Knitting Galore

Viborg has been bombed – yarn bombed, happily, which is so much nicer than the awful goings-on in Boston earlier this week.

A couple of trees on the edge of Borgvold, a little park by the lakes, have been wrapped in colourful knitting. Before we had two days of stormy weather, there was also a sign on the fence next to the multi-trunked tree, saying ‘There is so much work you never see’ – which is why I suspect locked-out teachers to be behind this.

Yes, the school lockout is still in effect; it has lasted three full weeks now, and rumours are that the government is not going to interfere after all. At Victor’s school, some degree of teaching is being done by teachers who are employed as civil servants: so the ninth graders, over whom the final tests are looming, are getting some lessons, and the sixth, third, and second graders, as well.

Victor is in eighth grade, so he is concentrating on his guitar lessons and practice. And he should: he has been entered to audition for the Talent Programme at his music school – very exiting!

But I digress. One major point of conflict and discussion in all this mess is the apparent inability of politicians and people in general to understand that teachers have more work to do than merely classroom teaching; this also pertains to the negotiations over the conditions for high school teachers earlier this year. For some obscure reason, teachers in all levels of the school system are accused of ‘sitting around and drinking coffee’ half the day instead of working. And well, yes, teachers do sit around drinking coffee half the day – while they work. Preparation, grading, meetings, &c – all this is invisible work and thus susceptible to denigration by those who do not know what it is to teach, or do not care.

And this is why it seems probable to me that the yarn bombing was done by teachers.

The Knitting

I wanted to report back on the Ocean socks that I knitted recently, just to say how much I love them! Love the yarn, love the pattern, really enjoyed knitting them – and then I had them sitting there in all their pristine glory for several days before putting them on to wear for real, not only to model.

Because herein lies truly the eternal Dilemma of the Hand-knit Socks: you want to wear them all the time, because they are soft and warm and pretty, but you don’t want them to be worn out, ever. And you know that yet they will be worn out, that a thinning of the fabric will occur, and eventually a hole under the heel or the ball of the foot; and you will have to choose whether to try darning them or chucking them out. Thus hand-knit socks can teach us a lesson about the transience of beauty: like the flowers that are appearing now, in springtime, must wither and die at the end of summer, so all socks must be worn out. But as new flowers will appear next spring to replace the dead, thus new socks can be knitted to fill the shoes of the worn out (sorry about the awful pun, couldn’t help it).

And with the abundance of gorgeous sock patterns and yarns available, the transient nature of the hand-knit sock is live-with-able. Though a thing of beauty really is a joy forever, the bittersweet knowledge of its impermanence can enhance the enjoyment of it. So, I wear my Ocean socks with love and pride, relishing their warm softness and knowing that they won’t last forever – although I can’t help wishing they would, sometimes.

But there will be other hand-knit socks: I am down the leg of the first Fosco sock and onto the heel. This pattern has several interesting features: a cuff with cross-over ribbing, followed by a complicated cable going down the side of the leg – the two socks have separate charts – and a combined cable and eyelet pattern on the remaining part of the leg. So far, so good. Next came the Welsh heel, which I haven’t tried before, so this is really a quite interesting project. Right now I am fiddling with the beginning of the gusset: my stitch count may be off, as I can’t get the instep pattern to fit – I’ll have to look at it again and work it out.

I promised you pictures of my two most recent FOs, the Wilhelmina shawlette and the driftwood cardigan, so here goes, straight from the spring sunshine in the garden today:

The KAL for the Comfort of a Friend Woman Shawl started on Tuesday; I inadvertently jumped the gun and dove into swatching while it was morning over here – and seven hours later, the official start was announced. Oops. And then later, next day I think, I realised that the plan for the KAL has the cast-on happening NEXT WEEK. By that time, I had done the ribbing and was started on the body increases. Oops again. Almost as if I had planned it, by the time I had done half of the increases I realised that the shawl was getting too wide too quickly, so I frogged all of the garter part and did it over, increasing on every 6^th row instead of every 4^th.

