Cool again

Knitting
I tried on Rubble eventually, although I haven't had another look at it since the weather cooled down enough to actually wear it and I haven't photographed it. I think it's OK. I'll have a look at it soon and report back.

I have been blasting on with Boxy. I'm making the seamed version, because like Jean and Sally Melville I think that garments hang much better if they're properly structured and seams help to give them structure. I don't seem to hate purling at all nowadays, and in fact probably feel exactly the same about purling as I do about knitting. Also, something with as many stitches as Boxy would get wildly twisted if knitted in the round, and I would get RSI in my shoulder, so flat it is.

I spent some time labouring over what size to choose, peering at other people's choices, but I eventually decided to do as Joji says, and chose the size that fits my arm circumference even although it's a bit bigger elsewhere. I'm making it slightly shorter than the pattern: the largest size is three inches longer than the smallest and one of the things I learnt from watching What Not To Wear is that long tops make your legs look short. Well, maybe not your legs, but certainly mine.

The purl rows at the shoulder don't really show up because of the marl, but I expect they add to the structure too. The pattern is well written and even I didn't make any mistakes doing the second side. At least, I don't think I did.

The yarn is lovely. The two plies are fairly loosely twisted together but I expect them to fluff up and become more dense once it's finished and washed: it needs a hand-hot wash to get the oil off. It's not totally cashmere-soft at the moment but certainly very nice to work with, and very airy. If the shape turns out to be a terrible mistake I can just chop the arms off and use it as a blanket.

Remember my floorboards are six inches wide. This picture shows the front and the first six inches or so of the back. Since the cashmre is so soft and doesn't wear very well,I might make some plain black elbow patches, but I'll have to see first where the sleeves fall and if it actually has elbows.

Telly
Last Tango in Halifax is being shown in the US and they're filming a second series. I think I was watchhing The Fall last time I wrote; it was terrifiic but I hope I'm not giving anything away if I say the last episode was a huge letdown. What Remains finished on Sunday and we're still reeling from the ending.

Those of you who follow the Idiosyncratic Fashionistas and live in the UK might like The Fabulous Fashionistas documentary showing on Channel 4 this week, on - oh, tonight, at 10.00.I expect it'll be available on 4OD.

And on Wednesday there's a doco on BBC4 called Knitting's Golden Age. It seems to be the first in a series about textiles but the website isn't giving much away, and the Radio Times mention is full of the usual patronising nonsense, but we shall see.

Family Snaps
Thanks very much for the comments about the photographs. Yes, I'm very lucky, Mette.  I wish I were well enough to organize them properly and annotate them, but at least I can post some of them here. Here's another one.

This is my great-grandfather, Robert Glen, in the late 1920s. He's the one in the wing-collar, bowler hat and very shiny shoes. He was a butcher and cattle-dealer so those must be some of his beasts, as we used to say in Scotland. His son married the dark-eyed girl you saw in an earlier post. He was still working when he died on the 2nd of July 1929, at the age of 94, and he only died because his wife had died on the 13th of June. My grandfather buried them 3 weeks apart.

Hot hot hot

I wrote this a while ago and didn't get round to posting it,  but rather than changing all the tenses I'm just going to post it and then start a new one.

Some time in August

Knitting
I've hardly knitted a stitch since my last post. It has been so horribly hot that I couldn't think about it, not even the big cotton heap that is Rubble: I finished seaming it and gave it a wash but I couldn't bear to try it on.

Provanmill is a part of Glasgow

When I say horribly hot, I am aware that this sounds a bit ridiculous to the rest of the world. I have family in Brisbane, Australia so it's one of the places on the weather app that I check most days: in Brisbane it is currently winter and the temperatures are much the same or hotter than those in Edinburgh, where it is currently summer.

I am a bit of a limp rag at the best of times but in this I am a damp, limp rag. My father used to call me Gollum but in fact he wasn't much better, as it's from him that I inherited an extreme sensitivity to sunlight. So although there has been much staying indoors, there has been little knitting.

I haven't entirely stopped buying yarn, however, weak-willed creature that I am.  I bought a skein of madeinetosh Merino Light in Curiosity from eBay, thinking that it was a grey which would go with some of my blues, but when it arrived it has an undertone of greenish yellow which won't work with them at all. I might sell it. And I've been buying hugely expensive quantities of Wollmeise merino to make a Boxy, gathering it from thither and thon with the help of Ravelry stashes.

