Somewhat restored. Thank you for the welcome-home, Laurie.

When we were waiting for our train north on Saturday morning, I discovered I was low on cash (a fairly common experience, in London) and had to explore the station thoroughly to discover a functioning cash machine. I am happy to report that Platform 9 3/4 is now signposted at King's Cross, not far from Platform 9. There are no tracks there, of course, let alone trains, and no explanation of the sign. All as it should be.

I finished row 16 (no difficulty) of the Princess shawl edging last night, and today will put it sadly and carefully away. I knit on, on the second Wallaby sleeve. Above is the current state of play. It looks too small, but I trust that is an illusion.

Lorna, alas, there is not much scope on the Christening shawl (http://www.jeanmile.demon.co.uk/veil.htm) for playing with lace patterns. I can perhaps substitute something else for the head bit, and can certainly indulge myself in selecting a different edging from Sharon's book when we get as far as edging it. But piety dictates the rest. It's not very large -- it shouldn't take long. I'll use Sharon's merino lace, the yarn I started doing the Princess in until she intervened personally to stop me (when I switched to her gossamer merino). The merino lace comes in a wonderful range of colours, but alas! I have no option in that sphere, either.

The Ally Pally

All my Blog-friends must have been to Rhinebeck last weekend. I await their reports breathlessly. Meanwhile, I can say with some confidence that I won't go back again to the Knitting and Stitching Show at the Alexandra Palace. It wasn't an absolute waste of time, but it's expensive to get in, very hot, very crowded, and the considerable majority of the vendors had nothing to do with knitting. A lot of the others were British vendors whom I knew well anyway.

Not a total waste of time, however. The one really exciting thing was the Japanese display. www.knitjapan.co.uk gives perhaps something of the flavour, but doesn't seem to include photographs of the magical objects we saw (my husband came along, which cramped my style somewhat). I also saw some alpaca yarn from a vendor whose ads I know, and I didn't care for the colours. I saw some Wensleydale, similarly (those are the sheep with dreadlocks, if I've got it right) and did like the colours. I have knitted with Wensleydale in the past -- it's a lovely, silky yarn. I saw and handled samples of both hemp and bamboo yarn, and liked the feel and the drape and the colours. I found a booth devoted to German sock yarns (www.getknitting.com, I think) and the entire display was what I think might qualify as funky, certainly resulting in socks that only females would wear, except for a very small section from which I bought a man's-socks-worth of a deep red yarn. Recent developments in sock yarn are very sad, gentleman-wise, thinking of the Socka range in the Patternworks catalogue ten years ago.

Non-Knit

I continue to be plagued with the Mytob virus. Fully half of the email I downloaded on Saturday evening, early, when we got home, consisted of it. Then I had a respite, when I logged in again late on Saturday and for most of yesterday. It was in full flow by Sunday evening, and again this morning. This sort of thing has happened on previous weekends. Could an American Jewish computer be the culprit? (American, because of the time-lag.) I have never had an individual virus-attack last so long.