by unpicking the sleeve / body seam and will have another go at sewing it together before she outgrows it. 

I was going to do a jokey piece about how the osprey chicks set off from the north in the middle of August, but instead of nobly setting off for Africa, they hung about in the south of England for weeks, stuffing themselves with fish on a river in Kent. They did finally head away from the British Isles last week, only for Deshar, the male, to head off too far west where there was no land from him to rest on, and disappear  for ever somewhere over the North Atlantic, after flying for 104 hours non-stop. Poor thing. His sister has been more fortunate and is now in Morocco, southeast of Fez. Wherever that is. 

Another totally brilliant LOLCAT. 

I watched In Bruges some time during all of this; I thought it was very good. It's one of those films that if you're expecting a comedy, it's surprisingly sad, but if you're expecting a drama, it's surprisingly funny. A bit like life really. 

Socks, Sweaters and Sunday Roasts

I wasn't well enough to go out on Saturday, so I didn't get to K1Yarns for Old Maiden Aunt's do. I hope the shop still has some left when I do get there to buy the lace needles for Adamas: maybe once the Festival's over. I was going to buy some yarn online as a consolation, but I decided to save my pennies for some beads to put on Icarus. Not in huge numbers, but on the edge and at the beginning of the border, I think: crystal or silver.

I finished the first ball, the Kidsilk Haze, and moved onto the Kidsilk Spray. I ordered a longer Addi bamboo needle but somebody at Royal Mail has eaten it or thrown it away, or possibly sent it to Beijing to be used as the handover in the relay races, and the 60cm needle I was using had got very crowded, so I had a dig around and wrenched the Kauni off its needle (remember that? still waiting for me to decide on the last pattern) and transferred the Icarus.

The rows are getting r-a-t-h-e-r long now. I've started on Chart 2, the feathers, which is very exciting. When I started the third row I realized that I had forgotten about the plain stitches in Row 2 so I unhitched them and reversed them while I was doing Row 3. I'm sure I bought a tiny crochet hook recently which would have been excellent for this purpose, but I couldn't find it. I did, however, find the camera batteries I was looking for last week, so that wasn't completely wasted time. (Which is just as well, because Royal Mail has thrown away the replacement batteries I ordered too.)

I think I will change some of the plain stitches in the pattern in Icarus: I have been peering at Icaruses on Ravelry and quite a few people seem to have done this without disaster striking. I also caught myself referring to it as 'Uterus' instead of Icarus: I shall have to watch out for that.

Mentioning that my mother knitted the cat sweater in my last post set me thinking, plus the fact that it was her birthday on Saturday: she would have been 87. She didn't always knit: she took it up whenever she was trying to give up smoking, which was often. Although she was a woman of immense will-power, she always struggled with that. The needles would replace the cigarette, and 'Just one more row' replaced 'Just one more cigarette,' while a garment grew rapidly beneath her hands: I sometimes think she just started smoking again because she got bored with knitting. Perhaps she should have tried lace - a Forest Canopy Shawl and Kidsilk crack might have taken care of a mere nicotine habit.

The Swallowtail Shawl has arrived safely with its new owner in Canada, on Vancouver Island.













Maureen, aka Nellie, sent me these pictures of its new surroundings. The deer are in her garden: she reckons they don't like yellow plants so she grows quite a lot of them.



I like the look of injured innocence on the one on the right.





This one has given up pretending.

I watched the second Britain from Above tonight and am totally hooked. It was about how human activities have shaped the land and itincluded a bit about how grazing sheep have changed the landscape, which is where I got the title for this post. Andrew Marr said that it was our weakness for 'socks, sweaters and Sunday roasts' which had caused the absence of trees in large parts of the country. So many people on television try to be cool, I find his enthusiasm a welcome change: he's good too at drawing knowledge out of experts, although one of the English Heritage archaeologists was so unforthcoming one wondered why he had agreed to go up in a plane in the first place, but never mind. Maybe he didn't agree: maybe his line manager made him do it.

The film was full of riveting shots which made me shout, 'Yes, but where is it?' as another distraction whizzed by, especially the bit about follies. I suppose I'll have to examine the website more closely. It's got all sorts of riveting things on it. In tonight's show there was a satellite-controlled combine harvester which can work for 24 hours every day. I'll try not to think about that when I'm falling asleep tonight.

