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November 06, 2013

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I love that! (and your cat's quite fetching as well, all bonneted and scarved. . . I've made slouchy berets, worsted-weight, and I wear a felted beret almost every day through the winter, yet I've never knit a proper one myself either. I'm thinking it's about time . . . .but currently knitting a Kate Davies Rams & Yowes blanket and the kit has enough yarn, apparently, to make a Sheepsheid Tam;that hat will have to come before any beret. . .

I love the photo of your sweet cat wearing the beret -- that's wonderful!

How did you--how do people--learn this skill? I feel as though everyone in the world except me knows how to knit.

I'm really adaptable, I can write about anything, it's what people paid me to do for nearly half a century. The well is never dry, the tone remains spritely, I can disguise ignorance with persiflage, if all else fails I've quotes from writers nobody's ever heard of - John Lodwick, Frank Smythe, how about them apples?

But knitting! I'm like a cop who normally does parking tickets suddenly coming up against Organised Crime.

Others might think it started with Lucy. It did, but way back. Months ago. So I trotted out my knitting stuff, about how I knitted only one bootee for my elder daughter and how poignant that was. How my fingers ended up feeling arthritic even though I was only in my late twenties. Lucy agreed about the poignancy.

A month ago, Lucy resumes with knitting. I am witty and inventive. Then another knitting post, then another. I have this tradition about never not responding. My last gasping comment takes an engineering approach, reducing knitting to its mechanical quintessence. Then I fall silent.

In the interim VR, a great knitter in her time but these days more inclined to Kindle, embarks without warning on a set of carol-singing mice. Knitted! I make nervous suggestions about creating miniature simulacra of their carol scores. I worry.

Now this, and I'm really worried. That close-up below the pic of the hatted cat - what am I to make of the expression? Surely a knowingness: yooo'll never understand (in a Lyse Doucette accent). Hey, I wouldn't mind being laid low by some devastating apercu about nuclear electrodynamics. But not knitting. What's the French for paranoia?

I loved this post. (excuse me whilst I shove a giggling, oooohing and aaaawing Lucy away) These days I am able to stand back without a wish arising to knit. I actually began knitting at around six or seven years of age, a blue cardigan with a pattern of holes in triangles, for my eldest sister. Since then, no the tale is too long, and anyway it would drift into dressmaking as well.

Far too busy to indulge in something as creative as knitting.

Frances, please share photo of whatever you make with that yarn!

Rachel - I am really considering making her a mini-beret. Jonathan thinks I'm crazy...

Andrea, my grandmother and mother taught me to knit when I was little, but I didn't really like it - I liked to sew much more. They were both great, prolific, fast knitters, but when you start, it's clumsy and slow and takes a long time to make anything. Later on I took it up again, with more enthusiasm, but I generally make small things I can finish quickly. Now I often see women sitting around together in yarn shops, helping each other - and most shops also give classes. There are also good YouTube videos, but it really helps to have someone show you the basics in person.

Robbie what a poignant and amusing comment! My father was taught to knit by a nurse in Belgium during the war; he was laid up with a busted leg and there was nothing to do...but I suspect ulterior motives, as he never knitted afterwards!

Tom, looking back through Lucy's blog recently I saw a picture of you knitting with a woman on a park bench! The truth is that knitting and reading don't go together, and if faced with the choice I'll choose to read. TV and knitting: well, yes, but maybe that's why I don't do so much. More power to Lucy, Alison, Lucy B., Rachel R. and all my favorite knitting friends who seem to manage to turn out project after project!

I have always adored berets, and your new green one is so "you". One of the beret's other great qualities is that it rolls up and stores in a pocket or purse. (The Canadian Forces stow theirs in their chest pockets.)

@ Andrea: My son learned to knit watching You Tube videos. Yarn stores often have evening classes for free or nominal cost, as do some community centres. And there's always asking sweetly of a kind friend.

The Cat In The Hat Redux, lol......best cat pics ever. Fabulous colors, interesting knitting descriptions. I tend to think of knitters as magicians.

Awww. This made me laugh! That green is really a special color, isn't it.

Beth, j'adore the last two photos especially but all are wonderful. That cat is outrageously cute and obviously owns you.

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Who was Cassandra?


  • In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well, you know what happened.

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