No More Twist

Fans of Beatrix Potter might recognize the title of this post. It's from The Tailor of Gloucester and is the note left for the tailor when his mice ran out of silk thread (twist) to stitch the last buttonhole.

Image copyright Frederick Warne

You can see the original of the embroidered waistcoat and more of the illustrations here, on the V&A site.

The plain part of the Purity shawl took about one ball of Kidsilk Haze. It's easy knitting: the only thing you have to remember is to keep your increases nice and loose so that the edge isn't tight. The shape is a straight edge and a very wide, shallow U, both of which have a flounce of lace added to them.

 Quite a lot of people on Ravelry have just added the lace to one edge which gives a less fussy result and while I was working on it I thought I would have to cast off the straight edge and pick up stitches on the U, which I thought would (a) be a lot of faff and (b) make the lace edge a tiny bit rigid at the changeover. However, while I was peering at finished ones on Ravelry I realized that it wasn't necessary to do this - the U stretches out a lot and it makes a nice line across the back of the neck, with a slight rise at the nape. I'm glad I noticed that because it saved me a lot of work and actually looks better.

The lace is easy enough if you're a lace knitter, a six-stitch repeat which is very forgiving because of the flounced effect created by the row of YO K1 before the lace starts. I'm sure mine is full of mistakes but only I will see them. There's a fancy cast-off which I almost thought I wasn't going to do because I thought it meant turning the piece a lot, but when I tried it it was easy peasy and very pretty. It's a kind of crochet cast-off, done on knitting needles. So I've learnt something new.

The lace edging took about one ball of Kidsilk Haze too, making two balls for the shawl. Except that if you knit it all on 5.5mm needles (as in the pattern) at my tension, then you run out of yarn about a yard from the end.

So I hot-footed it back to my dealer, the Edinburgh branch of John Lewis, to get another ball, but not only was there no more Cream KSH from that dyelot, there was none in Cream at all. Quelle horreur. I did have a sneaky thought about finishing it off in some Kidsilk Night I have which is Starlight, a buff pearl with sparkles in it - if it had been for me, I would have done it without hesitation - but this is for a wedding shawl and one really can't cheat then, at least not when it's someone else's.

However, the sterling Lindsay at John Lewis Edinburgh  reached out to the JL Rowan mafia and asked if anyone else had a ball of Cream lurking and thanks to their eternal vigilance, the shawl can be finished. Claire in Cheadle rang me (it was on my birthday that all this happened, which made it even more exciting) with the right colour in the right dyelot, and organized its dispatch northwards. A ball was found by Sarah at Trafford too.

I have it now but I haven't brought myself to finish the cast-off yet. How could anyone bear to finish this?

As some knitters seek out babies to knit shawls for (you know who you are), I think I shall be seeking out brides just so that I can make another one of these.

Thank you Lindsay, and Claire, and Sarah, and all the other Rowan ladies who checked your stock. I don't know what I would have done without you.

Henri

Cat
Oh Lynne, thank you for reminding me. I had Henri in my list of things to be added to the blog and then he sank out of my mind. Here he is now. Be sure to turn on your speakers.



Knitting
The latest Pinwheel got ripped again. I weighed the yarn before I started doing the edge and after a couple of segments it was plain I didn't have enough. There didn't seem to be any white Paton's Jet left in the British Isles and I had gone off the idea of blue. What if they have a little girl later on? There was however a small cache of the yarn in cream, and I acquired that.

I got the original ten-pack of white on eBay for a trifle so it was a bit galling to have to pay the full price for the last three balls, but never mind. I think it's pretty.

I was pleased with the end result, and the friend who commissioned was pleased too, so Phew.

By the time that was finished I was only too happy to switch from my lengthy not-very-fine-yarn-in-garter-stitch binge and turned my attention to some froth. My Polish friend is getting married this summer and I offered early on to make her a shawl or a veil, but she said that was too old fashioned so I turned my attention elsewhere. But of course, I yearned. The dress she has chosen is strapless and I can't help wondering the priest will be altogether happy about her baring her shoulders in church. Or have priests and ministers given up on that front? Anyway, I couldn't resist, and if she doesn't wear it on her wedding day, she can use it to keep warm next winter.

I have liked Sharon Miller's Purity shawl from the first time I saw it in Rowan 43 and somehow two balls of Kidsilk Haze in a light, luscious, gauzy cream shade found their way into my sitting room. (Oddly, it's just called 'Cream', and not some interestingly Rowanesque name like Cloud or Sneeze.) 