Anyway, I am not the only one to have worked ahead. To fill the whole five weeks of the KAL I can either string this shawl out, so to speak, by only working on it once in a while – or I can finish it and then go on to knitting the doll and girl versions that I want to make for my niece Laura, anyway. Or I could string the adult shawl out by working on the little ones alongside it. Decisions, decisions ...

The Books

As I mentioned last week, I have been listening to Quiet by Susan Cain, about introverts in an extravert society. It is no wonder that I enjoyed this book: any book that caters to your own personality traits, confirming their validity and values, is easy to love. Cain provides both anecdotal and scientific evidence for the distinction between the two major personality types treated in the book: stories of people and their lives, how they handle or fail to handle the challenges they meet; and studies done by psychologists and psychiatrists in babies, children, college students. We get a description of a Tony Robbins seminar – that left me tired just hearing about it – and later in the book advice for couples, parents, employers and employees on how to respect the needs of introverts in a world that continually demands outgoingness.

Next up in my Audible downloads is Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, a history of biology, evolution, language, culture, invention, and warfare to explain how it is that Europeans have conquered so many other parts of the world instead of the other way round. The whole of the explanation can, not surprisingly, be summed up in the title of the book.

This book is in no way a justification of the white European’s superiority or claim to rule the world; rather a list of natural and geographical factors that have coincided to make Eurasia the place where ‘civilised’ life developed earliest. Europeans are, of course, no more intelligent or inventive than peoples around the world: they simply had better conditions in which to work.

To give a few examples: Eurasia is mainly orientated East-West, so plant and animal species adapted to the climate of a certain latitude can spread more easily than on continents lying on a North-South axis (the Americas and Africa). Most of the ‘big fourteen’, the large herbivores suited for domestication, were originally found in Eurasia (cows, horses, pigs, camels, &c).

And so, settled life providing more food and closer contact with other people and with animals developed earlier in Eurasia than in other parts of the world, thus exposing humans to various microbes that either kill you or make you stronger. It wasn’t just Spaniards on horses with guns (the Spaniards, not the horses) that killed so many Indians in the 16^th century, it was smallpox and measles.

An entirely different book on humans and animals is George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Thomas has been reading Orwell lately, so I decided to re-read Animal Farm to better be able to talk with him about it; it is probably at least 25 years since I last read it, so there may have been a couple of details I had either forgotten or missed altogether.

It is really a rather depressing story, reminding us of the glaring incompatibilities between the ideals and the realities of Communist societies.

‘All Animals are Equal, but some are more Equal than other.’

And I finished the Ravenor trilogy; as all good science fiction, this is not only about space travel and gadgetry, or even daemons and weird magic, but also the human condition in general and particularly when faced with evil. Ultimate evil, of course, but also the more squalid kind: slavers, corruption, greed and meanness. I like the way Dan Abnett manages to write whole persons, not cardboard cut-outs, for minor characters as well as the main ones; and to drop in those everyday observations that bring life and depth to the story.

On that happy note, I will leave you for now. Have a great week; keep happy, keep healthy, keep crafting!

Temporal Displacement

Happy spring time to all! I hope the weather and the holidays are treating you well, whether you are celebrating the season or just enjoying the return of daylight. Depending, of course, on your hemispheric persuasion; those in the southern parts of the globe will be on their way to a cooler season.

This week, we have had the ten-day Easter break that includes the upcoming Monday; a nice quiet week for us with lots of sleeping late for the boys and a couple of family gatherings. We celebrated the birthday of my nephew Emil on Thursday with a delicious brunch and lovely weather.

For Victor, the break may well turn out to be longer than usual: the negotiations for work hours and pay and work conditions in general for the teachers keep breaking down, and a lock-out was announced quite a while ago. Unless something radical happens, it is to begin on 1^st April, keeping all primary and middle school teachers away from work – and all children away from school. This, of course, has a huge impact on everybody, not only teachers, parents, and children, but also anybody employing parents who suddenly need to look after their children during school hours.

