Snails

I don't have any immediate plans for knitting mittens, but I can't get these out of my mind.
They're from the Knitter's Book of Yarn. I love the snails. I keep thinking they would be cute round the hem of a child's cardigan but a little girl might not like snails. Then again she might.

Monday, Monday

I had a very nice surprise this weekend when Knitting Linguist picked me amongst the ten bloggers who brighten her day. I was amazed and flattered and at first too embarrassed to post about it, but it's part of the deal that I have to nominate another ten, so here is my list, in alphabetical order to stop fights breaking out.

Anna at Mochimochiland makes me smile with her crazy toys which are the very thing you didn't know you were looking for - today, Stackable Cats!

Another Anna, at My Fashionable Life, who hasn't been posting lately because she's been busy with an FO called Stanley, but who writes beautifully and designs such elegant patterns.

Dear Annie Modesitt, who often cheers us up when she must be feeling far from cheerful herself.

Jean Miles, who should really be first. I found Jean on the Internet and then discovered that we live in the same town and that we had lived around the corner from one another for years.

Jessie of What Housework? who dyes beautiful yarns at A Piece of Vermont, and writes wonderful posts with lots of pictures of the animals she and her husband keep acquiring, from peacocks to pigs, not forgetting Milo.

Kathy of Knitting Weather, who doesn't post often enough but when she does, she posts these beautiful photographs of Alaska which take my breath away - as well as photographs of knitting, of course.

Knitting Linguist herself, of course, who writes long interesting posts and causes me to spend even more money on books than I would anyway.

Kristin Nicholas of Getting Stitched on the Farm, who lives in Massachusetts with even more animals than Jessie and writes about her beautiful colourwork and also about lambing and sunflowers.

Rabbitch, who must be getting sick of being nominated.

Ted at Knitterguy, who doesn't exactly cheer me up every time, but I'm always happy to see that he's posted and I like reading him and seeing his breathtaking lace.

Speaking of Knitting Linguist, she had a post on Saturday about going to the zoo; that and the tiger documentary that I watched while I was ripping Mavis and getting her back on the needles (three times) had me thinking about when I used to go to the zoo with my Dad when I was small. I was always mad about animals, but particularly the cats. Edinburgh Zoo is built on a hill, so we started at the bottom with the sea lions (Californian Sea Lions, according to the label: I wonder what they thought about ending up in chilly Scotland), past the birds and the reptiles and the monkeys and apes, who were beside the ice-cream kiosk.

My Dad knew that one of the chimps smoked so he used to throw him a cigarette and a match; the chimp would strike the match, light the cig, and enjoy a nice contemplative smoke. O tempora, o mores.

Past the bears, including Jim and Queenie the polar bears who never produced a cub, in spite of Edinburgh's very good breeding record. After Jim died and they had a closer look at him, 'he' was discovered to be a girl, which explains it.

Past the penguins, of which there were so many they had to keep giving them away and supplied zoos all over the world. (See, I was an avid reader of labels from an early age.)

Then the cats' enclosures were arranged up the last bit of the hill, arranged from the smallest like civets and things to the largest, the tigers. For a long time there was a wolverine in this stretch which puzzled me endlessly because a wolverine isn't a cat but a sort of very large weasel; I suppose the enclosure was in some way the best for this animal, but to my already very organized way of thinking it was baffling. At that time the tigers were Rajah and Ranee (although I called them Mr and Mrs Tiger, I'm afraid) who had lots of cubs over the years and who used to lie around watching us with a great deal of disdain, puzzling no doubt why so many exhausted human beings struggled up quite a steep hill to stare at them. We would then stroll down the hill, perhaps pick up another ice cream and find ourselves back at the sea lions and my dad would say, 'Is there anything you want to have another look at before we go?' and I would squirm engagingly and say, 'Can we go back and see Mr and Mrs Tiger again?' Amazingly, we sometimes did.

Anyway, back to the knitting. I got Mavis back on the needles and knitted quite a lot more of the chevron bit. I got out a sheet of paper and made lots of notes and calculations. Today I am going to count the stitches and separate the body into a back and a front, and once I've done that I'm going to check the number of stitches. At least twice.

On Sunday night I scored some Boye needles on eBay. It's a vintage collection of different sizes and two lengths and it includes the sizes I need for the Habu scarf, which is nice.

Taz, if you click on the picture of the washcloth, you should be able to see the pattern more clearly.

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.