Blogging is a great system for getting things done. Today I will make a serious start on the income tax, and write to our solicitor about a related capital gains problem which is beyond me.

And yesterday, as hoped, I got the revised pattern for the striped Koigu toddler's sweater onto my website: http://www.jeanmile.demon.co.uk/jamie's%20koigu.htm. I'm working on an adult version when we are in the country, as some will remember. If I'm successful, that version of the pattern will eventually appear as well.

Not much actual knitting yesterday. I re-read my own archives on the subject of attaching Wallaby pouches -- thanks again, Sharon -- and approach the event with more confidence. I got a bit more of the ribbing done, and am a little over half-way through the 46th repeat of the Princess Shawl edging. I think I've mastered the pattern at last, but one needs to keep one's wits about one.

I wandered around my website for a while, after posting the pattern and revising the opening page to take account of current events. Jayne and I had been corresponding about Evelyn Waugh since my post earlier in the week about the death in extreme old age of his wife's sister. I was reminded of the picture above, and of one we took at my 70th birthday party:http://www.jeanmile.demon.co.uk/birthdy1.htm -- bottom picture, in which we all tried to look as disagreeable as possible. It's not easy when the sun is shining and you're having a good time and are glad to be together. Clearly, in the picture above, the Waughs are attempting the same thing. The two youngest boys are particularly successful.

I also started giving some thought to my future long cardigan with pockets (as worn by Evelyn Waugh's wife's sister). The travelling stitch cardigan in Meg Swansen's "Knitting" appeals -- as does the sweater she is wearing on the inside back flap of the dust jacket, but there doesn't seem to be a pattern for that. I must look about for a yarn with good stitch definition in approximately DK weight. When I went to Camp Stitches in '99 I bought a couple of balls of Jean Frost yarn (do I mean that? or Jean Moss?) for Candace Strick's travelling stitch class. It worked brilliantly (and the class was fascinating -- I wish Candace would write her travelling stitch book). The yarn eventually wound up as a cabled hot water bottle cover, and looks (and wears) well in that role as well. Is it still in the Patternworks catalogue.....?