I wrote a while ago about the conclusions of the negotiations for high school teachers, which were not favourable for either teachers or students; this may turn out along the same lines, though I sincerely hope not.

And today, we are all jet-lagged, I am at least, having set the clocks forward for the Daylight Saving Time. I find this immensely annoying; there may very well have been a time, when the saving of daylight hours was important – but the world works differently now, and the need for daylight for manual labour has decreased dramatically. At the same time, the period in which the clocks do not tell the right time has increased to seven months per year, from the last weekend in March till the last weekend in October.

The effect of this temporal displacement is not the same as when you travel. Going to a different place in a different time zone changes the environment and your routines as well as the time; you are in a liminal state, and all bets are off. With the changing of the clocks, you are supposed to believe that the time of day is another than it was yesterday, even though the light is the same, and everything else around you is the same.

This disturbance wears off in a day or two, I know, but today, I am annoyed. Or rather, continually confused.

So, let’s get to something a bit more pleasant:

The Knitting:

Now I can finally show you the birthday jumper for Emil: a hood down hoodie, with a henley opening and cables running from the top of the hood right down over the body and sleeves. I made it in lovely soft angora silk tweed from BC Garn, with a bit of nylon to make it sturdier, in a light fingering weight on 2.5 mm needles. So it will be warm, but not too bulky and stuffy for the little guy.

He got to try it on for his afternoon nap and after:

The little birthday boy - and cousin Thomas in the background

For the time being, I prefer having two projects running at a time: one ‘interesting’, with cables or lace or something like that; and one simpler, like a stocking stitch jumper, for TV knitting or while being social. So, I had the cabled birthday jumper and my striped driftwood cardigan; and when the birthday jumper was done, I immediately cast on for a pair of socks – for me, this time. My driftwood is ongoing, now striping down the body.

Remember I got this lovely yarn for my birthday? A skein of Mary Queen of Socks from Superknits in the colourway Feel (not Come Back to Me Colour TV, as I thought I had figured out), a gorgeous tealy turquoise. And so soft: it is MCN, merino, cashmere and nylon.

Almost right away, I found a sock pattern I liked. This is the Water Cycle Socks, a free Ravelry download – always loving those! – and I have been looking forward to knitting them. Not only because I am selfish and love to knit for ME, but also because the last four pairs of socks I’ve knitted were man-sized, and it is so much quicker to knit for my little feet. I have already nearly finished the first sock after a couple of evenings spent on re-watching film trilogies: Back to the Future and Jurassic Park. All of these films are so well known that I can easily handle a bit of lace sock knitting while keeping up with the running and screaming. Not to be disparaging; the words of Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) just popped into my head.

The colour of the yarn suggests to me a tropical sea, maybe the Caribbean, with white-beached islands, palms, sunshine ... and so, the water theme of the pattern fits perfectly: there are waves above the toes and on the heel, raindrops up the instep and front of the leg, and billowing steam or clouds on the back of the leg.

The pattern is well written and easy to follow; the charts are even placed logically on the pages, so that Chart C and D used for the front and back of the leg are on the same page and easily fit on a screen, as well – I haven’t printed the pattern and keep it in a PDF window on my laptop.

As for books – well, I haven’t been reading much this week, what with the boys being around and family dos and all. And the watching of films.

I did go to Audible to buy the second book in James P. Blaylock’s Narbondo series, Homunculus; but so far, I’ve only listened to 22 minutes of it.

On Chop Bard, to which I am a new listener, I devoured Ehren Ziegler’s comments on Romeo & Juliet. This podcast works differently than CraftLit, in that you do not get the whole text read aloud, only salient bits and pieces; so you will want to have the play within reach. I did that, listening and reading – and discussing the play with my boys.