Power Surge

I haven't had a power surge myself; quite the reverse in fact. I usually have a relapse around this time of year: I try to be positive and think that maybe this year it won't happen, but then I get sideswiped again and spend a couple of weeks picking myself up off the floor. That's how it's been lately. The actual power surge was on a new television series which started on Sunday, Britain from Above. I watched it; don't know if I'll watch the rest. It reminded me a bit of a schools programme but it was quite hypnotic. Aerial views are always quite compelling somehow. Anyway, the reason I mention it is that there was a bit with a man who manages the national grid or part of it, and he was bracing himself to meet the surge in demand that follows the end of East Enders. I've already forgotten the staggering number of electric kettles that are switched on within six minutes of the end, but what caught my attention was Andrew Marr's assertion that we're the only country in the world that does this, switches on huge numbers of kettles all at once. Bill Bryson says somewhere that it's one of the things he likes about the British, their ability to get excited at the prospect of a hot beverage. I wonder if there's a surge when people open the fridge door to get a cool beer?

I started the Adamas shawl but then I decided that it wasn't a start, it was a swatch. I like my lace holey but this is so open that you can't really see the sweet little intersecting squares that make up the pattern. Plus, I had made a mistake. I'm going to start again with 3.5mm needles, which I don't have in the Addi lace at the moment. I can get them at K1 Yarns on Saturday, if I get there.
The yarn is delicious.



I blocked the Forest Canopy from 40 inches by 20 to 50 inches by 25. So it's not huge, but it's very nice. My friend was very pleased with it. I had thought that blocking would quieten the Kidsilk Haze down a bit but it was still as mad and fluffy and airy as ever, quite difficult to wrap up in tissue.




We read a lotabout SABLE, Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy, but not so much about another besetting sin, Pattern Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. I've been buying some old VKBs off eBay, not respectably ancient ones like Jean buys, but 1980s ones. One of them, Holiday 1986, I must have owned at the time because I have the sweater to prove it. I got my mother to knit it because I was too busy: of course, I can't squeeze into it now but I would never part with it.

I loved this one with the bow too: I still think I might use the chart someday. I know it's not fashionable to say this, but I really like '80s knitting. It was a very exuberant period, with a real joy in what could be done with yarns and colour and I think there are just as many hostages to fortune in the latest pattern books are there are in these.

Speaking of the latest pattern books, I am totally in love with the latest Rowan book, number 44. As I type this, I am horribly aware of all the things I was in love with in last autumn's Rowan book that I never got round to knitting, but we won't dwell on that. Rather than my taking a lot of bad photographs, or stealing them from another site, here is a link to to Colourway's site which has some of the highlights - Rowan themselves are 'moving to a new website' so they have nuttin'. Click on the thumbnails for embiggening and yardage.

One of the best things for somebody as unimaginative as myself is that they have shown some of the styles twice, in different yarns or with and without embroidery, or with and without stripes. I'm not really into embroidering my knitting; I sort of disapprove of it in a way which I can't possibly justify, but it is a lovely look. The 'stories' are Nostalgia, which has already had Vivienne running for her costume book but doesn't pretend to be historically accurate fortunately, Renaissance (likewise, I suspect) and Elegance.

The mag also has a piece about a book by Sharon Brant, Knitting Goes Large, which is due out in theUK next month. She contributed to Martin Storey's Classic Knits for Real Women, which I found very disappointing, but this looks promising. I found the Storey designs included a lot of the things that I avoided after I gained weight, like shirt collars and styles that button right up to the neck, not to mention dull colours and general fussiness. One of the items on the cover is a sleeveless polo-neck, of all things. Rowan has increased the size range in its patterns at about the same rate as I have needed them to, which is handy, but this might be a useful extra.

When I was collecting the mag I had the opportunity to touch, and sniff, some of the new British Sheep Breeds yarns which are just wonderful. They're not for the faint-hearted or those who prefer their yarn suitably distanced from proceedings which produce it, but if you like to bury your face in a sweater and go wibber wibber wibber, you will probably love them.

