Thursday, September 08, 2011


Today is James's 50th birthday. That leaves only Greek Helen. Happy Birthday, James.

Mourning shawl

148 rows done. Charting those final letters has now become rather urgent. I asked our niece yesterday what her name was, and a good thing I did – there were no unexpected names, but the ones I already knew appear in an unexpected order. She, like her mother, travels under the second of her given names.

I made a small design decision yesterday, too. The thing is: assume the central portion is going to come out square. In one corner, the lower right, are the initials of my husband’s sister who died in March: MCRM. In the middle is the year: 2011. I had planned to put our niece’s initials, ECR as I now know, in the upper left-hand corner, turned the other way. Now I think not: that would be all right without the date in the middle, but as things are it will be better to orientate them in the same direction as the other two panels.

So I don’t need Rorem’s upside-down alphabet after all, this time.

We have now entered what I think might be called the time-frame for the arrival of my new madelinetosh scarlet yarn from Amsterdam. (I ordered it last Saturday.) There’s only about a week of shawl-knitting left, so it had better turn up soon.

Qiviut

Thanks for the link to Windy Valley, anonymous. The colours look promising, all right – but all of the qiviut yarn seems to be lace-weight (understandably, given the price). That’s how I remember things from my own qiviut phase. I knit my mother an Amedro stole in it.

But I was struck yesterday with the fact that Caryll Designs offers the hand-painted colours in fingering weight – the naturals come in sport-weight as well. That still doesn’t achieve the worsted-weight you mention, anonymous, but it makes it possible to think of knitting my husband an extravagantly expensive and beautiful vest. With the price of heating fuel these days, it might even pay for itself.

Knitting oddities

The brain was knitted by Dr. Karen Norberg, and was on display at the Boston Museum of Science when I cut this item out two and a half years ago. The picture of Cate Blanchett was exactly two years ago, September, 2009. To my mind, fully worthy of the late lamented blogspot You Knit What?













2 comments:

  1. Gosh was that Cate Blanchett dress two years ago already, doesn't time fly!

    Happy Birthday to James.

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  2. I can't say that I'd consider the Cate Blanchett dress to be a good choice for daily wear, but as a red carpet piece, I think it's very whimsical and fun. And she looks as though she's wearing it with a good sense of humor, as is appropriate.

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