Thomas recently watched the Baz Luhrmann film adaptation (which Ehren Ziegler does not approve of, for many valid reasons) for school, and while in London, they attended a workshop at the Globe with a real live actor, working on how to express various characters through movements and modes of speech. Thomas got to be Tybalt ...

Anyway, after I had listened through the whole story and re-told it to Victor, who didn’t know it beforehand, only as the common concept: two young lovers die; we watched the Baz Luhrmann film together. I critiqued, and we had another good talk.

And then I got to thinking about Rosaline and her side of the story. You know Rosaline, the girl Romeo is moping about when we first meet him; Juliet’s cousin. No? Well, she never appears in the play. But she is there in the storyline, not least as the reason why Romeo and his pals even go to the party at the Capulet house where, of course, he meets Juliet. Rosaline is the catalyst for the whole sequence of events that unfold during those four days in July.

Anyway, if you are into Shakespeare, Chop Bard is great; Ehren really knows his stuff. And he’s on Ravelry.

I’ve just started listening to the Jane Eyre episodes of CraftLit; this is interesting, as I have never read the book or watched any film adaptations of it. I know the title, of course, but only as a title in some vague connection with the Brontë name – one of those books by those sisters ... So now that I have listened to Wuthering Heights by Emily, I will listen to Jane Eyre by Charlotte, both published in 1847 – and all of Heather Ordover’s comments and annotations on biography, Yorkshire, history, &c. And the discussions on Ravelry, too. I know I’ve said it before, and I will probably say it again: if you like books, if you think there are books you ought to read, but never have: go to CraftLit. You will have great works of literature read aloud to you and all the tricky bits explained, all the background filled in. And you can skip the crafty talk, if you want, by going to the JustTheBooks feed.

The opening chapter of Jane Eyre describes how the 10-year old, orphaned Jane lives with her aunt and cousins in her late uncle’s home; how she is mistreated and bullied by her 14-year old cousin, a big fat boy who behaves horribly towards animals and his little cousin and nevertheless is his mother’s darling. The aunt defends her son’s interests (!) to the point where she refuses the tutor’s attempts to improve his diet by cutting down on cakes and sweetmeats, because denying the boy any pleasure is unthinkable. Of course, Jane gets the blame for any alteration between the children and is, apparently frequently, told that she is ungrateful for this useless life she leads at the mercy and generosity of her relatives.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Yes, Charlotte Brontë obviously read Harry Potter. Or maybe it’s the other way round, I’m not sure ...

So, it seems that the film 300 is going to have a sequel, mystifyingly titled 300: Rise of an Empire. I cannot fathom which empire that is supposed to be, nor who or what 300 are referred to.

Apparently, they want to continue the story of the Persian Wars in 480-479 BCE. OK, there is a lot of story to tell, and the trick of throwing Herodotus’ text up in the air and see what lands can be repeated many a time. No Frank Miller this time around, though. But Xerxes is still supposed to be the guy who thinks he is – or maybe is? – a god.

Here’s how it goes according to Herodotus: after the battle at Thermopylai in northern Hellas, where Xerxes was delayed for all of a week in his progress due to the 5 or 6,000 Greek troops assembled there – who dwindled to the famous 300, when the odds became obvious – the Persians continued southward, heading for the really important city states. Athens worked hard to rally the others and present a united front against the invaders, with varying success. Themistocles, who seems to be the lead figure in the new film, recommended building a battle fleet after a prophecy from the then Pythia in Delphi had spoken of a ‘wooden wall’ to protect the Athenians from being wiped out when the Persians destroyed the city. Which they did. After much debate, the battle fleet was, in fact, built, and a naval battle ensued in the strait between Athens and Salamis. The fleet of Persian and allied ships was much larger than the Greek one, of course – but the Persians were landlocked, brilliant horsemen, but no sailors. As soon as things heated up a bit, they panicked, crashed their ships, jumped overboard and all that. So this time, Xerxes suffered a crushing defeat; and in the battle at Plataiai in the following year – alluded to at the end of 300 – the Greeks beat him again, and he dropped the invasion. Overtly, at any rate.

