In the stirring lyrics of the old British football song, Here we go! Here we go! Here we go! I have heard no more from Beijing, so presumably James and Kirsty are at this very moment somewhere over the Urals. And I am far too twitchy to venture out to lunch without my knitting, so I phoned my sister-in-law in a quiet moment yesterday and told her it was coming too. She agreed that it would be rude to bring it, but was quite understanding. The excuse -- perfectly valid -- is that this is Christmas knitting. She knows that James is coming, and that he's supposed to be kept secret until he arrives.

I cast on the second-attempt swirly scarf yesterday, and it is at a perfect stage to accompany me. I've got as far as 450 stitches and am now required to do 12 rows plain. All is going well so far, but with the other attempt it was the third doubling of the stitch count that did for me. In this case, when I've done the 12 plain rows, I am supposed to double the stitch count again, and then immediately cast off, pick up the cast-on stitches, and set off in the opposite direction.

Today's illustrations are, obviously, not knit-related. I have friends who enjoy Alexander McCall Smith's accounts of life on Scotland Street (which is just around the corner from Drummond Place). I tried to read the first one when it was serialised in the Scotsman, and found it seriously boring, but it figures on many a best-seller list.

One of my Smith-reading friends asked the other day if there is really a tunnel under Scotland Street, so today's pictures are (a) the mouth of the tunnel, down by Tesco's, photographed yesterday, and (b) the crack in the wall of our hall, which my husband is convinced is tunnel-related. McCall Smith suggests, I believe, that there is access to the tunnel from a door or doors on Scotland Street. I don't know about that, but it sounds not unlikely. Edinburgh is a funny sort of place, that way.

Comments

Thanks for comments. Anyone remotely interested must know by now that Pakistan won the first test. My husband and I are reading Churchill on the Second World War at bedtime, and on Tuesday evening had just finished the chapter on the fall of Singapore. England's collapse on Wednesday morning, from a relatively good position, was very similar.

Lee, thanks for the tip about "Knitting on the Road". I've heard good things about it, too; perhaps it will be my next purchase. I still haven't looked at "Knitting Vintage Socks".