However, while I was waiting for it to arrive I had a casting-on accident. What happened was that I was shifting stuff off the sofa because I had a visitor coming. When I bought this sofa a few years ago a friend asked me if I was happy with it and I said, Well, it seems to be mostly covered with knitting and wool and books, but it's very comfortable, and she said, 'So it's really just a very expensive shelf?' Which it sort of is. Anyway, I was clearing wool and books off the shelf and carrying them through to put them on the bed (this is a small flat) and  as I do every time I do this I had to pick up the bag containing some Colourmart cashmere that I bought last winter. (The printout inside the bag says it was the winter before, but that can't be right, can it?) It's a black and white twist, slightly thick and thin.

 I'd been swatching Wollmeise on different sizes of needles so I had the required gauge for Boxy at the front of my mind, so  I fished the little Colourmart swatch out of the bag and what do you know?

Bootee Binge

Knitting
You're absolutely right, jeanfromcornwall, it's knicker pink, a colour which haunted our youth, plainly. As far as I can see however, later generations aren't scarred in the same way so I took a deep breath and handed the blanket over and it appeared to be very welcome. I also handed over a rabbit, one of the Jellycat soft toys, which I find irresistible, and it appears to be very popular.

The baby is a beautiful little girl and the first time she met me she slept happily in my arms, so she's obviously perceptive and intelligent too. Then I got sidetracked into bootees. I like Elizabeth Zimmermann's pattern in The Opinionated Knitter and I couldn't resist casting on a whisper of Kidsilk Haze in Cream.

And then another one.

Impossibly cute. I followed these up with another pair in madelinetosh Merino Light which I think is called something Rose.

I must do another pair soon.

I'm sorry to have taken so long to post, Amy - I got the idea into my head that I really must finish Rubble before I could do another post here, but I've decided that doesn't matter. The second half has taken much longer than the first; I'm not sure why because I like the pattern and I want to have it finished but somehow it keeps sitting there and not growing. But now it's nearly done.

This is a very bad photograph but it's late at night: you'll have to forgive me. It's nearly done, just one more cuff to do and the neck. I'm not going to do the ribbed neck: I'll just pick up the stitches, knit a round, and cast off. It looks huge but every time I try it on it looks about right, which is worrying in that it means that I'm huge but reassuring in that it means I've made it the right size.

I've been called away for some emergency cat-sitting or I would have got it finished this weekend. I'll take something smaller and lighter, perhaps the denim Shetland Triangle which you all thought I'd abandoned. I've been thinking for a while that after all those lacy shawls I used to do, I have recently had a long spell of being a project knitter. Franklin has obligingly written an article about this in the latest issue of Twist Collective. Although I've enjoyed a lot of these big plainish projects, my thoughts have secretly been turning to froth again and it might be nice to test my enthusiasm on the Triangle.

And matinee jackets. Yes, Mary Lou, I think it's more a British expression. After some consideration I don't think it's the same usage as a matinee at the theatre, but more a distinction between nightwear and daywear. A baby at the time of my Granny's knitting pattern book would have worn a long flannel nightie which tied at the back, and been put into knitted garments for daytime.

The Past
I have had this photograph for a long time, since my mother died and I acquired her collection of family photographs.

It shows my mother's mother's parents, outside their house. Do click. They were Jessie and Robert Forrester. I like their vegetable garden. Jessie died before my grandmother married so I've never heard anything about her: my mother didn't know her as she did her paternal grandparents. I've wondered from time to time where the house was but I thought I didn't know, until one weekend recently when it occurred to me to google a couple of names that have cropped up in family stories. And what should I find?

It's at Mill of Torr, Stirlingshire. The vegetables have vanished from the garden and it all looks a lot tidier now.

These were taken on the doorstep.

My Granny is the dark-haired girl on the right. (She's not the knitting Granny; that was my father's mother.)

Her brother Jim is the handsome man at the left in the top photograph. I don't know who anyone else is. You can see that country people didn't buy new shoes that would only be worn once for a wedding, but they did polish their boots very well.

This is Granny and Jim many years later. I'm almost certain this was taken against the wall of the outbuilding in the first two pictures.

The walking sticks are Jim's. He had very bad arthritis. You can see he still has his moustache and his lovely smile.