Friday, March 24, 2017

I had to go down to Tesco today for this and that. I bought my cider to drink on Sunday – the mid-Lent break. It’s perhaps a bit dangerous to have it in the house untouchable for a whole day and a half, but I think I’m up to it. I was there in the car, and it’s heavy. I often stop at Tesco on the way back from Mass – but they have been known to run out of Weston’s Vintage on a Sunday, and I drink no other.

So it’s here.

I had another good day with Tannehill. The third skein has been joined in. I think I have earned my weekend of Fair Isle.

I didn’t take a picture. I kept putting it off because I was going to knit a few more rounds, and then, of course, the light was gone. But tomorrow I won’t knit it at all, and the light promises to be good, so there we are. And on Sunday the clocks go forward and we’ll have even more light.

Madtosh is notorious for having skeins of different values. This third skein of Tannehill is very dark, and has produced the sharpest colour-change line I’ve ever had. You’ll see. I’m not going to worry about it. My husband doesn’t go out and about. What he wants is a cosy DK sweater asap.

MaureeninFargo has written to me to say that she didn’t adapt Meg’s video-vest to make her own cardigan (as I said yesterday) – Meg did it herself. It’s the cover picture, indeed, of her book “Knitting”. In view of recent events, you may be surprised to hear that I found that book exactly where it belonged, with EZ and Meg’s other books. It sounds from what she says there as if vest and cardigan evolved simultaneously.

Kate Davies has posted an interesting blog entry called Patients and Doctors. No knitting in it at all. It sounds as if she is writing a book about her stroke.

Kristie (comment yesterday), my hesitation about knitting the museum-quality sweater for which Jamieson&Smith offer a “temporarily unavailable” kit, would not be the knitting of a whole Fair Isle sweater in fingering weight. That’s fun. It would be the fiddliness of knitting all those different lozenges, and of knitting the peerie pattern as the v-neck edging.

Meg says, in the introduction to the cardigan pattern in “Knitting”:

“Those who have experienced the excitement and contentment of knitting a true Fair Isle pattern need not be told of the pure pleasure involved. Elizabeth once described Fair Isle knitting as ‘painting with a different color in each hand and never having to rinse the brushes.’ For me it is like going into a trance.”


Just so. All those different lozenges might spoil it.

6 comments:

  1. Thanks to all for the compliments on my knitting! I knit my Traditional Fair Isle Vest from the J&S museum pattern, using the brighter Shetland Heritage Madder rather than the called for Berry Wine. I love all the different lozenges but you are very right, Jean, in thinking that all the different lozenges do interrupt the rhythm of the knitting. I determined after knitting it that a different lozenge each row is quite enough variety for me!

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  2. I'm all about the rhythm. That's why I don't like intarsia or stitch patterns that are just too fiddly.

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    1. Some of Kaffe's patterns, Tumbling Blocks for example, achieve a sort of rhythm in intarsia.

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  3. Anonymous4:00 PM

    Your quotes from Meg Swanson and EZ made my day. I hadn't read them before, and they're spot on.
    -- Gretchen (aka stashdragon)

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    1. Anonymous4:02 PM

      (By which, I mean that I hadn't read those remarks before, not that I'd never read anything by Swanson and EZ).
      -- G (aka s)

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  4. rosesmama6:05 PM

    re: lozenges. The seems they are all the same size. It wouldn't be hard to limit each section to one or two? So the same number of different ones, just not at the same time. Knit on in meditation.

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