Who’d have thought it? Finished!

That neckband proved to be perfect rugby-knitting during yesterday’s thrilling match between Australia and England, and lo! and behold the result.

There is a difference between the sleeves – as reason had suggested, one has more stitches than the other. I’ll leave it for the moment.

The sweater is dense and heavy. Unless Ketki gives up banking and goes to sea, she’ll only be able to wear it a couple of times a year. It’ll be just the thing for a long walk on Boxing Day.

Here’s a neck gusset.

Now I can start swatching and sketching (very grown-up, sketching) for Theo’s cashmere gansey. I think I know what Brown-Reinsel pattern I want to use, but having all these books off the shelf in the last few days, in order to catalogue them, makes me feel I should at least leaf through the traditional-British-sweater ones.

Fishwife, (comment yesterday) did you manage to make yesterday’s widget in the sidebar work? I couldn’t get any sense out of it, and have just replaced it with a simple little thing that goes straight to my catalogue in LibraryThing. I’m sure you’ll have as many books as I do when you reach my great age.

Joe's current post raises an interesting question about what it means to be rich. Maybe I’ll write an essay on it one day. But for now – I remember when I wasn’t rich, admiring Gladys Thompson’s book in a shop in Birmingham again and again but not being able to justify the expense to myself. That must have been in the early 70’s.

Whereas when “Glorious Knitting” came out in ‘85, and I plucked it from the shelf in that same shop, I said to myself, “I’m going to buy this one eventually, so I might as well have it today.”

KF came and gave a talk in a department store in Birmingham in ’93. I took it along like any schoolgirl and asked him to sign it for me. So, a signed first edition. For Mrs Thompson, I wound up with the Dover reprint.

Don’t miss The Panopticon’s account of his day-long workshop with Kaffe and Brandon Mably. Oh, happy man!