Blue, Blue, More Blue and a Little Green

The Habu lesson on Monday was very good. I'm glad I went. I got a little ball of Kasuri Bamboo Tape which I think I will be able to use with the Shosenshi paper, and I am fired to have another go at the Kusha Kusha scarf before I give it up. The workshop gave the necessary clues to deciphering a Japanese pattern, so I should have a better chance of understanding the Setsuko Torii book I bought at the beginning of the year.

I also, quite unintentionally, bought a skein of Old Maiden Aunt's merino sock yarn. It's called Pine, but the greenness reminds me of something else that I can't put my finger on. Terrible photograph.

I didn't mean to buy it, just as I don't intend to knit any more Xmas presents this year, but this just has somebody's name all over it. There's a smidgeon of navy blue on it which made me think of dark blue beads and a little Forest Canopy Shawl, but since then I've been thinking of fingerless gloves rather a lot. Or a cowl? A Forest Canopy Cowl with beads?

The Pinwheel is finished and has been despatched to my friend, the baby's great-aunt. I blocked it with very slight points at the YOs, just enough to give it a bit of movement.
It turns out that this baby isn't Australian as I thought: it's English and is due in December, and is having an Australian cousin in January.
So I may be knitting another Pinwheel for the cousin. It won't be Lorna's Laces Worsted, because the price of anything brought from the US has gone up by 50% since I bought the Hawaii. I have been looking for another superwash 100% wool in the right weight and it isn't easy, but I've found a couple and await a choice being made.

I've been wearing a lot of black this week - no special reason, just feeling dramatic - so I haven't done any fluffy white angora knitting.

I bought a cone of Colourmart cashmere from one of my favourite eBay sellers, cossetter, and swatched a little bit.I've photographed it so close up that it looks like Aran weight, but it's very fine, 4 ply (2/13). I'm not sure what it's for but it's nice to have it.

I also got some laceweight merino from her in the palest pale blue. It's even finer, 2/28,and it's like knitting with a spider's web.
It's not at all a babyish or sweet blue; it's very cool and icy. She has more of it here, and in white too here and here. I'm not sure why I'm telling you this as I want to buy some of the white myself.

The swatches are both Forest Canopy: I wouldn't use such a fine yarn as these for that but I can swatch it now without getting off the sofa and looking for the pattern so that's what I did.

Raveller found this link on the Scottish Screen site to a clip of a Shetland woman blocking a shawl. I can't embed it, but do follow the link. She runs a strand of yarn around the points with a curved needle and then stretches it over wooden pegs in the ground which look as if they are fixtures, outdoors with snow on the ground and a strong wind blowing. The shawl would have been wet and cold too. Her poor cold red hands. I'll think of her next time I'm pinning out a shawl in my heated bedroom.

Some blue sheep have been created for St Andrew's Day.

It's a pity they aren't Blue Faced Leicesters.




For those of you who are already feeling jaded by the downside of Christmas, and fans of the Number 11 Bus, here's a seasonal roundup of Edinburgh scenes.

Scottish Joke

I came across this on LOLCATS tonight and it reminded me of something.



There was a television series some years ago called Scotland on Film which consisted of clips from the Scottish Screen Achive interspersed with clips of people talking about the themes covered. They had tracked down some of the people who were in the clips as children, and got them to talk about what they remembered. It was very interesting and also sometimes very funny.

One woman was reminiscing about a gossip in her town who was the butcher's wife, in the days when game used to hang outside butchers' shop windows, pheasants and droopy rabbits. She said that the wife had a grand view from the shop of everything that was going on - 'keekin' oot atween the rabbits' erses'.

I expect the rest of you can do the translation.

It's worth going to the Archive link and searching on 'knitting' and so on. This is a film from 1939 about rooing, this has a moment of knitting at the beginning, and this is a lovely ad about the virtues of the Knitmaster knitting machine - the women don't sound very Scottish to me, or if they are, they're awfy genteel.

Babies and Brides

I've finished the Pinwheel but this photograph was taken while I was doing the picot bind-off.
I put off starting the bind-off because I was worried that I'd hate it like the first effort and would have to keep looking, but I think it suits the yarn and the pattern very well. I'd forgotten how much I like to do a picot bind-off; it's a very satisfying rhythm and I even manage to count up to 3 and 4 successfully most of the time. I was quite sorry to finish it.

I haven't blocked it yet and will take another photograph when I have. There was quite a bit of yarn left over and I even toyed with the idea of ripping the picot and doing another couple of rows, but then I thought, 'Hat!' If I remember correctly,this is another Antipodean baby so it will need a woolly hat when it's five or six months old, so I did that sort of size instead of a newborn's. It should make a nice set for sitting in a buggy.

Back in the realm of lace, I mentioned to the bride's mother that I could knit the wedding veil and there was a bit of a silence on the telephone, no doubt while she pictured something made in dishcloth cotton, so I shall do some swatches to give her the idea. I know I'm not up to doing something stupendous like the Princess or the Cap Shawl from Victorian Lace Today, but while I was finishing the Pinwheel it occurred to me that it might make a good pattern for a bridal veil, if one used a fine enough silk and a good border. I checked and something like it is on Ravelry, a pattern from Knitter's Magazine.

I also came across lots of Pi Shawls knitted in silk so I shall think about that too. The bride is a gardener so I could probably find some patterns that are fitting; the groom is an accountant so I'm less likely to find anything to represent him. If the bride doesn't want anything lacey knitted for the day, I can always just make her a pretty shawl anyway.

Spinning Fishwife directed me to this lovely find, the Forest Canopy Cowl. I'm pretty sure I see one in my future, possibly even from stash. Yes, of course I've already bought the pattern.

The Barbara Walker Treasury that I bought off eBay arrived; it's the first one so I have stopped fretting about having Volume Two without Volume One. I wonder how long it will be before I absolutely have to have Volume Three.

The Shetland Triangle is coming along too. I put in a lifeline and did one more repeat, but it looks to me as if I can still squeeze in another before I do the border. I'll put in another lifeline first. It's shedding more now that it's grown.

Because I have this Habu event coming up on Monday, I picked up the Kusha Kusha Scarf again, but I'm afraid I also put it back down again too. I'm going to give it one more try on different needles, and if that doesn't work I'm going to give up on this effort. Maybe I should try again using the stainless steel with some Kidsilk Haze: I think that was one of my swatches. I still have a huge skein of grey Shosenshi, so perhaps I'll get moving with that after Monday.

I'm still glued to Between the Lines. They show it on on Sunday and Monday nights, so I have a binge on Tuesday and watch them one after another. The cops aren't smoking so much but the technology is almost as diverting. The lady cop recently opened up her briefcase and took out an enormous mobile phone, about the size of two bricks, and Tony was seen working last week on a - not a laptop because he would have cut off the circulation to his feet if he'd put it on his knee, but a portable computer. I remember we had one at work: it was portable in that it had a handle on it but it weighed a ton because of the battery. I think that was in pre-Windows days and I used to use Wordperfect on it in DOS. I was allowed to get a taxi when I had it because it was too heavy for me to carry to the bus stop.