I dealt with the ends on the Baby Surprise, sewed the shoulders, and started i-cording it.

JoVE, thank you for the advice. I've got a row of Debbie Bliss books, but alas not that one -- I eventually stopped buying them when I realised that, much as I sort of admired the patterns, I never got around the knitting any of them. And the books I do have, don't have anything about finishing.

I used lots of pins, and rolled up a pillowcase to serve as a seam pad, and attempted mattress stitch, and I think the result does look rather well. A table wasn't feasible, although I take the point. My knitting time is largely confined to about an hour and a half in the early evening, when we watch our soap and the news and something on tape -- Frasier, perhaps, or the Simpsons -- while my husband tests his blood sugar and injects insulin and waits a while as required and then has tea. I could absent myself to sit at the kitchen table and sew seams, but it wouldn't be very friendly.

Excursus

I bought Jamie Oliver's new book yesterday, heavily discounted at Sainsbury's. He's my favourite celeb cook, at the moment. This one is called Jamie's Italy. ("jamie's italy", rather) There's a recipe in it for Amalfi Baked Lemons.

I've been there. On three separate occasions, in the 80's, a colleague and I took parties of girls from the convent school where we taught to see the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum and all that stuff. We did it ourselves, booking pensione and coach and rail tickets directly (and this in the days before the Internet) and thus saving remarkable amounts of money over the prices quoted in the school travel brochures, quite apart from doing everything exactly as we pleased.

On one occasion, after a worthy day spent among the temples of Paestum, we stopped at Amalfi and Ravello. Ravello is not north or south or east or west of Amalfi, but directly above it. One ascends by hair-pin turns up a cliff face, as I remember. My colleague and I were sitting in the cafe opposite the cathedral there having a well-earned glass of something, when the man above came in with that lemon, which he showed proudly to his friends. I asked if I could take the picture you see.

Not much later, he cut it into slices and handed them round, including one each for me and my colleague. We ate the whole thing, skin and all. It was meltingly delicious.

It's the sort of thing one always intends to do -- and this time, I am pleased to remember, I actually did it. I sent a copy of that picture to "The cafe across from the Cathedral, Ravello" and thanked him again in my halting Italian for the memory of "quello limone emorme e squisito."