 I'm doing the version which only has the lacy flounce along one edge. It's heavenly, like knitting with ice cream or candy floss, or the froth on a cappuccino, and I don't really want to finish it.

Telly
Yes, Knitlass, I think Saga is meant to be somewhere on the spectrum but it all seems very unlikely - would you ask an autistic person to conduct interviews? And while we're on the subject, do they really not keep any record of police interviews in Sweden? And it's one of those very scary serial killers who seems to be able to walk through walls and influence people's behaviour from a  distance, and I just spend too much time thinking, 'But nobody would do that,' about all the characters, all the time. And the make-up department must have used up the entire Scandinavian supply of putty-coloured foundation, as all the characters look on the brink of unconsciousness. But no doubt I shall watch it to the bitter end, which is this Saturday night, just so that I can complain about it.

Ryan
Sad news. The Handmade Ryan Gosling hs got a book contract so the website is saying bye bye. Here's a last thought for us to cling to.

Not Much To See Here

I wanted to write a post tonight but I'm really too addle-pated* to manage very much so this will have to do.*

Knitting
Knitting has been  going round and round,

then rippity rippity,  then round and round again.

I am suffering mild anxiety about having enough yarn. There doesn't seem to be any white Jet left in the UK but there's pale blue so it will be saveable if the worst comes to the worst. I will know soon.

 This is a Chruchmouse Yarn and Teas Shoulder Cozy, which I have had my eye on for a while. When I wear the Crispy Crunchy Cowl I find myself shrugging it down to keep my shoulders warm but it isn't really deep enough so I've decided this is the answer. It's a bit like the beautiful Shadow[] Box, but not nearly so much knitting.

 It's designed to be made from Rowan Summer Tweed and Kidsilk Haze held toogether, but I think it's good in Kidsilk Aura too and I have a few balls of light and dark grey which blink at me balefully from my stash from time to time. Actually, I don't think I've seen any of these on the Ravelry project pages that don't look good, whatever the yarn and it looks good worn as a cowl in the neck of a coat too.


I was well enough to get out last week and meet a friend for coffee (hi, Lindsay!) and she was wearing a beautiful Opal shawl in lilac Aura. Opal is another pattern that looks good in almost any yarn and I wondered for the umpteenth time why I don't have one, so I've ordered another couple of balls of Aura in Coral to add to the two I already have. I love my Miss Marple but it isn't quite big enough. I'm not a huge pink fan but I do like coral and have arrived at the age where I need a touch of pink near my face to stop people asking me if I feel all right. 

 Ryan is still thinking about knitting, and us.

 from The Handmade Ryan Gosling

Telly
Inspector Montalbano has finished for a while. I was getting very used to my weekly dose of Mediterranean sun and Sicilian insults. I used to think how lovely it would be to go and stay in Montalbano's house and go swimming in the morning and drink coffee on the balcony - as a sort of hopeless dream because of course it's fictional, but then I discovered that actually you can: it's let as a bed-and-breakfast in the summer. This means that I have considered it and decided not to go, so I can't have the same idle dream now when I watch it, which is rather a shame. BBC4 has been showing them out of sequence but it doesn't matter a great deal: the sun is always shining, Livia is always cross with him, Mimi is always chasing a woman, and the food always looks delicious.

It's been replaced by The Bridge, A Swedish / Danish co-production.  It looks promising but I'm concerned that the heroine is too bonkers even for a televison maverick detective. She exhibits so much asocial behaviour that one can't really believe she has come up through the ranks of any police force, and as usual on television, although she's distracted to the point of incoherence, she knows how to put an outfit together, usually one which involves a ration of cleavage.  Funny, that. I gave up on Homeland because Claire Danes just seemed to be batsh*t crazy all the time and I could only believe in it when Mandy Patinkin showed up and put in a spot of calmness and good acting. I don't see the point of inserting female main characters into these shows if they're just as unhinged as the male ones we're used to, but that seems to be the way it is.
 
This grumpy little cat was on LOLCATS ages ago and I've kept her on my desktop ever since. It's not so much that I acknowledge the state of mind in myself, although I do, but that it takes me right back to work and certain colleagues.

 *I've just spent five minutes trying to remember the word 'cognitive'. That doesn't bode well, does it?