Rain, darkness -- and the clocks haven't even gone back yet.

We had a strenuous weekend up north. In our month's absence, the house had been invaded by mice. We used to have a fair amount of trouble with them, 40 years ago, but lately things had been peaceful, live-and-let-live. They nibbled the insulation off exposed water pipes but spared the occasional packet of lentils on a high shelf; I let them alone.

Not this time.

The mess was appalling, and of course included a lot of things of no use to mice, like a packet of Brillo pads. The saddest loss was of some seed potatoes of rare breeds, saved from this year's crop and carefully left, under an Arabic nespaper, on a table in an upstairs bedroom. I've brought the remains back; all is not utterly lost.

So the days were spent cleaning, and securing every mouse-worthy item in the kitchen in jars and tins (where I won't find them next time). We caught quite a few, eight in fact although one got away. They are pretty little country mice, a different species from the horrid House Mouse, but they make just as much mess. If not more. Our last night there, we didn't catch any, which seemed rather encouraging. Time will tell.

So, not much knitting. I finished the first sleeve of Rachel's striped Koigu, picked up stitches around the armhole, did a three-needle bind-off. I'm rather pleased with the effect. The stripes made it easy to deal with the problem of row-to-stitch gauge. I picked up three stitches from every (five-row) black stripe, four from the coloured ones, and that pretty well took care of it.

And I started the second sleeve. And discovered that ribbing, not my favourite practice, is much easier back-and-forth, as here, than it is round-and-round, as on the sock I started the week before in London. Why?

It was raining so hard yesterday morning that I didn't dare take the camera outside. So the traditional garden picture was taken from the sitting-room window. It's not very good.

On Sunday I broke a front tooth. I haven't been able to get a dentist's appointment until Thursday. Consider yourself fortunate that this isn't a live webcam.