I feel I should confess that I have been lurking on Ravelry for a little while. As long as images had to be uploaded to Flickr I knew there was no way I could join in wholeheartedly, but Blogger has obligingly uploaded all my blog images to Picasa and Ravelry has obligingly arranged to upload images from there, so I no longer have an excuse. I am chronicknitting, and at the time of writing I have 214 Faves and 3 Friends. Ooops. Obviously I should get out more.

So what did I do when I realized I had a couple of weeks to fill in before I could start knitting Adamas on smaller needles? I cast on for Icarus, of course. I have three balls of Kidsilk Spray in the grey / black / white colourway, Graphite, and the pattern is notorious for eating yarn so I started with a spare ball of plain grey Kidsilk Haze. I'm nearly at the end of it here. I'm not finding this part of it dull; I'm just enjoying the yarn and looking forward to doing the feathers.

Thank you for the Music Box recommendation, Judith. I didn't record it but I've added it to my LoveFilm list. Amazon transferred its dvd rental business to LoveFilm and I don't like them nearly as much so, irrationally, I'm not watching the dvds I've got. I must have a blitz and then I can get some new ones.

No MoreTwist

My back is improving nicely (thank you for the good wishes) and I have knitting progress to report. First, something rather alarming. An emergency, you might say.Do you see that? I've done 16 repeats and I'm casting off... and I've run out of yarn. I could rip the cast-off and a couple of rows of the edging, but I would really rather not. I reckon I need 2 yards, maybe 3 to be on the safe side. It's Rowan Kidsilk Haze, shade 581 aka Meadow. I don't care about the dyelot. I am even toying with the idea of ripping the bind-off and doing the last two rows in a slightly different shade: I have some 601 and a blind man running for a bus would never notice the difference. Eeeek. But it would be nicest just to do it neatly in the right colour - do any of you have a secret KSH leftovers stash?

In spite of this dreadful experience, I am preparing to do my next piece of lace. It's the Adamas Shawl and this is Fyberspates' Scrumptious Lace which I bought shen she visited K1 Yarns. It's 55% merino and 45% silk and there are 1,000 yards of it so I shouldn't run out this time. I had great difficulty stopping myself from casting this on on Sunday night, when I really should have been knitting Chrissy, but I was saved by the fact that my printer had run out of black ink so I couldn't run off the pattern. The ink arrived in the post this morning so I can spend today staring blankly at the charts.

Speaking of K1 Yarns, they're having a visit from Old Maiden Aunt in a couple of weeks, on 16 August. I will so be there. After all, I need more wool, don't I?

This is Chrissy as she currently stands, or hangs. I took the opportunity to try it on, just in case I hated the neck, and I'm quite pleased with it. It is the sort of size and shape that I had intended and it fits me (it doesn't make me look as cute as the girl in the picture, butI was prepared for that). It has, as you can see, a different-dyelot stripe around it. I don't mind this too much as it's a casual sweater for floppy occasions, but what is a bit odd is that the stripe appears to be very slightly heavier yarn and the tension is better on the stripe than it is on the rest. Oh well, as I say I'm not planning to wear it on tv so it doesn't matter. I really like the colour on me: I can't wear beige without looking as I've recently been dug up, but this is definitely cream. I think I might get the sleeves out of what's left of the main dyelot: if not, I can do another stripe on the second arm.

I finally watched Blood Diamond, which had been sitting in my DVD pile for far too long because I kept feeling too squeamish to watch it. When I was young I made myself watch and read all sorts of things because I felt I ought to, but as I've got older and more awful things have happened to me and my loved ones I've felt less inclined to put myself through virtual pain, and I knew this was going to have some difficult scenes so I'd been putting it off. It does have difficult scenes, but of course it has other things too and at least the violence serves a purpose in that it reates to real events and isn't there just because someone thinks it's time for another explosion. Leo DiCaprio did a brilliant job, not only with the Rhodesian accent but also in looking like the person he was meant to be, a sun-dried white from Southern Africa. I know the make-up does a lot of the work, but it doesn't do it all - he even smoked convincingly, how many young actors can do that? Djimon Hounsou was excellent too, and David Harewood, who's a black British actor that we see on television a lot. I think he's played a lot of policemen, but he has a very wide range: he was certainly convincing as a psychopath here.

