Old friends from Birmingham are coming to lunch today – I must be brief here. The dining room is more or less presentable, the lunch is to be simple: but everything I do takes much longer than it used to.

Weight-loss

I have lost about half-a-stone (7 pounds) during Lent, through not drinking cider and not replacing it with chocolate (as I tended to last year, under stress from the Primaries). Now I learn that Joe has lost ten pounds over the same period, through a book that seems to involve hypnosis and an MP3 player. And on Joe it shows; he looks better. I don’t know what I conclude from these facts. I couldn’t get away with walking around with a MP3 player.

Knitting

Thank you for the kind remarks about Fergus’ shawl. I designed some others, for other grandchildren, but that was the best because it was the simplest. Less is more. I haven’t seen it for quite a while – I think the photograph has come out blue-er than the yarn actually was.

Susan, I’m knitting my Princess in Heirloom Knitting’s own Gossamer Merino (which I recommend highly) on a 2.25mm needle. The yarn is plied, and therefore much stronger than Shetland cobweb. I think it’s finer, too. It’s very well behaved – Sharon knit the prototype in cotton, and says that the stitches kept trying to escape. Mine don’t, even when there were more than 800 on the needle.

I’m much taken with Cashsilk, from the same source, and will probably go for that in a deep colour when/if I attempt the Queen Ring. That’s what Sharon used for the prototype and a little bit is included with the pattern, for swatching. I am also much taken with the Habu A-32 yarn (snappy name, eh?) I saw at I Knit. Mohair & silk, 186 yds to half an ounce,. (Gossamer Merino is 480 metres to 20 grams – you’ll have to translate; I’ve got to go make a bean soup.) The Habu yarn comes in wonderful muted shades.

There I had better stop for today.

Except to say that I've finished row 13 of the final repeat of the Princess centre. The opening motif is done!