Friday 19th June - I received a cable!

(I've pinched the blog title from Ang!)

 I remember visiting Porthcurno in Cornwall, on the beach below the Minack open-air theatre and seeing the curiously small and insignificant hut where the huge, vital trans-world undersea cables came in;

Oh my, this brought back memories of watching a play as the sun set into the sea, a fishing boat slowly making it's way across the horizon...

The sea really was this colour, the sand really is golden....

The hut is at the head of the beach. We trudged up the sand to see the massive tarry cables emerge up through the floor, and continue to the office (now a museum) at the top.

But I digress. It wasn't that sort of cable...

I was momentarily baffled that she had only sent one photograph of the squares in the write-up, but she had created two the same. I love tracing the paths of the different strands in cable knitting. 

It's a nice shade of green, very soft wool with good stitch definition so the cable really stands out. 

The flat gift is an interesting guide to a textile exhibition she went to at Blickling Hall with fascinating pictures and information. 

I sent her a square from one of my favourite patterns for knitted squares;

You cast on enough stitches for two sides, and steadily decrease at the centre until you are left with only three stitches, which you knit together. The thing to watch out for with this version is you do a double decrease in every other row... you have to keep track of where you are and what you are doing! It's not as easy as marking the centre with a stitch marker, as the centre stitch is involved in the double decrease (slip 1, knit 2 together, passed slipped stitch over). I call this 'mindful knitting' and not entirely relaxing! 

(For 'mindless knitting' I  mark the centre and do a single k2tog after the marker on every row. Not as tidy, but with fuzzy yarn like this who can tell?)

The pattern actually called for Liquorice Allsorts stripes;

but I used self-striping yarn and let it do its thing. Two ends to sew in instead of many.

I've kept the pale square and sent Ang the darker one; it looked a little neater.

Finally, another flashmob. Clearly a setup, but still brilliant. The 'flute' player, Michel Tirabosco, is amazing.