Many thanks to everybody for the comments about my too-tight twirly scarf. Yes, I knit a plain row after cast-on, and between each increase row. Judith's idea of using a smaller needle for this one, final increase row feels as if it might work. I didn't rip the thing out yesterday, so I might well try that.

The tightness is not just number-of-stitches, which I could deal with. Hey, I'm knitting the Princess Shawl Border on 840 or so. But they're so tight that I can't push them along the needle, which is half the fun of knitting.

I was interested to learn from my kind commentators that Queer Joe had done such a scarf in Koigu. I thought of that, and then I wondered whether, if I went on with the same size needle, it would be so loose that it would flop around and not twirl. A certain amount of tightness must be essential.

I have some more or less solid green and brown in my extensive Koigu stash, with which I once knit the above sweater. It's a Knitter's pattern -- I'll try to look out the source for tomorrow; a really good one. It comes in all sizes from toddler to adult, and it's a cardigan as well as a pullover, with an interesting construction technique. I don't know why it didn't become a cult. Well, maybe I do: because the first time I knit it, I misunderstood the instructions -- how could I have been so stupid? -- with the result, as I think you can see, that the miter on the right shoulder (to the left above) is seriously awry, not centered. So the sweater lives in stash, and as far as it is possible not to like Koigu colours, I don't like the colours very much.

But they'd be perfect for a twirly scarf. The pattern Judith has me going on is double -- you pick up stitches from the cast-on edge and do it all again. So I could use both. But on what size needle? We'll see.

So yesterday I knit row 17 of the Princess Shawl Border, and started happily back across row 18.

But that'll have to be that. James is coming from China for his father's birthday on the 13th, which is any minute now. (The birthday is not till the 19th.) I'll have to get started on the replacement First Holy Communion veil at once.

Non-Knit

And my husband has announced that we have to go back to London to see some big art shows which have opened since we were there. There is nothing for it but to leap into action, and book us down next week. If I drag my feet even for a moment, I'll have to explain why we can't go the week after (James will be here), and spoil the surprise.

Lorna, I followed with pleasure the link you left with your comment. That makes two readers in Scotland, which makes it worthwhile to repeat something from yesterday's paper, unintelligible to the majority. The columnist Fraser Nelson was writing about the stunning lack of judgment Mr Blunkett showed in joining the board of DNA Bioscience, "a company which brokers the kind of tests which decide Blunkett-style paternity arguments. This appointment goes beyond self-parody. It is the equivalent of David McLetchie joining the board of an Edinburgh black cab company."