" title="Knit one, read two"> Knit one, read two

So after 4 and a half days of cursing the estate agent’s name, they finally phoned to say that the vendor had accepted our offer.

Steven’s in a state of advanced panic and I’m resisting the urge to phone the estate agent back to check that I didn’t imagine the whole conversation.

I had planned on a long, well-thought out post today discussing my success with NaBloPoMo and what’s it taught me about blogging and my particular approach to blogging. I’m afraid that, given the news, it’s amazing that I’ve managed to post actual words at all and not just complete gibberish.

There will undoubtedly be more to follow on this subject but right now I need to go tend to my shattered nerves.

Since I’ve recently updated my other blog and added a link to it from here, I thought I’d post a brief description of what it is and why people might be interested in it.

I should explain that it’s not a ‘chatty’ blog like this one. Its purpose is to help me keep track of books that I’ve bought to process through the Distributed Proofreaders site. Each book gets a post that provides some publishing information and any other interesting snippets about the book or the author that I’ve come across. An example would be the publisher’s advert for the Concise Dictionary of National Biography that I found in another book.

The bit that might be of interest to people is the “Posted!” category. These are the books that have made it all the way through the Distributed Proofreaders system and are now available for downloading from Project Gutenberg. There’s a link directly to the Project Gutenberg catalogue entry for each book in its post. (If there isn’t, let me know!) In the future, I plan to post here from time to time about most of these books, explaining why I chose them and what’s interesting about them (if anything).

The ‘Cleared’ and ‘In Progress’ sections will be of less interest. ‘Cleared’ just means that Project Gutenberg have confirmed that the book is public domain in the US and so they’ll accept it into their collection. ‘In Progress’ means that the book is currently working its way through the Distributed Proofreaders site. If you think you’d be interested in proofreading a particular text, you could always sign up at DP and help.

This thought came as a revelation to me so apologies if it’s already occurred to everyone else: “you can use stitch markers even when the pattern doesn’t say you have to!”

I’m used to using stitch markers to mark specific points on jumpers, e.g. where the seams will be joined later, but it only recently occurred to me that I can also use them to keep track of simple repeating stitch patterns mid-row.

I’ve been working on a pattern with an extremely simple stitch pattern. How hard could it be to keep track of knit 2, slip 2 or purl 2, slip 2, even for a row with more than 400 stitches? In my case, nearly impossible! (For someone who works almost exclusively with numbers, having to admit that I was having trouble counting to two was embarassing, to say the least.)

Stitch markers to the rescue! I’ve now got stitch markers every 40 stitches and just work out at the start of every row which stitch (of the four stitch pattern) I should be at when I get to a marker. If I’m not at the right stitch, I never have to work back more than 40 stitches, which is a huge improvement over having to rip back the entire row!

This technique will work for any repeated stitch pattern. Just make sure that your markers are placed at appropriate multiples of stitches. For example, for a pattern with a repeat of 5 stitches, place markers at any multiples of 5 (5, 10, 15, 20, etc.) and, in each row, you should always be at the same stitch in the pattern when you get to a marker. Obviously, if your pattern shifts slightly from row to row, you’ll be at a different point in the pattern on different rows, but you should always be at the same point for every marker in a single row.

A really simple method of keeping track of which row of a pattern repeat you’re working on (if, for whatever reason, you don’t want to use a row counter) is to write the row numbers, e.g. 1 to 24 down the side of a piece of paper. You can then attach a paperclip to the paper that can be moved down as you work through the rows and then back to the top for the start of the next repeat.

This is fine if you know what you should be doing on each of the rows, e.g. if all the even rows are to be worked in the same way and similarly for the odd rows. What I find this most useful for though is when a pattern consists of, say, four differently worked rows that are combined in a 24 row repeat. This may result in the original pattern being written something like:

Row 1 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 2 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 3 [RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 4 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Rows 5-12: Repeat Rows 1-4 twice more.
Row 13 [RS]: Work as for Row 3.
Row 14 [WS]: Work as for Row 2.
Row 15 [RS]: Work as for Row 1.
Row 16 [WS]: Work as for Row 4.
Rows 17-24: Repeat Rows 13-16 twice more.
Repeat Rows 1-24 six times more.

