A woman went missing in Kirkmichael on Friday, after setting out on a strenuous walk, and was found dead yesterday. The people who pushed us out of our driveway were a man in his late forties and two healthy-looking girls on one side or the other of 20, on their way to lunch after a morning spent tobogganing. Age-wise and love-of-outdoors-wise, the dead woman may have been their wife and mother. There couldn’t have been all that many strangers in Kirkmichael on Friday. Would God do a thing like that? All too likely.

Here are the missing pictures left over from yesterday, Ketki in her gansey and Cathy in the melon scarf from Victorian Lace Today (the only picture of an actual ’08 Christmas present). The yarn is the Yarn Yard’s Jean laceweight, named for ME.




Anonymous in Canada, I looked up Cathy’s jacket (yesterday's picture): It’s the “Round Trip” pattern, Knitter’s, Fall ’03. The Mitred Mozart you mention is a Candace Eisner Strick pattern –do you happen to know when it appeared? I’d like to take another look at it.

I sit down at the turn of the year and make a list of the projects bubbling in the back of my mind: not resolutions, just trying to catch the moment. I found it very hard this time to get anywhere beyond, More Princess, Theo’s gansey, Finish the Araucania sweater. A Mitred Mozart might be just the thing.

I got a bit more Araucania done while we were in Strathardle, the back finished except for casting off – I want to smooth the shoulder cast-offs. I know it’s done with short rows and wrapping but couldn’t remember precisely how, and all my books were here in Edinburgh. So I’ve left the stitches on a string and made good progress with the front.

And back at the ranch, I’m Knitting for New Hampshire on Theo’s gansey, establishing the pattern. The fear continues to hang over me that the whole thing will have to be frogged and re-started because it’s too big. We’ll see, fairly soon. I have an almost superstitious reluctance to rip out those nice initials. A picture tomorrow, maybe.