Fergus wasn’t feeling very well yesterday (he brightened in the evening) so we didn’t go to the Royal Museum, and Helen stayed over another day. In the country, with an ailing Fergus, she wouldn’t have been able to exercise and entertain the elder two.

I’m somewhat forrad’er with the Paisley Long Shawl – working the second of six repeats of the interminable centre pattern. Here is a picture of Fergus when I walked into the sitting-room yesterday morning He was holding up my Katcha-Katcha and clicking it merrily. “What’s this for?” he asked. It’s for keeping my place in the 20-row pattern. (His brother Archie told me that it registered “11” when Fergus started in on it. Archie doesn’t go in for missing tricks.)

Blogger seems to have turned over a new leaf, picture-wise. Thank you for the suggestion about Flickr, Xmasberry. I have often thought of using them and will probably do it soon. I love those little grids of changing pictures.

Gansey

My sister points out, with the acumen which has taken her to the top of her profession, that I can finish the gansey for Helen, and knit Ketki another one. (See yesterday and the days before.) It would be by no means an ideal solution, but it is certainly preferable to ripping out months of work. I’m not being sarcastic: this obvious solution hadn’t occurred to me. Theoretically, it means that I could go on knitting right now, but it’s sort of a fiddle to get the stitches off the needle, and I think I’ll wait until I see Ketki and can try it on her. So I have flicked through Cheryl Oberle’s “Folk Vests” book, but everything is too fancy for present purposes. I’ll need to get that swatch done and run it through the Sweater Wizard before we go north again, probably on Monday.

Non-knit

I continue to follow the adventures of the Farmgirl with avidity. Have a look at those striped blister beetles on July 17, if you want to see horrible. And they’ve had a bad storm which blew down trees and destroyed the greenhouse. Late courgettes and small potatoes aren’t quite in the same league.