I'm half-way through the 12^th repeat of the centre of the Unst Bridal Shawl. Six more needed.

JeanfromCornwall, I ordered the Dutch gansey book from A**zon.co.uk – I wouldn't have thought of looking for it there, but for you. I am sorry to take the business away from Meg, but in fact the major loser is the US postal system and I don't feel under any obligation to them.

As everybody must know, a new series of “Shetland” starts tonight on BBC television. We didn't get on very well with last year's. For one thing, we couldn't understand much of what was going on (we're not very clever), and for another it was meant to be set in deep midwinter – Up Helly Aa figured – and had patently been filmed at a different time of year.

But we'll give it a try.

The big news, television-wise – not knitting-related, however – is that a sort-of sequel to Twenty Twelve (called W1A) will start next Wednesday, a week tomorrow. Twenty Twelve was one of the very funniest things on television in recent years. It was about preparations for the London Olympics. The idea for the new series is that the team has moved to the BBC, where Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville, Lord Downton himself) is now Head of Values.

Will it work? The joy of Twenty Twelve was that the Olympics were really going to happen. The movement of traffic in London really had to be planned. Muslim sensibilities really had to be considered. We'll see – we will certainly be watching.

Cookery

Dragonwagon's “Bean by Bean” turned up yesterday, and it's good. Although I haven't yet zero'd in on anything specific I want to make. At bedtime, in despair, I put some chickpeas on to soak, figuring that I could always make hummus. The Greeks can help me eat it when they get here at the weekend.

Health

Greek Helen has arranged to stay on an extra two days – she'll be leaving on Tuesday, instead of whizzing back to Athens on Sunday after talking to Archie's teachers. It would be nice if Thursday's dr's appt would produce something specific, like instant hospitalisation. I dreamt last night that I got all the way there and realised I had forgotten to bring the ECG.  

I enjoyed my Sunday, although even cider doesn't taste as good as it used to. Both daughters rang up to tell me that I have probably damaged my heart with excessive cider-drinking and must give it up altogether. They'll be suggesting I give up knitting, next. But I will at least ensure that drs are fully apprised, and meanwhile it's back to Lent.

My husband, on the other hand, has begun to talk about getting back to Strathardle, and, indeed, of planting a magnolia on the west lawn. That's the elephant in the room, all right. I said I'd have to get better first. He said, you're not in terminal decline. I thought that was rather encouraging.

There was some talk, in the telephone calls just mentioned, of trying to postpone this week's dr's appt until Friday, so that Greek Helen (arriving very late Thursday) could come along. But Friday is the day the publisher and the researcher are coming to see us (I will order in sandwiches from a promising website I have discovered) and I think that's probably enough for one day. I can see the argument for bringing it forward, too, although that would be likely to mean that he wouldn't have last Wednesday's chest x-ray yet. He told me last week the symptoms which would mean I should ring up the practice and demand to see someone at once (as well as the ones which would mean ringing 999) – I'll wait and watch.

And I'll ask about potassium.

Knitting

I have finished the 11^th and embarked on the 12^th repeat in the centre of the Unst Bridal Shawl. Progress. If my husband is wrong and I am in terminal decline, this is the baby I want to leave behind. It is uncomfortable to reflect – but true of all of us – that something, or some collection of things, is bound to be left behind unfinished.

The Schoolhouse Press has got a new book called Dutch Traditional Ganseys. I wondered at first whether it was a re-publication, perhaps updated, of the one work I have on the subject, but I've found my book – it was actually on the Traditional Knitting Shelf where it belonged – and it's a different one, “Knitting from the Netherlands” by Henriette van der Klift-Tellegen. Another wonderful name. So I'll probably order the new one, although Dutch fishermen's sweaters are not nearly as interesting as British ones.

The Schoolhouse also seems to have revived Woolgathering. I'm not quite sure where I stand on that one – I think my subsciption expired and I couldn't renew because we had entered the hiatus. I'll have to try to check.

