There's the jacket, with its neckband half cast off. I'm pretty pleased. Notice the discrepancy between the cuffs. I think now that it's perfectly acceptable as a Design Feature. I will try to make the two front bands identical, however. Maybe I'll do another Fair Isle next winter, given that the stash is endless. I'll keep better notes next time -- I have only very sketchy ones for this job.

Meanwhile, however, thoughts are turning lacewards. It'll have to be scarves, I guess, since nobody I know goes in much for shawls. Much as I love knitting them. My sister-in-law, rejecting the offer of a shawl, said once that she'd like something she could wear in bed, so maybe I'll enlarge something into a stole for her. Meanwhile, it's time to take Heirloom Knitting down from the shelf again.

And then I read Mary Morrison's Blog, and start thinking textured. Life is too short.

Life Is Also Long

I've got my husband's first 25 files into the Palm. Now all I have to do is slog on patiently forever. I've done two already this morning -- copying endnotes from word processing limbo into the main text, then saving the result in MS Word 2003 -- but the next one has 230 of the wretched little things, so that will take me awhile. Meanwhile, although I can create and name folders on the Palm, I haven't figured out yet how to copy files directly into them, nor even exactly how to move them once they arrive on the Palm. I'll worry about that later.

My husband is a great one for getting the bit between his teeth and pressing remorselessly on with whatever it is. Lately we have been shopping for a think, solid cushion for him to sit on when working at his new laptop in the country, to make it easier to reach the keyboard which is, in the usual laptop fashion, separated from the user by an empty expanse. And he has been nagging me to fill out an insurance claim form relating to the peeling of ceiling paper in the dining room where Mrs Carson's tenants' bathwater dripped through in January.

But he doesn't seem to include the state of my eyes amongst our current problems, great and small. I'd rate it high, but I'm just as glad to have the mental space to myself. One morning while we were in London last week Rachel came over early with my sister, who was staying with her, and we dealt in record time with a number of outstanding problems -- preliminary arrangements for my husband's 80th birthday in November, and for Thomas-the-Elder's 21st in August. (That one was easy: no party.) Then there was accomodation for the Games -- we can house two families-with-small-children in Burnside itself, in addition to me and my husband (priority for those places goes to the families with the youngest children), and I've already secured an entire bed&breakfast house in the village for some of the overflow, but I need to look for more space when we are there next week. Then we got on to the subject of eyes and the advice contradicted the decision I thought I had come to and I feel like a rabbit in the headlights. I did make a phone call yesterday, though.