The dinosaurs are still not cast on: I went too far with Cathy’s second sock and had to rip out ten rounds. But the socks are finished and Kitchener’d and need but a few moments’ tidying.

An unexpected flaw in the Regia sock yarn can be detected in the right-hand sock, even without the help of circles and arrows which I have never mastered. There is a very discreet knot after an olive-coloured stripe on the foot – the sequence then resumes with the right colour (blue) but the wrong shade of blue, with the result that half-a-repeat is lost.

I don’t care, because I was aiming at fraternal twins anyway, but I’d be irritated if I had been trying to achieve identical ones.

An early dentist’s appointment today may even give me time to cast on the next pair, but for serious knitting it will certainly be dinosaurs.

We spent a happy day yesterday twittering down phone- and email-lines about Theo and Jenni’s happy news. Rachel phoned my sister (Theo’s mother) in CT: the wedding will probably be early next year, in DC or Wisconsin. Theo and Jenni’s mundane future (and therefore perhaps even wedding plans) will depend a good deal on who is president of the US this time next year. It is hard to believe, just now, that the question will ever be settled.

Miscellaneous

The link Jenny provided yesterday is good on Van cats.

This is a picture of some peas I am growing on the doorstep. I’ve done salad leaves in other years, and then got cold feet about the prospect of eating all those exhaust fumes. I tried a miniature runner bean once, but didn’t get much of a crop. I am seriously hopeful this time that we might get a plateful. It’s a new dwarf variety called “Half Pint”. I planted the rest of the packet in one of the squares of my Square Foot Garden.

We hope to go to Kirkmichael on Wednesday. It would have been tomorrow but that the weather forecast is bad. If time is to be so limited, at least I want to be able to work outdoors.

Now I’d better put on a clean tee-shirt and face up to the dentist.