Not Finished, Just Begun

Once, long, long ago I went to some sort of graduation ceremony at a primary (=grammer) school in New Jersey. Those words were written on a  banner across the stage, and they became more and more appropriate as the interminable afternoon wore on. Well, I'm sure that's how I'll soon feel about the Princess Shawl, but for the moment I am bursting with pride. I did it. I knit the edging. I hope to make a good start at picking up the stitches today.

What will follow is not, as it would be for a typical square shawl, a knitting-inwards towards the centre -- that process has the delicious advantage that the work seems to be going faster and faster, as the stitch count decreases. This time, it stays exactly the same. I am about to try to knit a Very Large Rectangle, with my pretty edging along one long edge.

When that's done, things get a bit difficult, as the rectangle is gathered around two sides of a triangular centre. Late next year, maybe.

Non-Knit

The next Big Event But One, around here, will be my husband's 80th birthday in November. Nothing more exciting than going out to have lunch in a restaurant, but James will come back from China and Helen from Greece for the occasion, and we have also invited a few choice old friends from hither and yon in GB. I hope we can keep it a semi-surprise: he will know that the London crowd have come up, because they will be sleeping on mattresses on the floors all over the house, and will think we are going out to lunch with them and with his sister in Morningside, and then the other people (including James and Helen) will meet us at the restaurant.

Be that as it may, the replies from the old friends have included snippits of information, and it is very odd not to be able to say to my husband over lunch, "L. has sold Duddingston Farm" or "M. says that the University Organist was killed in a car crash".

The next Big Event will be when we go to London in October. Rachel and her family have given me -- given us -- tickets to "Guys and Dolls" as a birthday present, which utterly suits my lowbrow tastes. We will all go together, even Alexander and Ketki. And then the next day, go out to supper to celebrate, belatedly, Thomas-the-Elder's 21st.