So again: which empire are we talking about? Stretching things somewhat, not least the term ‘empire’, it might possibly be Athens and the subsequent Ionic alliance, in which Athens played an increasingly dominant role during the following decades. Meh. Not convinced. And the ‘300’ part is plain silly.

According to IMdB, the Spartan king Leonidas is not in the film because Gerard Butler didn’t want to do it. Huh?? Leonidas died, people! That’s the whole point of the 300: Spartans do not leave a fight. Either they kill everybody else, and the fight no longer exists, or they die trying. Which they did in this case.

I will probably watch this film when it comes out, just to see what hash they make of the history. The naval battle could be spectacular, if it is done well.

Aside from the Hollywood mangling of history and stories in general, there is the rather disturbing aspect of the way the Persians are presented in this / these film(s): subhuman, grotesque, fantastical. Now, a lot of the bizarre paraphernalia, including Xerxes’ looks and presumed divinity – which is utterly a-historic – derives from the comic book phase of this story-telling, Frank Miller’s version of it. For a skilled reader, this presents no problem: it is quite obvious what is realistic and what isn’t. But there could be a sneaking subtext here: Persians a.k.a. Iranians are the Enemy, they are inherently evil and deserve to be wiped out, because they are a constant threat to our Civilisation and Democracy and the Free World.

This is, of course, what Herodotus says, but he has very good reasons for it: in 480 BCE, the fledgling proto-democracy in Athens was under a very real threat from a huge empire that had spread over the whole Middle East and intended to spread westwards, too. If the Hellenic city states led by Athens had not defeated the Persians when they did, the whole of Hellas would have been subjected to Persian rule. And Rome would not have been capable of stopping them back then, either. So, in the 5^th century, Persia really was a threat to what was the beginning of democracy and free thought.

That is not the situation today, though; and the parallel is dangerous. I can well understand those Greeks who take offense at American movie-makers and money-makers abusing their history for their own ends.

Well, then, I will get off my soap box now and enjoy the remainder of today’s sunshine.

Keep happy, keep healthy, keep crafting!

We don't need no

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Apple Basket!

I hope you have had a good week; mine has been somewhat active, so on top of all the activities of last weekend, this one is being rather quiet. The snow is gently falling outside, and we are all settled in with our quiet pursuits.

I am going to bake for today’s afternoon coffee: homemade Fastelavnsboller, which are cream-filled sweet rolls or Danish pastry, traditional for Shrovetide. Mine will be rolls rather than Danish, with a marzipan filling. And, by the way: in Danish, ‘Danish’ is not called ‘Danish’, but ‘Vienna bread’. Such are the ways of the world.

This week, I rant about conditions for teachers, and as always give you an update on my knitting.

The Apple of the Week:

Recently, our lovely politicians seem to have it out for teachers on all levels of school, both the folkeskole (something like primary and lower secondary), years 0-9, and the gymnasium (upper secondary / high school), years 10-12.

The common consent is claimed to be that teachers do not work enough, what with only 16 or 18 or 20 hours of ‘real’ work a week (and not even proper hours: most schools still have lessons of only 45 minutes) and ridiculously long holidays.

Someone has even calculated that teachers at a gymnasium work 9 hours a week. Yes, nine.

How do you come up with that number?

There are several phases: first, you count all of the academic staff, including the headmaster, the administrators, the counsellors, the guy (or gal) who manages the library, all of whom are traditionally trained as teachers, but who obviously do not all teach full time, and add up their number of teaching hours.

Next, you divide that number by (1) the number of above mentioned people and by (2) 46: the number of weeks in the year minus the 6 weeks of vacation that everybody in the workforce is entitled to. Note that the break weeks, in which no students are at school, are included in the number of supposed teaching weeks, as is the exam period.

Finally, you set teaching hours to equal work hours, ignoring planning, preparation, evaluation, meetings, marking of papers and performances, &c.

