We usually take a group picture when we get back to the house at the end of Games Day. This time, we had to do it in a great hurry, and the result is the best group picture we've ever had. The hurry was because James and his family were leaving at once -- he had to write a "special" for last week's Economist (the issue which goes out of date today) about Mr Hu's visit to Washington, and the magazine wanted a Beijing dateline for it. "Kirkmichael, by Blairgowrie, Perthshire" didn't have quite the same ring, apparently. So James eschewed beer all day, and they drove halfway down, stayed in a TravelLodge somewhere that night, and flew out from Heathrow on Sunday afternoon. And James wrote the special. And Mr Hu had his visit cancelled so that the President would have more time for hugging people.

Anyway, my brother-in-law took charge of the group picture. We usually line up on the front lawn. He turned things around, ranged us in front of my vegetables facing into the evening light, magic'd a tripod out of somewhere, and here is the result. Roger himself is the tall man in the back row, next to his son Theo in the Koigu sweater. I am the fat woman in white towards the left, wearing the prize-winning tammy. Mungo Drake, whose Koigu sweater is sliding off his shoulder (another bad crew neck) is to the right in the foreground, holding a rose to represent his brother Oliver, Helen and David's eldest son, who died at six weeks and is buried in Kirkmichael.

I've had some nice comments lately. Thank you, everyone. One of the "Jean's" asks how rainbows work, and why the colours are reversed when you get a double rainbow. I don't know. There is a famous and rather awful pre-Raphaelite picture, possibly in the Birmingham Art Gallery, called I think "The Blind Girl", in which a vivid double rainbow appears. I read a comment about it somewhere once in which the critic actually complained that the artist had made a mistake in reversing the colours for the second rainbow.

Knitting

I'm working on repeat #73 of the Princess Shawl edging. I'm really going to miss it when I finish. And I've done a couple of inches above the ribbing of the first Wallaby sleeve. It shouldn't take long now. When I finally finish with the Games and get back to pictures of knitting, you will see some progress.