I am deciding which sock to knit for my next project, but am coming up against a term I don't recognise and can't find a definition on knittinghelp.com for. So I am hoping someone here can explain.

>wrapping the last un-worked stitch on each row.

What do they mean by wrapping the stitch?

Ta

Sadly, I am still crap at it and my stuff is full of Lose and whatever the opposite of Awesome is. Every so often someone tells me I should write, or I have an idea and think I should write, but then I start doing it and realise that I really shouldn't. If I could turn the flashes of ideas I get into photos they might work, but there's rarely an entire story in there.

:? I am sometimes baffled as to why people expect me to be good at things, especially when they don't expect themselves to be able to do the same stuff. The friend who thinks I should write has just got his PhD. I couldn't even manage an MPhil. What makes him think I could manage a book? On the other hand, I am a born potterer, and pottering with words can be fun even if it doesn't get anywhere.

Reviewing also means I have the willies about writing. I'm a professional stone-thrower; everyone's going to chuck rocks at my glass house if I ever do write anything.

Ah well, I have my motto: "If you don't even try, you can't fail."

From Mr Pip I moved to reading Great Expectations yet again. I love Dickens but, folks, this is the book for people who think they hate him. Take out Pumblechook and Wopsle and the book seems 'un-Dickensian'. On every re-read I find more in it and it's the style which is so impressive, the beautiful elegiac voice so very modern for a book published in 1860. There's also plenty of excitment: the plot to conceal Magwitch and spirit him away is like a spy story. If you really can't stand reading Dickens, watch David Lean's film instead.

On this reading I felt very let down by the illustrations for the Folio edition, which I picked up recently for a pound. I've known Charles Keeping's work since I read Rosemary Sutcliff's books as a child and the image below shrieks '1960s!' at me.



Now here's Keeping's drawing of Wemmick's house for Great Expectations.



Wrong! And wrong again. All the pictures seem feeble to me and add nothing to the reading of the book, whereas the illustrations for say, Knight's Fee (Sutcliff) are inseperable from my memories of the book. Disappointing but perhaps it just shows how important illustrations are for children's books? Narnia/Pauline Baynes; Ransome/Ransome; Ballet Shoes/Ruth Gervis; Alice/Tenniel; Molesworth/Searle: hard to imagine one without the other.

I'm not quite sure where the days are going.

I may appear to be a lady of leisure these days, but that's sadly not quite the case. I've got a lot of work to do on PV, to save it after the dark months when I barely had the energy to watch TV, let alone write about it. Plus, I've started doing the part-time work that's going to help pay for my degree, which is rather important. Still, I have just enough free time to fill the days with endless puttering, puttering which seems very important at the time but leaves me, at the end of each day, wondering exactly what I did all day. Considering that I'm soon going to be adding full-time studying to this schedule, perhaps I should organize my time a bit better.

But, oh, is it lovely to wake up in the morning and have nothing I need to do immediately. I could get far too used to this. I would make an excellent housewife, though ideally without the husband and kids.

 What is your name? Debodacious
4 letter word: Debt
Boy name: Draco
Girl name: Desdemona
Occupation: Drudge
A colour: Dun
Something you wear: Diamonds
Beverage: Dandelion and Burdock
Food: Damson Crumble
Something found in a bathroom: Duck (Rubber)
Place: Durham
Reason for being late: Dead on arrival
Something you shout: Damn and blast.

I wrote recently about my annual sweet peas then yesterday spotted a horrible tangle of perennial sweet peas, Lathyrus latifolius.



It's usually bright pink but mine, as you see, is white. It's one of those plants you forget about because it's so late into growth, then you notice it too late to train it at all. This plant is just left to scramble its way through a wall shrub. They can be very effective trailing down a bank, should you have one. At the end of the season there's a brown skeleton of stems to cut down and that's all you ever have to do to them. Very easy to grow from seed, and to save your own seed for friends.

The fantastically bright Huzzah For Me Socks are done!
I used one skein of Fleece Artist Merino 2/6 to make them. I think I want to cast on for another pair straight away, since these were so quick and easy to make. A lovely mindless project that I can do when I want a break from my bigger harder projects.