And voila: you have proved that teachers work much less than everybody else.

Anyone who has ever tried teaching will instantly know, of course, how preposterous this is. I am continually amazed – and angry – that it can be put forth again and again, that reporters and politicians can get away with so blatant a lie. Who would demand that actors are only paid for the time they are on stage or in front of a camera? Or musicians? They are not, as it is sometimes claimed, paid a vast amount of money for a couple of hours’ concert; they are paid a pittance for the vast number of hours of practice they put in before the concert.

Or the politicians themselves? Would they want to be paid only for the time they actually speak in the House?

I am reminded of a tale I heard recently, about the Emperor of China:

The Emperor was a great collector of art, particularly images of horses. He had jade horses, gold horses, wooden horses, and horses made of porcelain. One day, he heard of an artist, the most talented maker of charcoal drawings in the known world. ‘He must draw me a horse!’ the Emperor said to himself; and he sent an envoy to speak to the artist.

The envoy rode out to find the artist, who lived far away from the city, up in the mountains, in a little cabin. And back he came, with the answer that the Emperor could have his drawing in six months, and it would cost him 10,000 gold pieces. ‘No problem,’ said the Emperor; he had plenty of gold.

Time went by, and when the six months were almost gone, the Emperor became impatient for his drawing. So he ordered up his retinue and set off, out of the city, far out into the mountains, to seek out the artist in his little cabin.

The Emperor entered into the cabin, looking about him, but seeing no drawing. ‘I have come for the drawing you promised me,’ he said to the artist.

‘All right,’ said the artist; and he took a piece of charcoal from the fireplace and with a few quick strokes drew a horse. It was a magnificent beast, with a flying mane, a spark in the eyes, ready to leap right off the paper and gallop away. ‘You can leave the 10,000 gold pieces over there,’ said the artist and turned to carry on what he had been doing when the Emperor walked in.

The Emperor admired the drawing of the horse; but still, he was puzzled and somewhat annoyed. Why had he had to wait for six months? And pay 10,000 gold pieces for a drawing that took less than a minute to do?

‘Oh,’ said the artist casually. ‘You can have those too, if you want.’ He pointed to a huge pile of paper lying on top of the wood stack.  ‘Those are the 9,999 less than perfect attempts to draw a horse.’

The negotiations for work and wages in the gymnasiums have been finalised now, resulting in more pay, it seems, and more teaching. For those who are not fired, that is: with the same number of students and lessons, and each teacher having to take on more, many schools will have to either fire or not hire teachers.

The secretary for finance, Bjarne Corydon, is pleased and calls this a ‘solid’ and ‘responsible’ result; read: he has managed to save some money and at the same time bully the teachers. And he is supposed to be a Social Democrat.

The real results will be seen when either even more teachers snap under the strain of a job that already has a high frequency of stress, or the quality of the education that the students get sinks to a new low, if everybody insists on working the hours instead of the task.

I can only be glad that my teaching days are over, and that I haven’t exerted myself to try to get back into it after a stress-related depression that has left me with lingering remains of social phobia. It would have been a slap in the face to start up again in these circumstances.

And that will have to do as an ending on a happy note; it is somewhat difficult to be optimistic about the future of education the way things are going.

Knitting is much more pleasant: you can always make the knitting do what you want and get decent results out of that; nobody ambushes your efforts or tries to denigrate them (apart, maybe, from USOC last summer, but never mind about them).

And then there’s the cat to cheer me up – he just decided to take a walk on the wild side:

So,

The Knitting:

Last Sunday, I discovered that the lovely Martine of iMake podcast fame has put up a free cowl pattern, the Splendid Striped Cowl. This is an easy, striped cowl in stocking stitch, knitted on the bias and grafted into a big loop.

And as I was going to a school function Wednesday evening, I needed something simple yet not boring to bring along.

