Never such a day for things of considerable interest happening in different parts of the world all at once. American readers should know – they probably do – that the extradition of the “NatWest Three” is of major interest here. I have only a dim grasp of the issue, but I suspect that part of the difficulty is that what they are alleged to have done is only “sharp practice” here, but an actual crime in the US. But they are British subjects, and what they did or didn’t do was done or not done here. The US has never, or at any rate very rarely, been willing to extradite to Britain people accused of Irish terrorist crimes.

A thing I don’t like at all is the way Americans often dress accused people up in funny clothes, and shackle them in public. The British are scrupulous in ensuring that an accused dresses and appears in public like an ordinary innocent human being, until convicted. Innocent until proved guilty, is the principle involved. Pictures of the NatWest Three in prison garb will not go down well.

We’re supposed to be talking about knitting, but there’s little of that today. I finished the Large Paisley Pattern on my Paisley Long Shawl, and have launched myself into the Hexagon Pattern. Picture tomorrow, before I depart for rusticity.

VKB

My sister has kindly taken an interest in my quest, and I have explained to her the difference, in the old days, between the British and the American magazines, I being interested only in the former. In the course of this she has found an incredibly interesting-sounding WWW2 American knit-for-the-boys book.. With socks. I wouldn’t have spotted it, on my own. It’ll probably go for a million dollars, and I will leave the chase in her hands. It’s very exciting.

WorldPay & Fraud

Thanks for yesterday’s comments, which were very comforting. Inspired by them, I went to the WorldPay website and tried without success to find an Email Us button. In the end, I sent the suspicious item to Heirloom Knitting itself. Ten minutes later Mike Miller rang up to comfort and reassure me. They had heard from WorldPay that such an email was circulating, and he was rather pleased to have an actual example from an actual customer, to send on.

I was desperately grateful. Trouble is, lace yarn is so fine and so slow to knit, that I can’t very well buy armloads of the stuff from them. If I ever decide to fall for Rowan’s Kidsilk “Spray” – striated, I would call it, rather than variegated; rather attractive – I will remember to buy it from Heirloom rather than from Lewis’s up the road.

Horticulture

The most attentive will remember that I am growing beans on the doorstep. They have produced rather pretty flowers lately, as promised in the catalogue. The big excitement yesterday was that I discovered some actual beans.