Non-knit

Greek Helen is now back in Athens after the family trip to Constantinople, getting ready to come to Edinburgh. She sent us these pictures:

Cat in Hagia Sophia:

Cat in the Archaeological Museum:

Hittites in the Archaeological Museum, looking remarkably as if they are clutching fringed, triangular shawls about their shoulders:

Well, at least Alexander and his family saw a thriller yesterday, with Scotland actually producing some rugby. We were leading by a single point in the final moments, but then France were awarded a penalty and kicked it without difficulty, putting them two points ahead. So it remained. So the Little Boys, despite frequent trips to Murrayfield, have still never seen Scotland win. All the sweeter when it comes.

A Week Is a Long Time

Last Sunday, Archie was here and we contrived to do a bit of picture-hanging before Mass. I was feeling weak and breathless, and you people and my family had persuaded me to ring up on Monday and make a same-day appt with a dr. Which I did. Lent was still in the future, and cider flowed freely.

Now, that Sunday seems an eternity ago. I think I am even weaker and more breathless. Am I really? Or is it just the psychological effect of knowing officially that I have a Heart Condition?

This week will be a long one, too. My husband's publisher and a researcher are coming to see us on Friday. I'll order sandwiches in, and tell them in advance that we need to rest in the afternoon, but it will still be an effort. Greek Helen will be here, to talk to Archie's teachers – she's arriving very late on Thursday. Thursday is also the day when I will see the dr again. So she and I ought to know a bit more by the weekend, and be able to make some immediate and some more distant plans. Alexander is ready to whisk his father off to Loch Fyne at a moment's notice if I need hospitalisation.

Greek Helen is virtually a vegetarian. I must plan a delicious bean-based dish for her. She is glad to hear that I am getting Rose Elliot's Bean Book “as I can't see any point in life without it”.

My sister agrees with you, Cam, that cider may not be a good idea, today. (And Alexander rightly says that it will make Lent harder, to break it up in that way.) I'll go ahead, but cautiously. The calories will be welcome – I don't have much appetite, and weight is falling away. A glass of cider will help lunch down, too.

And if I wind up feeling too good, I may give up Lent altogether.

Knitting

And meanwhile, big news, I've finished the Milano. I don't think I need to block it. Shape is perfect. It's whisper-light and deliciously soft. A pass with the steam iron will suffice.

I resumed the Unst Bridal Shawl without difficulty, too. When I switched to the Milano, the bigger yarn and needles were hard to deal with for a moment. I was afraid that I would have the same effect in reverse, on returning to lace, but no, it was fine.

I am 2/3rds of the way through the 11^th repeat of the centre pattern – 18 ½ repeats are required. The end isn't quite in sight, but it's not far around he corner. The plan is to finish the centre, pick up all those stitches around, and establish the borders, and then think of incorporating Rams&Yowes into some sort of system – a couple of days a week, maybe.

Zite is full, these days, of stories about knitting little sweaters for penguins. I haven't bothered to read any of them, so I don't know what's afoot. But I love Franklin's take on the problem, whatever it is.

Milano is finished, knitting-wise. It will need at least one more session for dealing with ends and then I may or may not decide to block it. The picking up of stitches for the neck wasn't very tidy, and the fact that different colours were involved made small flaws more conspicuous: the neck scoop cuts down through several stripes, so whatever colour I chose for the band was going to have to pick up a lot of stitches from other colours.

I added an extra three rounds to the neck band itself, in the hope that the st st curl would conceal the pick-up line, and rather to my surprise, I think this has worked.

You'll have to wait a week or so for a pic, for reasons you will eventually understand.

Beans

I have just ordered Elliot's Bean Book – I bought the 1980 edition from Abebooks because several of the reviews on Amazon said it was better than the modern update. I use Abebooks a lot. I order things on-line a lot. When I got to the last click, security code from credit card already entered, I noticed that I was about to buy a book in Spanish (not about beans, as far as I could grasp) costing more than £23,000.