A gratuitous flower shot from a local organic farm's U-PICK garden. This one is of Bergamot.
I also picked up some sour apples, rhubarb, & ginger & made a fantastic apple/rhubarb crisp, but alas, we ate it up so fast there are no photos to share. I will definitely be making more soon, since it is a relatively healthy and oh so delicious dessert! Oh & I have lots more rhubarb left...



And a bouquet of poor-man's orchids, aka, wild sweet pea blossoms from my garden. So pretty :-)

I see it's over two years since I wrote here about Alexander Waugh and his forebears. Now I've read the book which the television programme was a puff for. It's hard to find a niche when your father and grandfather are so famous and Mr Waugh has had a varied career. You might wonder what can be added to the world's Waviana but in this 'Autobiography of a Family' the author has had access to previously unpublished letters and of course to his own memories. The most interesting part of the book is probably the story of the obsessive love which Arthur Waugh, Evelyn's father, felt for his elder son, Alec, at Evelyn's expense. There is also a lot about Alec which I never knew before and which makes him a surprisingly attractive character. Ironic that Evelyn, settled in marriage, hard working, religious, was far more like his father than the better beloved son. The present head of the family has many irritating stylistic tricks; in particular the repeated use of the word 'homosexualist'. It must be a family trait as I'm quite sure that, like his illustrious relatives, he is not at all homophobic. It's still a very readable book. I went from this to other biographies on the shelf and dipped yet again into the brilliant Way of The World. Now I'm getting an urge to read Brideshead again. I'd watch the DVD if the machine weren't broken.

Dear Subconcious:

You can stop having dreams about going in to the last week of work and teaching the Year 10s again. It's over. Really. OVER.

Also, would you mind never again featuring a chase sequence with rabid Adipose? I know I'm a geek, but I would prefer if that fact did not penetrate my dreams.

Thanks.
Me

Also last night, I had my very first UK pub quiz. I was rather excited by this. We did not win, sadly, which is especially annoying considering that we were only a point away from the finals and were held back by one incorrect number and an erroneous bit of punctuation. The first two categories were science and geography, which basically forced me to sit in the corner and marvel at my own ignorance, but I was able to be somewhat useful in the film category. At least there were no sports.

FINALLY, Okkervil River is playing in Glasgow in September, and since I missed them last time when the tickets sold out (BOO), I am buying my tickets THIS WEEK. They're at Oran Mor on 11 September -- anyone else want to go?

ETA: Silly US website using American dates! It's actually on 9 November. Probably no rush, then.

for greenie knitters

making your plastic supermarket bags into yarn
http://kateeaustin.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-to-make-plarn.html

grocery bags to make with it
http://www.iliveonafarm.com/1bag.html
http://www.allfreecrafts.com/knitting/bag.shtml
http://hakucho.blogspot.com/2007/08/hakuchos-big-bag-recycled-plastic.html

I had thought knitty had a pattern as well, which looked like those string expandable bags, like your granny had (or was that just me).

So, the Pup with No Name is now called Martha (we had to go with a majority verdict in the end, but I daresay I will get used to it in time, even though Martha is totally a cat's name) and is 8 whole weeks old, and has moved in. She is a Lakeland Terrier BTW (I forgot to say last time).

We are all besotted, except Senior Dog, Pip, who is treating her with kindly contempt. He is letting her play with his best toys though.

Off to Hong Kong for a week. When I get back life should be much calmer, what with the big annual conference having happened last week, so I may even manage to catch up on my flist rather than seeing random chunks. Love to everyone and brace yourself for a deluge of photos...

The current Orange ads are madly irritating. What was Rose Tremain thinking? Money, I expect; I don't blame her. I've enjoyed her books, now her voice is one of several driving me to switching off point. In contrast, Peter O'Toole's 'For All You Are' advertisement for The Sunday Times is uncannily similar yet watchable. 'And in between - I've done a bit of acting'. You terrible old actor, she sa fondly.

I have not had much time to post because I have been too busy FALLING IN LOVE with Glasgow. It's entirely possible that I will never, ever leave this city.

My first week here has been spent mainly unpacking and tackling IKEA. I am now thoroughly fluent in the language of the flat pack and have assembled five pieces of new furniture. I would have done more, but I ran out of money, especially when I decided to buy a new fridge, too, once I discovered that the fridge that came with the flat a) doesn't work and b) doesn't come with a freezer. That is clearly unacceptable, as living without ice cubes for my vodka is not really living at all, is it?