So, if I’m on row 20, I need to work out which of rows 13-16 that corresponds to, then I need to look back again to find out what that actually means I should be knitting. No, thank you!

However, by copying and pasting the details for rows 1-4 into a text editor and then working through the instructions, copying the details from the appropriate row, I ended up with something like:

Row 1 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 2 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 3 [RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 4 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Row 5 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 6 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 7 [RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 8 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Row 9 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 10 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 11 [RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 12 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Row 13 [RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 14 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 15 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 16 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Row 17[RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 18 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 19 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 20 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Row 21[RS]: Stitch details for row 3.
Row 22 [WS]: Stitch details for row 2.
Row 23 [RS]: Stitch details for row 1.
Row 24 [WS]: Stitch details for row 4.
Repeat Rows 1-24 six times more.

I then printed this off and attached my handy paperclip. Now, at a single glance, I can see exactly where I am in the repeat and what I should be knitting on that row.

Having complained earlier about the fact that Scotland really wasn’t all that different from England, I am now suffering through one of the major differences: the legal systems. In particular, how they apply to buying houses.

In Scotland, any offer you make to purchase a property is legally binding (except for when it isn’t; sellers, you might want to check with your lawyer that any offers you get are as binding as you think they are). In England, you can change your mind and withdraw your offer, without penalty, right up till the contracts are exchanged and money changes hands, which can be as late as the day that you’re due to move.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both systems. In Scotland, for instance, we wouldn’t have been able to make an offer on the flat that we’re currently interested in early enough because we didn’t have a mortgage arranged first. Had we made an offer without at least an agreement in principle, we’d have been taking the risk that our offer was accepted and then no one would lend us the money (which was very nearly the case). In England however, there’s nothing to discourage anyone from making an offer without fully considering whether they’re going to be able to follow through on it. This leaves the seller in the position of having to decide which of the offering buyers are most likely to be able to meet their offer as well as having to decide amongst the offers on their own merits. My current concern is that someone else’s offer will be accepted over ours and they will then pull out, the property will end up back on the market and we’ll have to go back through all this stress again if we’re still interested in buying the flat. (We know that there have been at least two other offers submitted.)

And (in England) the saga doesn’t end when your offer is accepted since the seller could also change their mind and pull out at any point up to the moving date. This is why there’s such a problem in the market with ‘chains’ (which I’m not going to get into discussing here). At least in our current situation, the seller is a bank who took the flat as a part exchange for another property so there’s no chain on either side and they hopefully won’t just randomly decide not to proceed with the sale.

Almost finally, a word of advice to estate agents: unless you’re absolutely certain that you’re going to have a decision from the seller on the submitted offers by close of business, don’t tell the prospective buyers that you’ll let them know by the end of the day! And if you still don’t have a decision from the seller two days later, it would be nice to call the prospective buyers and let them know that that’s the case!

Finally, for those of you who are worried that this blog is going to turn into a house-buying/renovating saga of woe, don’t panic! I don’t want that to happen either and will be doing my very best to find something (anything!) else to post about.

Ah, the property ladder! I was on it once, you know. Had a lovely view from that first rung. Affordable monthly payments (even though I hadn’t been able to put down much of a deposit), falling interest rates and regular trips to B&Q. Good times.

Then I decided to step off it, move to London and change careers. The step off was easy, my estate agent was swamped with offers and the flat was sold for almost twice what I had paid for it. Deciding to get back on two years later is not proving so straightforward.

In theory, it should have been easier this time. We now have two salaries which combined are roughly three times what my single salary was first time around and thanks to the proceeds of the sale of my last flat have a reasonable deposit. Unfortunately, we’re fussy about where we live and the current object of our desires is (according to the market) worth around five times what I paid for my first flat. And it needs a lot of work done. And we’re getting married next year.

Taken altogether, this means that we need to hang on to most of our deposit for renovation work and to pay for the wedding, which means that we have a higher loan-to-value ratio (meaning lenders want to charge higher interest rates). Adding in the fact that two months ago I took a large pay-cut when I changed careers so we need to borrow a larger multiple of our combined salaries (higher interest rates again) things aren’t looking so appealing in terms of available mortgages.