I watched it again with the director's commentary (once I get started, I'm quite tough really) and enjoyed that too. Commentaries can be very variable, but Edward Zwick had a lot to say.

Now, The Poisoner, Judith. This is a French television series, three hours long altogether, about a woman, Marie Besnard, who was tried after the War (World War II) for the murder of a number of members of her family - a true story. She was tried three times, for a different number of murders each time, between 1952 and 1961. I'm not going to tell you any more about the plot in case you want to watch it. No Spoilers Here. But I do want to write about the production.

I'm the worst person in the world to watch any sort of historical film with. I get very grumbly about the make-up being wrong, the hair wrong, all sorts of things being wrong. Sometimes I try not to, but I still end up doing it. I don't mind if it's something made-up but if it claims to be history, then it should be right - what's the point otherwise? McKnitus had a post about this recently. And I mind a bit when it's classic literature; I mean, Jane Eyre wouldn't wear heavy make-up, would she? That's part of the point. And Fanny Price wouldn't wear her hair down and wouldn't have huge fixed teeth and big black painted-on eyebrows, and wouldn't run about all the time (have they read the book?). I like Billie Piper, she's a good actress, but that was bad casting and worse direction. The fixed teeth and collagen-packed lips are a recurring problem in films, and on television too. I'm not saying that people should look entirely accurate, complete with missing teeth and hair that was washed once a fortnight, but there must be a place in between, where the actors aren't 18th-century from the neck down and 21st-century from the chin up. And the sets and lighting should make an effort too: there's no point in having halogen-bright lighting in a grubby Dickensian kitchen. So, as you can tell, I can go on like this for hours. But The Poisoner was a revelation: the people really looked like people from the '40s and '50s and 60s; the women looked awful, it has to be said, and everybody looked unhealthy by our standards. It was photographed in that sort of colour where the blacks look like navy blue and nothing looks clean so it gets round the fact that it's set in a period we're used to seeing in black and white. And the people - I thought they must have tracked down a village full of real people who were still living on a post-War diet, but I checked and they're all actors with long careers. It was the make-up and lighting. I think that all the actresses should have got some sort of extra payment as compensation for looking so awful - maybe they did. There is a young woman in it and she was allowed to look a bit fresher and lovelier but she didn't look completely out of place.

The film cleverly doesn't offer a final view on Marie Besnard's guilt but lets you come to your own conclusion. Extraordinarily, all of this took place in Loudun, where the devils were supposedly found three-and-a-half centuries earlier, and the atmosphere of small-town gossip seems to have survived and is captured brilliantly.

I'm not sure how available it is. It isn't on U.S. or U.K. Amazon: it's on French Amazon in a Region 2 version. (The extras include 'Le Making Of'.) My dvd player will play any region dvd, but yours might not. Amazon, as usual, doesn't mention whether it has subtitles (I love you, Amazon, but why don't you show whether dvds have subtitles?) but this must be the one that BBC4 showed, which did, so it must. I think. It would probably be worth keeping an eye on eBay, but there isn't one on sale, anywhere, at present. I wish I hadn't erased my recordings and I hope it's shown again.

I was well enough to get to the Post Office yesterday so I posted the Swallowtail Shawl to Nellie, who is in Canada and probably won't need a warm scarf for a few months yet. Last night at midnight, our humidity was 93.8% and it's back up to 87% tonight, after dropping during the day, but at least it's not so hot now. I'm not good at hot.

And to end on a cheerful note, here's another knitter's LOLCAT.

We Have Lift Off

It's so exciting: I saw one of the osprey chicks take off and flap a couple of feet above the nest this morning, and stay there for quite a while. The chicks are a boy and a girl (like Angelina's twins) and I can't tell them apart, although a lot of viewers of the webcam can, and viewers have been placing bets on who would be first to fly, and when. When I say placing bets, I don't think any money's been changing hands except perhaps in donations to the RSPB. Most imaginary money has been on the girl, who is called Nethy or more prosaically, AY. AY is the name on her leg ring so that she can be identified when she arrives in Africa or anywhere she chooses to stop off, and 'Nethy' is the name she's been given by the wardens: it's the name of one of the local primary schools. The boy is AZ and Deshar.