Most days are spent puttering around the flat, repeatedly marvelling over how very wonderful it all is -- STILL no slugs to be seen -- or exploring my neighourhood. Today, I discovered the expat food shop. That's not actually its name, but it might as well be, as it is stuffed to the rafters with salsa, Kraft ranch dressing, Marshmallow Fluff and the like. Sure, when you factor in the exchange rate, everything costs about six times more than it would in the US, but what does that matter when I can buy ingredients for Tex-Mex. Tex-Mex! I am going to be cooking all summer. As soon as I have a fridge, that is. Today, I was fairly restrained and walked out with only a box of Nutter Butters and some root beer, but I'll be going back with an open wallet very soon.

Best of all, Glasgow has offered me the one thing Petworth never could: a social life. Imagine that. After TWO AND A HALF FREAKING YEARS of living in the country, having to trek into London, two hours each way, whenever I wanted to see people, now all I need to do is walk ten minutes down the road to meet people. Last night, I went to the fabulous OMG! Glasgow arranged by uniquefergus, where I met several new LJ tags and generally had a great time. Tomorrow, there might be a pub quiz. Friday, I believe I'm meeting hfnuala for lunch. This is so, so good. It's the sort of life I used to have, that most people have, and one that I will never take for granted again after the dreaded Petworth years. People who need people are the luckiest people, you know?

Those that say happiness is a state of mind, rather than a geographical location, can bite me, because this move really did change everything. I am very, very happy. For the first time since I moved to the UK, I feel like I might have a home.

I've achieved my ambition of a vase of sweet peas on the kitchen table every single day for (I hope) three months. I don't grow them properly so as the season goes on the stems will get shorter and shorter but the flowers will still smell as good. Those in the vase are just a basic Unwins mix. In the past I've added in the variety 'Matucana', which has small, dark flowers and is very strongly scented. It's an odd fact that while most serious growers are men, sweet peas are regarded as quintessentially feminine. One thinks of Angela Thirkell's Mrs Brandon, draped in soft chiffons, reclining on a sofa. On her very first appearance (in The Brandons) she 'had collected another great bunch of sweet peas and was holding them thoughtfully to her face,' ( More sweet pea pictures )

No DS for me today - well, a mere 15 minutes - and my hands feel okay. I managed to leave my sock pattern at work, so I won't be knitting this weekend either. However, I have a plan! I don't often make plans - if you don't have any goals, you can't fail to achieve them - but today I have one. I'm going to design some socks for Aggers to hand in to TMS when I'm in Barbados, cake being a bit impractical for transporting across the Atlantic. Pete says I should make a pair for each of the TMS team, but at the speed I knot that's unlikely to happen. He also suggested making a pair in MCC colours, but I think most dyers have more taste than whoever dreamed up the MCC's 'rhubarb and custard' colours.

I have a pattern for a baby jumper and the for the front section after the 8 rows of ribbing it says to:

P1 *m1, p2 pass m1 over the previous p2, p2 from * to last st, p1

What does it mean by pass m1 over the previous p2?

I make one stitch then pass it over the two pearl stitches I've just done on the right hand needle or pass the made stitch over the pearl stitches from the ribbing on the left hand needle.

Does that make sense?!?

Can anyone clear this up for me please?

Thanks

In September, dahlias are at last allowed to bloom without those tragically intoned words: ‘What, dahlias already!’ being heard. (Christopher Lloyd, The Well-Tempered Garden)

Yes, no sooner are we past the longest day and into July than people really do start to say, ‘Dahlias already!’ and to send their frightfully amusing emails to Terry Wogan about how it’s time to put on the sprouts for Christmas. It’s true there are harbingers of autumn at this time of year and to me the most disconcerting is always the sight of a rowan tree laden with berries. Berries mean autumn, right? But here’s the arum starting to turn.



Although there are plenty of pinks and mauves in the garden, ( tawny is starting to take over )

Torrential downpour: DO NOT WANT. At least tights dry far more quickly than trousers would.

topicaltim is out tonight, and I have bought myself a tuna steak for dinner. However, I didn't notice until too late that the steak I picked was half on top of the scallops. I (think I) am allergic to scallops (at any rate, the couple of times I have eaten them the result was unpleasant enough that I have no desire to try again to be sure). Does anyone know if eating tuna that was touching scallops would be enough to make me ill?