I made a good start yesterday at dusting little-used parts of the house and setting up beds. Much remains to be done. They’ll be here tomorrow. I also made a grid on a piece of waste paper and wrote “chicken” in the square representing Sunday lunch. It’s a start. I’ll get some salmon tomorrow and take it to Kirkmichael on Saturday to be smothered in sorrel sauce that evening – that’s another square done. And make some soup to welcome them off the plane from China.

Did you see Karen’s wonderful comment yesterday? – not only did she provide a link to a Jamieson’s page where you can see the Trellis Jacket I have in mind for Franklin’s Panopticon yarn, but she also did the arithmetic and figured out how much I’d need. I ran the problem past Ann Budd’s “The knitter’s handy guide to yarn requirements” this morning – Helen gave it to me as a first-foot present – and got a very similar answer. Karen was calculating weight, Budd works in yardage, which I averaged-up a bit to allow for the fact that garter stitch consumes a lot of yarn. So the coincidence was encouraging.

I added a skein to-be-on-the-safe-side, and emailed Get Knitted to see if they can get it for me. So that’s a step taken.

Having mentioned the Baby Surprise yesterday, I remembered that there is an adult version. I can’t find the Woolgathering offprint which I know I own, but it doesn’t matter because it’s in “The Opinionated Knitter”. I think the Trellis Jacket will be neater.

Thank you for the kind words about the dinosaurs. Yesterday I got the next separator-pattern done, and started in on a new set of legs. I hate the separator-pattern the most. It looks so easy, but three of its seven rows are three-colour and proceed with agonising slowness.

VKB

I haven’t mentioned the Vogue Knitting Book for a while, not because I’ve lost interest but because EBay has been most unforthcoming. Number Nine is on offer at the moment – 380039805704. I’ve got it. I’m sure it’ll sell for peanuts since I’m not in the contest. The seller says “probably 1940’s”, forgetting, I suspect, what happened in Britain during that decade. It is in fact autumn, 1936.

I have mentally promised Senator Obama a nice donation when one of the five I’m still missing appears – and now that I’ve made the promise in public, maybe I'll see some action.