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Alexander rang up yesterday morning, muttering something about "utter incompetence" which I didn't quite catch, and offering to go into Blogger himself and straighten things out. So he did. We've now got comments back under control (although with the permanent loss, apparently, of many of my treasured comments from the past) and the hit-counter incorporated as well. I am pleasantly surprised at how many of us there are. I will report tomorrow, when the system has had a whole 24 hours to run.

Knitting

The great thing about this veil is that the rows are short enough that several are accomplished at each session, even though the session be brief, so progress is visible. I got out my treasured copy of Piecework for May/June, '98, yesterday. That's the one with Bridget Rorem's essay about the bridal veil she knit for her daughter Ingrid. There's no pattern for the veil in Piecework (although Bridget later contributed a similar, although reduced pattern to Meg Swansen's "A Gathering of Lace") but there is a lacy alphabet, fully charted. I have used it several times, to sign shawls, and will use it again here to incorporate the initials of the wearer and her younger sister.

The Curmudgeon (www.knittingcurmudgeon.com) likes Kate Gilbert's jacket pattern in the current IK, too, (like me and Joe and Selma) but has the wisdom to point out that the front edges curl inward. Would attaching a facing help? If so, what? I must have the answer on my bookshelves somewhere.

My sister wrote yesterday, asking for a shawl to replace one which vanished into the void when an airline lost a suitcase. A happy loss, as I had wanted to knit her one for her 70th birthday next year -- a prospect which makes me feel a good deal older than my own did, a couple of years ago -- but soon realised there was no way it could be done in secret (she reads the blog) without depriving myself of anything to write about. Now it's out in the open. We are discussing patterns and yarns.

She is living and working in Mozambique at the moment. She attached this cheerful Christmas picture.