I removed it from my shopping basket and went ahead with the Elliot order, but it was an unnerving experience, and must have something to do with this plague of pop-ups which often means, as I said recently, that I click on one thing and get something else entirely. There's a job for Archie when he's here next weekend. I had better make a list for him.

And my sister says she has ordered the Rancho Gordo book for me from American Amazon – I should have an Abnormal ECG more often. Then Amazon offered her the Kindle edition for a small additional sum and she took it, since the pages of her own copy are stuck together with tamale sauce. Amazon.co.uk hasn't got on to that wheeze yet. It's a good one.

Yesterday I cleaned out the top cupboard shelf where previous essays into healthy and cheap eating were stored – beans of various sorts (more than I expected) for the most part BBE Nov 2011. I threw them all away – they would have served well enough if we were under siege, but I now know that the fresher dried beans are, the better, so I'll start from scratch.

And I discovered that Jamie Oliver has a rather good pulse chapter in his first book, The Naked Chef.

But despite all that, I went to bed forgetting to put any beans on to soak. So, not today.

Miscellaneous

Alexander and his family are coming over for the rugby, ever hopeful. They'll drop in here around lunchtime if they can get past Rest and Be Thankful. It's been in trouble again.

I am strongly tempted to follow my own lead, and regard the Sundays in Lent as extra-curricular. I've never done that before, but I've never had an Abnormal ECG on Ash Wednesday before, either. One of the two or three things I can remember from a lifetime of sermon-listening is the suggestion that the cheerful acceptance of the penances life imposes on one can be more meritorious than laboriously carrying out the ones one has thought up for oneself. (I got home from church that day and found that the Aga had gone out, which sort of underlined the message.)

So, perhaps a bottle of Weston's Vintage with lunch tomorrow.

Little to report.

I finished the second sleeve of the Milano. There was a minor hitch – the sleeve concludes with a little cuff made of six rows alternating k1p1 rib with st st. I started happily off and then looked at it and saw an ugly line of purl bumps, every other stitch. Then I had a closer look at the first sleeve and saw that I had sensibly started with a st st row. So I frogged and did it that way. Common sense, really.

So today's job is to pick up the neck stitches. Then just 12 rounds of st st, I think it is, cast off and leave it to curl.

Life

Ordering groceries on-line is hard work, and not nearly as much fun as walking up and down the aisles reading labels and tossing in little treats for oneself. But I got it done, and presumably subsequent orders will be quicker because they will let me load last week's list and amend it.

“Pulse” came, and has proved rather a disappointment. Too many lentil recipes – my husband claims not to like them; too many recipes allowing me to tip beans out of a tin. I do that all the time, and now I want to be inspired to soak and cook them properly. My sister swears by Rancho Gordo's book which I think is called Heirloom Beans.

I am afraid I have now ordered “Bean by Bean” by Crescent Dragonwagon. This is ridiculous, but who could resist that name? (It's not genuine.)

Here we go. Lent. It will be particularly interesting this year to see if I feel better (as I usually do) without cider.

A friend of Greek Helen's phoned yesterday and offered to drive me to the hospital – that's what's meant by a good friend. I accepted with pleasure. The Western is close, and if there's a place in the hospital car park, it's not far to walk to the door. But if there's no room, one often has to park down by the big police station at Fettes. The hike back up the hill from there is more than I want to undertake just now.

This will be for the ECG and chest x-ray. I doubt if I will know anything about the results until I see the dr again next week.

I did a bit of minor tidying in the sitting room yesterday, and found a little DVD called “Shetland Fine Lace” which I bought in the Lerwick Museum in September.. Our DVD player doesn't seem to be working – we don't use it very often -- job for Archie when he's next here – so I wound up watching it on a computer. Very highly recommended, some fine pictures of old lace and of Shetland landscape. As much as anything, it's an account of the new lace yarn I'm using for the Unst Bridal Shawl.

I'm nearly half-way through the second sleeve of the Milano. =Tamar, it's matching. I hesitated over making it fraternal. That's the way I always do socks. But I thought the discrepancy might look discordant here.

