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The plan

It took me a little while to decide on the cables that I'm going to use in Patrick's aran. This was a very enjoyable process - I suspect it'll be the most fun part of the whole project! I chose cables from different books and therefore they weren't drawn to the same scale. Also, one of them wasn't charted at all. Therefore I decided just to draw them all again using the photocopier for the repeats. I now have a long strip: here's just half of it.

Working from the centre (right of the photo) we have Saxon Braid (Barbara Walker III), OXO (traditional), twisted stitch zigzag (adapted from Inishmore by A Starmore), mini honeycomb (Janet Szabo), Aran Braid (Janet Szabo).

A room of one's own

Every woman needs one, as Virginia Woolf declared. As some readers may know, I've recently left my part-time editorial job and am setting up as a freelance editor (once again; I've done it before). I've been spending the last couple of days fitting up Peter's old bedroom as my new office: making IKEA shelving, desk, chair, etc. It has been very satisfying, although these enterprises are never as straightforward as you think they're going to be! Now I just need a bit of professional help to fix some bookshelves to the wall so that they don't topple over, because our floors are rather uneven. Lastly, I'm going to buy an iMac but I'm holding off until the new Snow Leopard operating system is out. I was lucky enough to get a voluntary redundancy package from work and so this is the treat I promised myself.

In knitting, I have started Patrick's (my brother's) aran. In the Janet Szabo method you start with the shoulder straps, and so here is strap  no. 1. (The background is one of my favourite 1960s (?) teatowels rescued from my mother's house.)

Adventures in Aran

No, I haven't been visiting islands off the west coast of Ireland, but I've been exploring Aran knitting. In my last post I included photos of swatches of the central motif of Inishmore (Alice Starmore pattern) knitted in Troon from Texere. It's nice yarn, but it was too tweedy and hairy to give a truly sculptural look to the twisted stitches that are such a feature of that pattern. I ordered some basic undyed aran from New Lanark Mill and while I was waiting for it to arrive we went for a few days to Monmouth. I took the Barbara Walker stitch dictionaries with me and played with different stitches. I bought the grey yarn in Monmouth. It's Tivoli Celtic something (I'd never heard of it before) and it's superwash aran. I think it looks and feels lovely when it's knitted up but it had an unpleasant plasticky feel to knit with and split easily. It's more expensive than the Troon or New Lanark, too.

Once home, I launched into Inishmore, with the undyed aran. Now, Alice Starmore is well known for her fiendishly tight tension - 22 stitches to 4 inches with aran wool! I couldn't get there with this wool, even on 3.75 mm needles. I did try, but the combination of wool, needles and twisted stitches was unworkable. I had to have a sensible chat with myself and bravely undid the 4 inches or so that I had knitted.

So, on to plan B, which was to follow the Janet Szabo method as described in her Follow-the-Leader Aran Knitalong pattern. This is a top-down pattern and, a bit like EZ patterns, is modular. I've been playing around with cable patterns that I like and am nearly ready to launch into the project. I'm knitting it for my brother (big chest!).

When I find some smooth, tightly spun but not stringy aran that can take tight knitting I will knit myself an Inishmore. The original was knit in Rowan Magpie, by the way.

Troon

Last weekend I went to visit an old university friend who lives near Leeds, where we were students. She took me to Texere in Bradford and Coldspring near Haworth! I had intended only to buy things that I can dye, but in the end I fell for some lovely heathery aran wool at Texere, called Troon. It was only £3 per 100g;  it's spun in Scotland and has a lovely rustic feel. Texere advised me to knit a swatch and wash it because this is oiled wool and the yarn changes quite a bit when it's washed out. I've been browsing Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting (thanks, Dawn!) and her Fisherman's Sweaters, which is mine. I've falled in love with Inishmore from FS and did a couple of swatches. Here's the main diamond pattern after washing:

Unfortunately I forgot to photograph it before washing. I can tell you that it did change quite dramatically, however, and I don't think this is going to be the right pattern for this wool. The twisted stitches that make the diamond just don't pop any more. I think the overall effect is pleasant, but I want the geometric Starmore pattern to show up in a more sculptural way. I tried a little swatch from another sweater with untwisted cables (here before washing):

It's a bit better, but I now really want to knit Inishmore!

How to make a great city look really ordinary

Our photos of Vienna really don't do it justice. From the tower of the Stephensdom:

This is a little better:

Here's no. 2 son enjoying the view:

Apart from that, we really didn't get the camera out very much at all. In Carinthia we did a bit better.

Here I am admiring the view of the lake on our walk up to the three waterfalls:

Thomas and Peter at the lowest waterfall:

Peter tossing the caber at the highest waterfall:

I remember walking up to these waterfalls as a child and seeing a salamander in a crevice. This time there were no salamanders, but there were enormous snails:

I tried to include my hand in the photo for scale, but that made me wobble too much. It's about double the size of an ordinary English snail, anyway.

A last photo: the house where my parents lived in 1949 when my father did his National Service (after the war Austria was divided up between the allies rather like Berlin was). We spent several holidays here with the family afterwards.