Glasgow today. I should be back here on Sunday, insh’Allah. Ketki is returning from New York this morning – she may be making landfall just about now. (I love that phrase, and hope I’ve got it right.) She has to work this afternoon, her husband says, and by this evening may be too tired to explain high finance and the world situation to her aged in-laws, although I’m sure she’ll try if asked.

My eyes continue to function perfectly satisfactorily. What happened, Wednesday morning, was that I saw huge black “floaters” when I tried to look out through them, like patches of oil on water. I don’t suppose it lasted more than two minutes, three at the outside, but I was terrified. It kind of underlined the precariousness of life, and what can happen between this moment and the next. It’s true of all of us all the time, but it gets true-er as one gets older.

I got a bit of sock-knitting done yesterday while my husband was trying on trousers in Marks and Spencer. I don’t usually carry knitting on such expeditions, but fortunately I had it with me then. I have joined in the new skein, and after the initial two or three rounds, it looks fine. The colours are OK – this is Araucania “Multi” we’re talking about – but wound into a ball, the new yarn looked as if the proportions of the colours were seriously different, much more green and grey than in the first skein.

The journey to Glasgow takes about ¾’s of an hour – plenty of time to knit a couple of inches and discover the truth.

Lisa, you’re right (comment yesterday), that the change, if it turns out to be apparent, won’t matter for this sock, because by now we’re well inside the shoe. Trouble is, this is the first sock.

Maureen in Fargo – yes, thanks, that’s the pic I was thinking of. (Surely it appears in one of the books?) And that’s a Bog Jacket EZ is wearing, surely. And you’re also right -- Hanne Falkenburg was the name I was groping for yesterday.

Mary Lou, I’m inclined to agree with Maureen (because that’s what I want to think) – that garter stitch isn’t intrinsically droopy, and that your trouble must have been the yarn. I’ve found a source for Lorna’s Laces worsted-weight in the Panopticon colourway (sock yarn is easier to locate); I think I ought to go ahead and order. The eye trouble was one of those crises that makes one feel that one is temporarily exempt from the normal rules of caution and prudence.

I read with concern about your political anxieties. Fortunately, all of my own cousins, even the seconds and the once-removed's, are rock-solid. Is it significant, Freudian-signal-wise, that you chose to knit a hat with circling wolves?

The calmer political articles at the moment are saying that no candidate, as far ahead as Obama is now, has ever lost. The Obama campaign itself, appealing to me daily for money, says that Al Gore was in this position in October, 2000. But then – Al Gore didn’t lose....

(Obama Campaign: if one of the five Vogue Knitting Books I still lack comes up on eBay, you’ll get your donation. I’ve been mentally promising that for a long time – I don’t think I’ve had a VKB to bid for in all of ’08.)

I’ve reached row 23 of the 9th repeat of the Princess centre. There are more than 400 stitches per row now, and life is serious.