….. I wrote this much yesterday, and then life took over. The cleaning woman was here, the vacuum cleaner stopped working, I had to leave a sandwich lunch for my husband before setting out to the hospital. You know how it is.

Lent: if I can do one day, I suppose I can do the rest.

Hospital: it was wonderful to have Helen's friend with me. Sure enough, there was no space in the hospital car park – and finding the places I needed to be, once inside, wasn't easy either. The ECG nurse gave me the print-out to take to the dr. I opened it at once, of course. It says “ABNORMAL ECG” and has four additional lines of unintelligible text which I have copied out and sent to my doctor-sister. She says she was never very good at ECG's and will have to look it up.

The chest x-ray took longer. That is being sent directly to the dr. My appt with him is a week today. I hope I will then find out something of what to expect. I dread surgery.

But for the moment I am greatly enjoying my new status as a genuine invalid – Pulling Myself Together and Making an Effort is of no use at all. This morning I will devote myself to sending in a supermarket order on-line. It helps not to have to order cider.

I should finish the second Milano sleeve today, and make a start on picking up stitches for the neck. Since that is done only once, the precise number won't be such a stressful issue as it was for the second sleeve, as long as they are distributed evenly around. There are lots of ends to deal with, but I'm still on target to finish next week.

Cookery

I am inspired to cook more with dried beans, after the success of that salad I made for Archie latr weekend. My sister has long been keen, and orders from the splendid Rancho Gordo. I can't find a British equivalent, although there are some interesting sources with a shorter bean-list (and a good health food shop on Broughton Street). Claudia Roden says that beans are largely a new-world thing anyway, now thoroughly integrated into Spanish cookery as into Mexican. Perhaps Christopher Columbus brought them back.

I have ordered a book called “Pulse” by Jenny Chandler which all the reviewers on Amazon are terrifically keen on. I hope it'll come today. There's a great-sounding bean salad in The Crank's Bible which is one of the books recently to emerge from the spare room.

Shrove Tuesday

Health

I saw a dr at the end of yesterday afternoon, setting off as cheerfully as to the gallows because I believed I would be sent straight to hospital. Alexander and Ketki, thinking along the same lines, had splendidly offered to entertain my husband. They will be rewarded in heaven.

The dr does think that the trouble is my heart (and I haven't forgotten, =Tamar, that you said that at the beginning). I was slightly surprised that he couldn't just listen to it and know everything, but apparently not (although he did listen). He has prescribed a diuretic and aspirin and one of those sprays we have heard about which you spray under your tongue in a crisis to dilate the coronary arteries. I am to present myself at the Western Infirmary for an ECG and a chest x-ray -- I've got a chit but no appt; that should yield some good knitting time. And then see the dr again next week.

It wasn't the nice young man I had been seeing so far, but it was someone I knew (and like) because my husband has consulted him.

And I am here, a free woman, not in hospital! I shall spend the day floating happily in my pre-Lenten cider and cooking nice things and then maybe devote Ash Wednesday to the Western Infirmary.

This ought to mean that I never again have to do anything I don't want to do, but I doubt if it will work out that way.

Knitting

I got the second Pakokku sock cast on yesterday, while waiting to see the dr. Waiting times aren't what they used to be, and these socks are not progressing very briskly.

And in the evening, I got the stitches picked up for the second Milano sleeve, a job I don't enjoy. Obviously, for a second sleeve, there's no leeway at all on the number. However, I got it done. The sleeve itself should go fast, now that I know, from the first sleeve, exactly how far I've got to go. It may have taken me a long time to get back to, and I may grumble at being deprived of lace, but I love it:

Miscellaneous

There was a considerable satisfaction, the other evening as we watched the television news, at seeing Russian soldiers in Crimea wearing balaclavas. That's where Balaclava is, in Crimea.

Lent: Knitlass, your husband should be persuaded that the Sundays don't count, if he just counts the days. From tomorrow until the day before Easter, inclusive, there are 46 days. Lent is based on the 40 days Our Lord spent in the wilderness. The extra six are the Sundays, which don't count as Lent.