This clip is from the week before last, and shows Mum arriving, and then Dad arriving with a fish.

.......................................................................... Whooooosh!

They've pulled back the webcam, or switched to a different one, so that we can see the whole nest now. I can't get over nests: how do birds do that? I couldn't build a nest, and I've got opposable thumbs. The present camera is further away and hence we can't hear the chirping and shrieking, which is a relief sometimes and disappointing at others.

Anyway, knitting. The above is not entirely a diversionary tactic, as you might have suspected; there has been knitting. I re-did the first front shaping on Chrissy and started on the second: then I ripped them both and started all over again. I won't bore you with the details, but I will give you a piece of advice. Always check your stitch count before you divide for the front neck. But I expect you knew that already. I watched another couple of epsiodes of Law and Order while I did that. On the Hallmark Channel, Lennie Briscoe is alive and well. I've picked up the stitches for the neck and am progressing round and round with that, although I am sort of thinking of ripping it and changing to a 3 x 1 rib, instead of the 3 x 3.

I wound another skein of the handspun and did a few more repeats of the baby shawl. It's very comforting knitting. I hope Baby finds it comforting to wear; although the mother-to-be has mentioned that it's high summer in Queensland in October, I think they have air con so the little mite will probably need a warm shawl after all.

And there has been dyeing. I had another go at the hank I did before and strengthened all the colours. I felt a lot more confident this time so I really worked it and I had also realized that the dye is actually attracted by the yarn and leaves the water very rapidly, so I made use of that.

Although the yarn is Knitpicks' Bare and is intended for dyeing, it is superwash and some nylon so it's not going to take the colours very richly, but I'm happier with the results than I ever expected to be. They're bright in a springlike way, rather than a totally garish way. If I knitted socks, I'd be perfectly happy to haVe a pair of socks made from it. But I don't knit socks.

When I visited Jean this week, I sneaked a peek at the Princess, which is awe-inspiring. I can see why she's itching to get back to it even although the idea of tackling such a project makes me feel faint and panicky.

This is more my speed. Yes, it's another Forest Canopy Shawl, folks. A friend was round the other evening when I had some balls of Kidsilk Haze scattered about and she was very taken with this shade, which is Meadow, 581. It's a very soft green, which always makes me think of Spring. It's the colour I used for the Scaruffle. So I decided to knit her a little froth to wear around her neck. It's like knitting with whispers, and amazingly quick. I did this bit last night while catching up on last week's Midsomer Murder. I'm using bamboo Addi circs, 4 mm or size 6. Addi bamboos are varnished so they're not as sticky as plain bamboo, but they're not as slippy as metal and it's zipping along.

I'm glad everybody was so taken with Italian for Beginners. I have to confess I've never read anything by Maeve Binchy, but it hadn't occurred to me that the setting was at all un-Danish... whatever that might mean. Apparently it's the highest grossing Danish film ever, because it took off in the U.S.

I can relate to your seeing it in Florence, Joan - in Danish with Italian subtitles - because once when I was in Amsterdam I went to see a film called Made in U.S.A., which turned out to be a Jean-Luc Godard film which even his fans say is 'not too accessible', in French with Dutch subtitles. It was in the days when you went in at the beginning of the film and stayed there until it was finished. My comprehension of written French isn't bad, but I can't follow the simplest conversation so I was totally lost - I probably would have been all right if it had had French subtitles, but of course it didn't.

Judith, since you obviously record the same films as I do from BBC4, have you watched The Poisoner yet? It's absolutely staggering. I'll do a post about it later, because there are things I must do this afternoon.

Where about in Tollcross is your flat, Mcknitus? I could have a look next time I'm in the area. I used to be up that way when visiting HK Handknit of blessed memory; I don't have much cause now but it's not that far away.

