I was just looking at my blog stats, then looked again. I knew, I just knew that today was Wednesday. Gak. Seems I dropped a day somewhere. Even my daily calendar was off by day, saying definitely that today was the fifteenth. Ha! I was spot on Monday. I wonder which day I “slept” through. Gads. I really hate it when I completely lose a day.

Update

Since I last posted I sleeved and shipped 70 more patterns to my distributor. Talked to Mom. She’s fine. She’s worried about getting her house painted, and picking out the colors. I told her to ask for help from a friend who’s very good with color. I think she actually will do that. I’ve been knitting. Swatched a very pretty stitch pattern that keeps saying it wants to be either worked into a tunic or a cardigan. It hasn’t decided which yet, much less what yarn it wants to be knit from. Been tossing around ideas for another tank top or two. I really wish I had more yarn. I know. But really, for what I’m doing, I hardly have any yarn at all. I really need to go invest a ton of cash in a ball each of a bunch of different things so I can swatch them, feel them, see what they like to do. Unfortunately, that’s out of the question. Drat. So, I hobble along. I should be getting a couple balls of different yarns from Elann to swatch with, though, as I have a vague idea for a nice brown cardigan. Might end up using the pretty stitch I swatched yesterday. Might not. Won’t know until the yarn gets here and I can play with it a bit.

I’ve been working on a new scarf pattern. I’m knitting this one up with some heavy fingering weight yarn I have, Silkie Socks That Rock, in In the Navy. This stuff knits up like a dream. The color didn’t turn out well at all in any of these pictures. I tried to fix it in Photoshop, but I don’t really know where it’s off, so ended up just making it worse. Ah well. It’s the stitch that’s important. I love the zigzags.

I have a lot more knit than this now. I’m more than half way done. I hope to get the pattern to my test knitter soon, very soon. What with completely losing a day this week, though, who knows when it’ll get done. Gads. What I need to do is to block one end of it before I go to bed tonight, then measure it tomorrow, figure out what gauge I’m actually getting.

Zigzags in architecture

From time to time I’ve shared with you bits and pieces from my love and appreciation of architecture. The zigzags in this piece of knitting made me think of things I’ve occasionally seen in older buildings, the lovely details they used to build into things back when form was at least as important as function, and artisans and builders were allowed to show their art and skill in the decorations on buildings that would endure for centuries. I did a couple of searches this morning. One of the first pieces I came across is this gorgeous Romanesque arch on a building in Ancaster (in Ontario?), taken by Tina Manthorpe.

It’s amazing what people can build with stone. There’s this gorgeous piece that I presume is somewhere in the U.K., though I was unable to figure out on what building or exactly where from the web page. This beautiful arch has zigzags in a couple different levels. I found it on Andy Marshall’s blog in an old post where he talks a bit about Romanesque architecture. The church of St. Mary the Virgin, Iffley, Oxford has a gorgeous zigzag framing a doorway. Then there’s this fabulous arch in Quenington, Gloucestershire (photo by Groenling). There’s a zigzag on the arch, and another double one lower down on the support.

More zigzags are found on the Lincoln Cathedral. I found this picture on a fabulous page on Answers.com when searching for Romanesque. I hope to have time sometime soon to go back and read their entire entry on Romanesque architecture—tons of information and lots of fabulous pictures. Looks fascinating.

Then there’s this entry on Wikipedia about Norman architecture, and a lovely archway on an old building in Guiting Power, Gloucestershire with lots of zigzags on it.

Because of all of this, I’m seriously considering calling this new zigzag pattern Quenington after that incredible arch with its wonderful double zigzag support. Mostly because of the support design. It looks a lot like my lace pattern, don’t you think?

Patternfish

Currently, part of the deal with my new distributor is that I will no longer sell pdf patterns in the U.S. and Canada, nor allow them to be sold here on my behalf. I know. I’m working on it. Until I can get that bit of the agreement fixed to my satisfaction, those of you in North America won’t find these on my site. In fact, after July 22 you won’t find them on Patternfish, either. But until that date all of my for-sale patterns will be available as pdf downloads here on Patternfish.