World Affairs

The world’s stock markets are in as much of a mess as ever this morning, if not more so. Even in 1932 there couldn’t have been quite so much going on, so near a presidential election. Maybe in 1940. I didn’t hear much of the debate. I gather McCain had a good evening.

My Left Eye

No more symptoms – that’s a good thing. Thank you for your sympathy.

The Eye Hospital rang up at lunchtime yesterday to offer me an appointment this morning. I was torn between relief to be seeing someone so soon, and anxiety that they seemed to be taking it so seriously. They rang up again an hour later to move the appointment to yesterday afternoon.

So I went, of course, and nothing much happened. I will see someone again in about a week, and someone else – at a Retinal Clinic? -- in six weeks. I’ve got to go get my blood pressure taken at my own doctor’s practice. It was not disasterous but somewhat elevated yesterday, but the dr thot that might have been the stress of the occasion.

I got off the bus on Princes Street on the way home, and bought Jamie Oliver’s new book ("The Ministry of Food") – half price at Waterstone’s. It promises well. I am a great fan of his.

My thoughts about what I do like, started in train by not much liking “Inspired to Knit”, have taken me back to the Zimmermann corpus. Predictably, I can’t find the picture I’m thinking of, of EZ and Meg, but I’m pretty sure it’s a Bog Jacket I have in my mind’s eye.

It’s not just basicness and garter stitch – it’s the neat fit. I have a Shetland garter stitch jacket, loose and droopy – I can’t think of the designer’s name, but you’d recognise it if I could. It took a lot of knitting (“Long Day’s Journey Into Garter Stitch” as Meg says somewhere, I think in the pattern for the Adult Surprise) and I’ve scarcely worn it. It’s in a drawer somewhere.

But a nice, neat Bog….My wanderings the other day took me to the list of prizes the Knitters for Obama group is offering on Ravelry if you donate. One of them was a couple of skeins of Lorna’s Laces in the Panopticon colourway; I had almost completely forgotten about that.

So there’s a definite something for my Wish List: a Bog Jacket in Panopticon.

Sock-knitting-in-waiting-rooms predominated yesterday. I’m steaming down the foot of Alexander’s first sock. I’ve finished the original skein of yarn, and will thus be able to do a couple of inches in the new yarn on the train tomorrow, going to Glasgow, so that he (and I) can have a good look.

I’ve reached row 18 of the 9th repeat of the Princess Centre.