Festival of Finishing

There's been a Festival of Finishing round here. The Scaruffle is off the needles: I didn't really block it, just gave it a soak and then squeezed it in a towel and laid it to dry naturally, no pinning. The photo above shows how much yarn was left over from one ball of Kidsilk Haze - not enough for another Scaruffle, but still quite a lot. From being unfeasibly frothy, it settled down and now looks like something you might wear seriously and not as part of a fancy dress costume. It's very pretty. It looks terrible in the last photograph; I'll try to take a better one tomorrow. I didn't think to measure it before soaking but the neck edge is a lot longer. I'll definitely do this again. It would look lovely in Kidsilk Spray, or with some beads scattered here and there, and I'm wondering whether it would work in stocking stitch: the Kidsilk is so light, I don't think the curling would be a huge problem and anyway I could do a few stitches of garter stitch at each edge. In stocking stitch, it could be striped, a sort of mini Earth Stripe Wrap. Very mini.

The Mavis scarf is finished and is blocking. I didn't pin it very rigorously, just enough to make the points nice and pointy. Seeing it in bright daylight today, I realized that the colour that I thought was cream is actually a pale pink, and not really all that pale. The colours around it must have sucked the pink out of it.

While I was doing the Mavis scarf, I decided that I would revisit the neckline of the sweater after all, just undo the cast off and knit another couple of rows with a few decreases, but when I went back to it tonight I could not for the life of me find where I'd finished and woven in the last end. I seem to have managed a perfect bit of finishing. I'll have a look at it in the sunshine tomorrow and see if that helps.

And I think the VLT scarf is finished. I haven't actually cast off yet, because I may as well continue with it until there's space to block it, but it won't be getting much longer. I don't think there'll be any sort of border on it after all. I even thought about putting a fringe on it in the crocus blue, but I feel that would limit it a bit. I may change my mind (surely not?) once it's blocked, but I don't think so. I can see quite a lot of mistakes in it but I never built up any confidence about taking it back, so I carried on regardless. I suppose it's because there aren't any plain rows in it, there's never any basis of sanity that you can return to.

Strangers on a Train was on yesterday afternoon. I watched the beginning and wondered when Margaret Rutherford was going to show up, and then remembered that was The Lady Vanishes, and anyway it was Dame May Whitty, not Margaret Rutherford. I eventually realized that I've never actually seen Strangers on a Train before, although I knew what the plot was and I've seen clips, so I watched it all. I even put my needles down for the last ten minutes; I was quite transfixed.

The Dale Damask pattern went for just over £11 ($22.55) but I don't feel any pangs of regret. Rather more amazingly, Solveig Hisdal's Poetry in Stitches was on eBay last week, and went for nearly $200. I have a copy of that already.

I was successful in my bid for the All Seasons Cotton in Organic yesterday although I almost paid full price for it, so I will start an ASC sweater this week, in either the Organic or the Iceberg. I'm sort of tempted to do something with a bit of gansey patterning on it, since ASC has lovely stitch definition and there's one in No Sheep For You which I could do, or there's Chrissy from Rowan Book 31, seen on the left. There's no surprises or anything to show off here, but I do like a classic, and sometimes they're the hardest patterns to find. Or I could be the last person in the western world to knit Rogue, although I think that I would rather do that in a darker shade, maybe the dark blue ASC that is currently in the wardrobe. Or the grey. Cheerful, eh?

Not Knitting

This week I have been mostly Not Knitting. By this I don't mean that I have been too busy having an exciting and fulfilling life and have not had time to knit; I mean that I have been actually refraining from knitting. I thought that this was because I was feeling guilty about starting something else, and yet also didn't actually know what else I wanted to start, but I finally worked out that it was because I was actively Not Knitting Mavis. I had finished the too narrow back and almost finished the too wide front when I put it down and told myself I had to think about it. This coincided with having another look at the measurements my friend had sent me. After Not Knitting for three days, I finally acknowledged what would have been obvious immediately to a child of six, had I had one handy: I needed to rip it back. So today I sat on the sofa and watched a documentary about tigers and ripped it back; I ripped it back all the way to the chevron stitch because I have decided to lengthen that part of it. Amongst the measurements and notes my friend scribbled down the side of the pattern (see, it isn't all my fault) I suddenly noticed she had said she wants it a bit longer.
So, this time I am going to count the number of stitches, and then I am going to count them again to check and I am going to write them down; I am going to write down my friend's measurements; I am going to write down how many stitches should be on the front and the back; and I am going to do this as if I were awake and not just skating along on automatic. I think I said some of this before, but this time I am going to do it.

