Austin to Austen

While I was away this summer, I got an email from someone about knotted fringe. She had seen my blog posting about knotting fringe (see the bottom of the July 2007 archive page) and had a question about it.

When I responded, I got a quick reply from Laura Boyle at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, England. The Centre, which promotes Austen-related activities in Bath, has a website that publishes articles about Jane and the world she lived in. At some point, her brother Frank,a naval officer, was visiting at home and made himself useful by knotting some fringe for the drawing-room drapes.

The website wanted to supply some instructions and went to the web to find something. Just like I did. Among other sites, they found my blog posting, and asked if they could reproduce it in their article. I was very flattered and glad to help. Of course I said yes. Here it is: How to Make Knotted Fringe.

Imagine, Frank Austen and I both knotting fringe for our sister/sister-in-law (shh!-- it's a secret!). As Jane wrote in Mansfield Park, "What strange creatures brothers are!"

1,067 and Counting...

That's how many souls are in front of me in line for a Ravelry invitation. I can't believe I didn't sign up for this when I first heard about it. I would have been among the first 5,000 to sign up and I'd be in by now. Grrr. The number has been dropping by about 100 a day for the last few days (oh, I've been checking!), so hopefully my number will come up soon. Here are the numbers from when I checked today:

• You signed up on June 27, 2007
  
• You are #11308 on the list.
  
• 1067 people are ahead of you in line.
  
• 17313 people are behind you in line.
  
• 35% of the list has been invited so far
  

At least there are more people that were slower than me to sign up than were faster than me. That's got to be good, right? Right?

In the meantime, I've been keeping myself busy. While still in Oregon, having finished the socks for Ed, I immediately cast on for this pair of socks for myself, also in TOFUtsies. I already have a pair of socks in a yarn that is visually similar, but I wanted some TOFUtsies for myself, and I wanted dark, subtle, simple me colors. This is in color 732, which, as far as I can determine, doesn't have a name.

I didn't manage to work on the sweater while in Oregon, but I did lug it up there and back, along with three balls of yarn. It's a miracle it didn't get mangled somehow. Since returning I've done three repeats of the 32-row pattern, and I think I've got two more before I start decreasing for the neck. I think it's looking pretty good, but it's getting big enough to cause menopausal symptoms as I work with it draped across my lap. That's the irony of me knitting in Texas. If I wait until it's cool enough to be comfortable knitting great wads of wool, I can't get the thing done before it warms up again!

I just checked my Ravelry position again. I'm no closer to the front of the line, but there are already 5 more people behind me. Heh heh heh.

Knitting-related schadenfreude is an ugly thing.

Happy Birthday, Ed!

I'm back from vacation in the fabulously cool Northwest. I didn't do much knitting, but I did manage to finish the TOFUtsies Footsteps socks, which I sneakily tricked the recipient into trying to make sure they would fit. Here, Ed is modeling them on the mini-balcony on the front of his townhouse in Portland, Oregon. We had such a great time up there. Thanks, Ed, for everything. A dozen pairs of socks couldn't thank you for all the great things you did for us as our host.

I managed to go to one knitting shop, as you can see from the previous post. I sent that from my cell phone, so it's pretty much just picture and caption -- not much room for more. Still, it's kind of cool to be able to blog from the road.

I took the sweater but didn't work on it -- although I should have at Crater Lake with evenings in the upper 30s! I kind of don't want to look at it right now. It was a bit of a shock getting off the plane -- and it's not even THAT hot. I've got to go back to work on Monday and I'm just not ready for it. Oh, and that two-weeks-worth of grass growth isn't going to mow itself.

But it's good to be back.

Me in front of Knit/Purl in Portland