My son Alexander is 49 today. If he’d done it my way, and been born two days later than he was, he’d be a lad of 12 ¼.

Princess

I finished row 40 of the antepenultimate (11th) complete pattern repeat of the Princess centre. At this cracking pace, I might even polish off this repeat while it’s still February. Here’s the promised pic of the tantalizingly small stretch of border still to be consumed. I think when I’m doing my end-of-repeat calculations this time, I’ll work out a tentative place for the centre to finish.

Sharon Miller herself abandons counting at this stage and says to “adjust if necessary by working a few rows extra/less to finish on a complete centre pattern motif.” When I summed things up at the end of the 10th repeat, I seemed to have about half a dozen more stitches-left-to-pick-up than strict arithmetic would lead me to expect. If that’s still the case, I may slip in a couple of k2togs during the next two repeats, depending on what stopping-place I’m aiming for. I need to get the numbers even on the two sides, too.

Gardening

My Mara des Bois strawberry plants turned up yesterday. I hope maybe we can slip in a two-night-stand in Strathardle next week to get them planted. At the moment, they’re heeled in in the herb trough on the front step. No doubt, if we do that, the Joan J raspberries I have ordered to fill gaps in last year’s planting will arrive just as our car turns out of Drummond Place on its northward journey.

Mel, that’s exciting news about your home-grown Peruvian Blue potato seed. I look forward keenly to hearing the result. And what an enterprising supermarket, to sell Peruvian Blue potatoes!

Vogue Knitting Book

I’m putting off this bit because it involves confessing to a disagreeable level of unscholarly sloppiness. Suffice it to say, for the moment, that I went on comparing the American and UK spring/summer 1960 issues when we were in Strathardle last week, and cheered up considerably. My fear, after the first comparison, was that all the patterns in the British book were of American origin, redesigned for British yarn but published, falsely, with the American pictures.

That’s not true. There are lots of designs in the British book which aren’t in the American one, and vice versa.

On the eBay front, I continue to improve my stock by buying nice clean copies to replace the more tattered and, especially, coverless ones I already have.

Miscellaneous

Here’s a recent tidbit from the Waffy to round things off: “Volunteers have knitted woolly jumpers for 1,500 balding battery chickens rescued by Jo Eglen, 29, who runs the Little Hen Rescue Centre in Norwich. The Centre has rescued and re-homed a total of 5,750 battery hens.”