We are carrying on regardless though. An offer has been submitted to the estate agent (which probably merits a post of its own), a lender has agreed in principle to lend us a ridiculous sum of money and now we’re just waiting for the axe to fall.

Thanks to a wonderful project, ScummVM, pirate Steven and I are now reliving the days of our youth by playing the LucasArts Monkey Island games. To quote Wikipedia: “The games follow the misadventures of the hapless Guybrush Threepwood as he struggles to become the most notorious pirate in the Caribbean, defeat the plans of the evil undead pirate LeChuck and win the heart of governor Elaine Marley.”

ScummVM allows (legal) copies of many of the original LucasArts games, among others, to be played on modern technology. For instance, we’re playing the PC CD version of the games on Steven’s iMac. There are also far more exotic ports including the PSP and iPhone. (I’m not entirely sure why we’re playing on the Mac when the games play perfectly well on my PC without the need for an interpreter but that’s beside the point!)

The games have a fantastic sense of humour, cover every pirate cliche I’ve ever come across and, unlike some of the other games of that era, don’t kill the main character just for walking around the wrong corner. (Space Quest, anyone?) The aspect that they’re probably best known for is the trading insults method of sword-fighting. As well as trading blows, you have to select the most cutting insult to deliver to your opponent at key moments. Examples will undoubtedly follow when we reach that section of the game!

And in an example of interesting synchronicity, the writing credit for the insults in the first game was Orson Scott Card, the author of “Ender’s Game” that the iKnit Kniterati were discussing this evening.

In case anyone is wondering about the excessive amount of blogging that I appear to be doing today, I thought I’d explain that it’s serving two very important purposes.

Firstly, it’s helping me catch up on my NaBloPoMo target, which was starting to look a little distant given that there are only four days left in the month and this will be my 22nd post towards a target of 30.

Secondly, it’s helping to stop me from going mad whilst waiting for a very important phone call. A therapist would call it “distraction therapy”. I’m not entirely sure it’s working though. I apologise for being cryptic but I promise I’ll post more details once the call has actually happened.

In the meantime, I’m off to check that I haven’t somehow missed the call and that my ring-tone is set to extra loud so that I’ll hear it if it goes on the train.

I may be exaggerating. Being a Scot in London should not count as a stranger in a strange land but a couple of questions from colleagues of mine have started me wondering this week.

“Did you get haggis for school dinners?” was the first. It at least came from an Australian colleague during a conversation about bizarre things that the British eat at school dinners. (For those of you wondering, my answer was No. I did however eat, and enjoy, rice pudding and semolina but not tapioca.)

“Do you like cold weather?” was today’s offering. Followed up with “because other_Scottish_person_in_dept. really loves it.” Which of course means that all Scottish people must love cold weather. (For the record, I do but only as long as I can stay inside and enjoy it from there.)

We’re really not all that different, honest! Just think before you ask the question: “In similar circumstances, would I ask an English person this?” If the answer’s no, then don’t ask me either.

It’s difficult to describe Ravelry succinctly. I can list what it has: patterns database, yarn database, individual notebooks and project pages where users can post details of what they’re working on as well as finished items. There are also forums and a private messaging system. The big thing though is the feeling of community. Being able to look at what other people are working on, reading their comments on particular patterns or yarns and having them comment on your items is just great. It’s like having access to a huge knitting circle without having to move away from the computer.

It was actually people’s comments on my projects that sparked this post. One of Ravelry’s features is the ability to mark something as a ‘favourite’. I noticed today that two of my projects have been marked as favourites by people, one of them by two different people, and it made my day!

What’s even better is that those two projects are also favourites of mine. One was Steven’s Avast jumper, which I was really pleased with and which, since he wears it a lot, I guess he was really pleased with too! The other was my beaded napkin rings (a variation on the Venezia pattern from Knitty). These turned out really pretty, even though I omitted the final, fiddly step of turning them into actual rings. The ultimate compliment on these so far though has been a friend who, upon being told that they were hand-made, commented that he had assumed they were shop-bought and spent the rest of the evening peering at them intently. I can only assume he was looking for some method of telling that they were hand-made.

Pictures below, since I don’t often have an excuse to post pictures to my blog.

In other knitting news, Henry is now 57% done but feels like it’s slowing down again. I still believe I can finish it by Christmas though.