That went well. Driving was surprisingly comfortable and secure, insofar as driving is ever secure. Everything seems in good order in the house, despite our three months’ absence. A bit of natural light does cheer one up, this time of year. Somehow it doesn’t work as well in the city.



That is how my vegetable garden looked at breakfast time yesterday. One really does occasionally worry, this time of year, that God has simply forgotton to turn the day on.

We bought a Christmas tree – that’s a big step forward. It’s got to be Norway spruce, they sell all sorts of fir trees these days; and it’s got to be rooted. We have spent the considerable majority of Christmasses in Strathardle, since our first one in 1963, always with such a tree. After three or four years it gets too big, and is put out to pasture somewhere. We wish now we’d kept a diary and map of them all. We both feel sure that they all lived.

My arm is having a great time, released from constriction. I think the orthopod was right, that I don’t need physiotherapy. I can now raise it above my head, stretching almost as far as the other arm. It’s uncomfortable. I do it a couple of times a day, for practice. The behind-the-back element of things is taken care of by fastening bras and tying aprons. I think the answer is that there are fractures and fractures.

Knitting…

I finished the knitting of the Malabrigo vest while we were there, mattress-stitched the shoulders, and brought it home to do the sleeve-hole and neck ribbing. Picture soon.

And resumed Ketki’s gansey. I wanted to get that well going, so that I could knit it when the house party assembles next week without having to abstract myself too much. I got back into the swing of the stitch pattern (“Mrs Laidlaw’s pattern” from Gladys Thompson’s book) easily enough, and there’s no mark where the knitting lay untouched for months, probably because the stitches were on waste yarn rather than a needle.




But I haven’t much idea what to do next. I have divided it at the armholes, and am knitting the back. The neckline is rapidly approaching. I have pages and pages of unintelligible notes, and even a couple of sketches, very grown-up. I can't make any sense of them. I read Brown-Reinsel and re-read and re-read again, and made a couple of decisions which I wrote down, with page references. We shall soon see.