On Wednesday the Habu kit arrived from The Knitting Hutch. In spite of my protestations above, this resulted in some frenzied swatching (teeny tiny swatches don't count) at 3 o'clock on Thursday morning (which definitely deosn't count). I went to visit my friend blogless Lindsay during the day and relieved her of a small part of her very impressive knitting needle collection, in the form of a pair of pale gold Boyes, size 5, and a pair of red plastic Susan Bates, size 10. (Here I must tell you that the Habu knitting pattern gives the needle sizes in US, UK and Japanese sizes, but not millimetres. Sigh.) I think the metal Boyes may be the answer to my Kidsilk Haze question; they're much lighter than the other aluminium needles I have (Blogger doesn't like how I spell millimetres or aluminium, silly old Blogger) and being shorter they are more easily managed. Anyway, I did three little swatches on the pale gold needles, one of stainless steel and superfine merino as supplied in the kit (the little pointy one at top left), and two of stainless steel and KSH because I wanted to see how that went. I meant to measure them before I felted them, but I forgot. This is them after felting, or at least after plunging into hand-hot water and scrunching a bit.

I think the KSH works brilliantly with the stainless steel. I won't use it this time as I want to stick to the pattern this time round, but I hope to use it in the future. Here is the teeniest swatch, of palest ivory KSH with the steel.

I will cast on for this just as soon as I have established just which size of needles, and then which needles, I shall use. This could take some time.

Gretchen has suggested, on the strength of the films listed to the right, that I might like L.A. Confidential. Well, I do, sort of. It's one of those films that if it's on, I'll watch it for a while, bit it's not one I watch transfixed from start to finish. I think I find it a little too stagey. James Ellroy's books are so very, very bleak, and I think I find the film just too colourful. It has some wonderful moments though: I think I was as surprised as Kevin Spacey when he - oh, haven't you seen it? I'd better not spoil it then.

Knittingwoman would like a jigsaw of the washcloth, so there is one over there in the sidebar now. I thought it would be easy because of the grid but it isn't. Not at all.

Spring Greens

When I went to see my friend Jean last week, she very generously gave me a goodie bag of leftover Kidsilk Haze from her Earth Wrap. I've been doodling with it ever since.

I started with a light, bright green which makes me think of snowdrops and crocuses and fresh shoots poking though the soil. It's shade 581, Meadow.

You can't quite see its fresh appleyness in these pictures.

I think this is going to be a sampler scarf, while I try out to see which needles I like with the yarn. I started with a pair of 5mm beech needles, but the combination of the yarn and the needles made my skin crawl. I ripped that after one row and cast on again with long 6.5mm metal needles, but after a few rows they were too heavy and, in this weather, too cold.

I did a short stretch with rosewood 5mm dpns, which were quite nice but a bit blunt. I know people sometimes sandpaper their wooden needles to a pointier point but I feel a bit apprehensive about that (I think it would be like cutting your own hair and would end in disaster) and anyway I haven't got any sandpaper. For the long stretches I am now using bamboo 6mm dpns, but they're very basic bamboo, unvarnished and unpolished, and they stick a bit. The points are a bit stubby.
I did another short stretch of stocking stitch with 4mm metal dpns, which was good because they were much lighter than the first metal needles but still a bit cold, and then returned to the 6mm bamboos. I used Kidsilk Haze once in the past, for a project which remains unfinished, ahem, and I did that with 5mm bamboo Addis which were polished and had nice long points. I think I liked them best. If anyone has thoughts on the best needles to use with this yarn, please leave a comment.

Since I took the photos, I've joined in another shade of green. I think it's a dark olive, although I chose it after dark so I may get a surprise tomorrow.

I've ordered a kit for the Habu Kusha Kusha scarf, which uses superfine merino and stainless steel yarn; my hope is that when I've completed that, returning to Kidsilk Haze will be like knitting with chunky tweed.

I ripped back a couple of rows of Mavis tonight, and did the row with the decreases. The only reason I did this was because I'd said here that I would; I was too embarrassed to face you all on Monday morning and tell you that I hadn't done my homework.