Lavender & Lace

Thank you to everyone for the comments about my graduation! Monkey is particularly taken with Susoolu's comment that he should have his own knitted graduation gown etc (he claims this is because he was the one who did the work, although I would dispute that). He also agrees that he would look very spiffy indeed in it. So, if anyone has any idea how I should start knitting him a gown, hood & mortarboard, or has seen a suitable pattern, please let me know (else he'll never stop going on about it).

I did manage to avoid going to the graduation for my first degree, from Royal Holloway, by going off to work in Switzerland that summer. My brother also cunningly avoided his by being on honeymoon! I've now told my bro that he's got to go to his graduation for his second first degree once it's finished as I've been put through the purgatory and I don't see why he shouldn't. Dreamcatcher - no, the ceremony was in the Logan Hall, which is in the basement of the Institute of Education. There isn't a hall big enough at UCL itself.

Did anyone see last week's Equator? There was a little boy monkey doing something that was a little bit rude for pre-watershed TV (and no I'm not putting the real word, don't want loads of dodgy hits from Google). Fortunately Monkey didn't see it, otherwise I'd have had some explaining to do about why he doesn't have a certain appendage...

Lavender & Lace has been finished for about a week, but there is a slight camera problem here at the moment. Living on my own makes it slightly difficult to take photos of me wearing said knitted items. My camera doesn't have one of those auto things on it. And I still don't have any mirrors up to stand in front of to take pics (everyone at work is used to me arriving with hair all over the place now).

So I took my camera along to Knit Lincs and Cay took some pics for me. It was a bit dark in the Hub, so they haven't come out brilliantly! And I really do have wonky shoulders!

Details: Lavender & Lace from Simply Knitting May 2006
Yarn: Patons 100% cotton 4ply in purple, 2 x 100g balls and Rowan Kidsilk Haze in black, 1 x 25g ball.
Needles: 5mm

Also, a book review!
"Good wives? - Mary, Fanny, Jennie and me" by Margaret Forster. I picked this up the first time I trotted off to use Balderton library and it was an interesting read. She examines the lives as wives of Mary Livingtone (wife of David), Fanny Stevenson (wife of Robert Louis) and Jennie Lee (wife of Aneurin Bevan), and compares it with her own in the late twentieth century. I found the tone a little frustrating at times (she gets quite sniffy about the way Mary Livingstone won't stand up to David at all, yet that would have been the norm during that period of history). I came away with a feeling of overwhelming relief that I was born now, rather than 150 odd years ago! What was interesting was the detail provided of the women's lives. All three were very different, Mary was born in Africa and felt most comfortable there (she accompanied David on many of his expeditions), whilst Fanny would have been quite notorious for her time, as she was divorced. They obviously led lives very very different to those of most women of their age and class as they travelled an enormous amount. Jennie was also a pioneer, one of the very early female MPs, who didn't want to marry at all, but ended up married to Bevan as the Health Service was brought into being.