Top Dog

...or The Day of the Rottweiler.

I was disappointed at the choice of Pope, but will have to trust that the Holy Spirit knew better. My fishmonger told me yesterday morning that the new Pope, when elected, would take the name Benedict, but he got the nationality wrong -- he thought it would be a Frenchman.

Cardinal Ratzinger used to be called "God's Rottweiler" (or maybe it was "The Pope's..." -- I do my blogging early, before I walk across the square to get the papers). Diana and her friends used to call Camilla "the Rottweiler".

Knitting

A good day yesterday with the Fair Isle jacket. Both armholes and sleeve "seams" are now tidy, and the front steek trimmed and pinned down and partly secured. My books agree that I've got to knit the neck band before the button bands, so today I hope I'll finish a first pass at the front steeks and pick up stitches for the neck. That's the last tricky bit. If I can get them even -- which means, if I've calculated right up to now -- we really are on the home stretch.

Starmore seems to think that I should make a second pass at securing the steeks -- having overcast them once with stitches which go like this: / I should go back over the work in the other direction, making stitches which go like this: \ and thus cross the first ones. I don't think that's necessary at the armholes, where I seem to have a fair amount of fabric and have largely turned it under, but the front steek seems more precarious so it's probably a good idea. Starmore reduces a steek to two stitches per side, which seems distinctly precarious.

The photographs shows the results of my toils to date.

Life

I got the first 25 of my husband's files converted and moved to the launching platform yesterday -- and then couldn't persuade them to make the crossing into the Palm. I was nearly in tears. But just as I got to the point where I had to switch off and attend to an evening meal, I think I spotted my mistake. We'll soon see.