The function was the presentation of 8^th grade projects, which Victor has been working on for several weeks together with a partner, who unfortunately fell ill last week, when all the writing had to be done. So Victor wrote it by himself – and presented it by himself, all alone on stage with his PowerPoint presentation. He would have preferred his guitar. But he did well; the umbrella subject was ‘On the Way ...’, and these two had chosen bio ethics: On the way to the perfect human, looking both at gene modification and mechanical prostethics. Other groups tackled youth culture, education, recycling, multiculturalism, global economics, &c.

Anyway, this entailed 1½ hours of watching & listening, so I did the provisional cast-on at home to have the fiddly bit done and then simply knitted stripes with in- and decreases on the RS rows. A fun knit; not at all demanding, but the stripes and the shaping add knitting interest – and I look forward to the warmth it will give to my neck.

An added bonus was that I finally got round to frogging a couple of items that I knitted nearly 2½ years ago and practically never wore: my Wayfarer wrap, from Rowan Magazine 48, and a little shoulder warmer of my own invention. The Wayfarer is big and chunky and romantic – but ultimately unpractical in a climate that is mostly wet and / or windy or too cold to not wear a proper coat. Besides, even the small size was too large and kept slipping down over one shoulder. So, much as I liked this thing and enjoyed knitting it, it has been languishing by the frog pond for a while. The shoulder warmer suffered from comparable, though different failures: too chunky and impractical.

And now they are frogged and ready to be reborn as this lovely cowl and ... something else. I know what I want to knit, but I don’t want to mention it before I actually get to it, so watch this space :o)

The anklet bed socks are done, and now that they have dried out after their soak to get the extra dye out, I can try them on and take pictures. The dye surplus is all my own doing; the yarn is dyed with a healthy amount of logwood to get the deep colour, and it does tend to crock. So my fingers were purple for a while there; I still have a faint trace of it across my left index finger, where the yarn runs over.

My driftwood jumper, named Juniper on Ravelry, because the colour of the yarn reminds me of juniper bushes on the heath, is coming along nicely. I have done all the increases around the shoulder part, and right now I am just working back & forth in stocking stitch below the armholes, waiting to join to work in the round below the opening. So far, so good.

And the Blues Riffs socks for Victor, the first of them anyway, is moving towards the heel; the gusset is rather elongated, with increases on every 3^rd round instead of the usual every 2^nd round. I say ‘usual’: that could only reveal how little experience I have with sock knitting. I may have to report back on that issue in about 20 sock patterns’ time.

Anyway, now the riff pattern is showing itself on the instep and looking very neat.

And the KnitPro cubic dpns ... I promise, they are not paying me for this (although maybe they should, lol): they are lovely. Pointy and not bendy like 2 mm bamboo needles. They are not all that long, mind you, so I have to watch the stitches a bit now that I have a lot of them going all at once; but that is just a phase, when I get to the heel, it will sort itself out.

Let’s see, is there any other knitting news?

Oh, I found the yarn for my nephew’s birthday sweater; in my stash – which doesn’t mean, of course, that I don’t want to spend on him, only that I have already done it. And I am contemplating a pattern. His birthday is 28^th March, so there’s no rush, but it does help to have a starting point. Now I have to ask my sister for his measurements; he will only be 2, but as his dad is two metres tall, this little guy is tall, too – as is his sister. So usually, one can go with the age-appropriate measurements in width and add a bit lengthwise.

This project I will get back to in a while: no pics before the big day to not spoil anything, but it will be mentioned here.

And I am almost ready to release a pattern in my Ravelry shop, The Apple Basket. I have some patterns there already, some free, some for sale, and I am working my way through the design notes I have sitting around to eventually get everything put out there in both English and Danish. The one I am writing up now is Pomona, a lacy summer cardigan that I made a couple of years ago; my task is to go through the pattern and clarify all the notes-to-self instructions, so that they are accessible to others. And, of course, make sure that everything makes sense and that there are not any errors.

That’s it for this week – I will be back next week with a report on how we survived the winter break that is just beginning :o)

Stay happy, stay healthy, and keep crafting!