Tuesday, June 28, 2016

I dozed through Wimbledon yesterday afternoon, knitting in hand, and thus missed the Upset of the Century. I’ll pay attention when the winner -- he's actually British -- reappears, playing Federer.

Football is not among my interests, but no knitter could be entirely unmoved by Iceland’s unexpected triumph yesterday.

Brexit

I had started to feel so guilty about feeling hopeful when everyone else was feeling sad, as almost to forget that Archie&I had actually voted Remain. But things seemed a bit better yesterday. An Action Group of some sort has been set up –filled with civil servants (think “Yes, Minister”). I don’t suppose most politicians know any more about the knitty gritty of the tendrils binding us to the EU than do you or I, but civil servants ought to.  And then I read Libby Purves’ column in yesterday’s Times – I have long loved her – and felt even better.

“Respect voters, channel Chesterton: ‘Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget/ For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.’ OK, they may have spoken wrong and plunged us into difficulties. But it is not fair to blame them more than the arrogant, incompetent Brussels institutions and the decades when governments neglected inequality.”

The excellent “Farming Today” programme on the radio yesterday morning said that the decision on glysophate was expected that day. I haven’t heard it yet.

Knitting

Hap-knitting is certainly getting slower, but I have finished with the colours and reverted to the grey. I am knitting the penultimate round, and may finish the border today if I can stay awake for Wimbledon. Then a decrease round, and a final round of purl – I’m unlikely to achieve all that today.

Jen Arnall-Culliford, co-editor with Kate Davies of the new Haps book, says that someone or other is working on every single pattern in the  HapsarehappeningKAL in Ravelry  – two weeks and two days after publication. That’s pretty good going, and a tribute to the all-around excellence of the patterns.


I got all excited about Kate’s blog post about the Cordova Gansey Project in Alaska – but, alas, it doesn’t represent a whole new vein of previously-unknown gansey patterns, as I had hoped for an instant.

2 comments:

  1. Yes Libby was wonderful wasn't she! I have had that couple of lines wandering through my head all through this episode. I wonder what John Moore would have made of all this - it was in one of his books that I first encountered that Chesterton poem.

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  2. Anonymous9:20 AM

    Many thanks for the link to our knitalong! It's been really humbling to see how many people have cast on so many haps so quickly! With many participants casting off and immediately starting a new one. And a few not even waiting until they had cast off the first!

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