Gottit

It had to be there somewhere, and I managed to find it. How to increase the width of the repeats in Old Shell. There is a lovely circular shawl in "A Gathering of Lace" which uses precisely this manoeuvre, and the chart provided tells me that my workings out were right on track. So I can make a start.

Correction. I have made a start. I have wound the skein of Helens Lace (colour Bucks Bar) that I brought home from last year's Knitting and Stitching show. It is all getting so exciting: I may need to go and have a little lie down.

Thinking back to the show, I still find myself thinking of the lovely Swedish mother and daughter that we met on the way there, and hoping that they found it as good as they had hoped. It is one of the games my daughter and I play on the tube on the way there - spot the crafty ladies. Almost as big a pleasure as the yarn is the selection of interesting strangers we get to talk to.

Back on track

All calculations done and the sweater is going fine - and now that have stopped coughing long enough to hold the camera steady, you can have a picture to prove it! That's the back folded and the start of the front on the needles. And the orange stuff is some working out that I am doing.

I could not think what I wanted to do in the way of lace until Vivienne returned my copy of Shetland Hap Shawls, and in it there is a picture of a half-hap - that is to say, a triangle with a border around two sides and an edging around the lot. That is what I want to do. This shawl has a single border of Old Shell, which, to make the edge curved rather than cornered, increases the number of woolovers at intervals. But I can't find a recipe for doing that, and I am trying to work out how it is done. Does anybody out there know how to do it? I would be SO grateful if somebody could tell me.

I have just made the happy discovery that if you click on the link to the book, the shawl I am wanting to do is shown on the second from the right, bottom row.

Spot the difference.

I really am not very good at this swatching business. It used to be so simple. We went to the shop on the corner, chose the pattern and wool, and Mrs. Brown sold us two ounces and put the rest in a big paper bag with our name on it, for when we could afford it. And the jumpers turned out pretty much as we hoped they would.

As I merrily knitted last night, I looked at the work and thought, "Yes, that will be wide enough." Then I thought "It is DEFINITELY going to be wide enough." Then "Just how many times is this supposed to go round me?" As soon as I got enough spare carpet to lay it out on, I measured, and the answer to the last question was "Approximately one and a half."

The last half hour of the day was spent in deep thought, aided by the calculator. Ah well: spring is just around the corner, frogs should be waking up.

I appear to be knitting a sweater.

I hadn't decided anything. I was just idly swatching. then I looked down and realised that I had cast on for the back of a sweater. Ah well, these things that decide themselves are usually the best decisions. The yarn is Stylecraft Linen Look , colour Palm, 65% acrylic 7.5% linen 17.5% viscose, and it is making a nice supple fabric. I bought it on my last trip to Knitwits in Penzance - a small shop that gives you a big welcome. They are so friendly and interested in there.

The shape is an EZ percentage - the hybrid with the shoulder yoke, but I am not doing it in the round untilI get to the armholes. The wondrous advantage of learning to knit "English" is that purl has no fears for me. In fact I believe it helps to keep my fingers happy to have that slight change of movement every so often.

So no picture of the pattern - just my note book in which, THANK GOODNESS, I wrote it all down last time I did this one!

Something to treasure.

It is rather unfortunate that the second hand bookshop in our town is right next door to the bank, so that when I go to pay in, I often find myself paying in to not quite the right place! But this week's find is something I have no trouble justifying. Just look at the typeface on the cover. I saw that on the spine and it drew me without my realising why.
Then look at where the authoresses taught, and put that together with the date (1913) (I had hoped to take a better picture) Arts and crafts and Macintosh and all those wonderful influences.
Then there is the wonderful frontispiece, of a design by Margaret Swanson.

The book is a handbook for teachers of girls from five to six, up to age fourteen and is crammed with designs and examples of work to give the children to do. The nicest thing about it is the philosophy of education embedded in the courses - basically: help the children choose their materials and colours, and let it be enjoyable - at all costs avoid drilling them in long boring seams that have to be perfect before they can go on to do something pleasing to the senses. Firstly they say the children are not capable of doing the fine boring work when they are little (quite so) and secondly there is no surer way of turning them off. They will find a way to do the boring work, when it becomes necessary to achieve a finished article they really want to make.

The last thing that I want to show from the book is the only mention of knitting and is that interesting method of darning knitting so that it looks like a knitted fabric. I do know that my daughter Vivienne has got an earlier book with a reference to it, but here is another one to put into the timeline.

A minor thought

At last a finished object! The jumper in Jaeger Matchmaker bought at the Knitting and Stitching Show, has made it off the needles. So that makes it about three months. Not bad for me. It is a very simple pattern, but I just needed another winter warmer, and now I can spend ages agonising about what to do next, because there is nothing actually needed.
Here is the thought which struck me as I was washing a bowlful of home-made socks. Why do I like them so much? Because they all have names. Either the yarn, or where I bought it - each pair has a back-story. That is more than you can say for a five pack of black cotton that you sling in the trolley in the supermarket.That is also the reason why I tend to hand wash them, even though most of them would quite happily go through the washing machine programme. I just like the opportunity to look them over and see them just a little bit more closely than way down there at the end of my legs.

Now I am going to split the rest of the day between cross stitch and deep communing with Victorian Lace Today. I have got 1250 metres, and the Addi lace needles.