I had a nice, knitterly time yesterday.

Helen C.K.S. had the new Sally Melville book, Mother-Daughter Knits. This morning I see that it hasn’t been published yet. How did she manage that? I clearly wasn’t paying attention. It’s got some very good things in it. Helen thought it didn’t quite cut the mustard. I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve had a chance to spend half-an-hour with it. I’m in the queue. I don’t normally add books which are simply collections of patterns to my groaning shelves these days, but I may make an exception here. I've got, I think, all the rest of Melville's oeuvre, and admire her work a lot, although I'm not sure I've ever actually knit anything of it.

Helen is going to be a stop on a blog-tour to be made by Lynne Barr to promote her new book “Reversible Knitting”. Blog-touring is a new concept for me, although come to think of it, I have probably read a few examples. Publishers must love them, for cheap promotion; and authors, for not having to spend dreary afternoons in bookshops.

The Griswold, meanwhile, is within two or three days of completion. And I did order “Flat-Style of the New Sense”, a Japanese knitting magazine.

Thing-Finder

Moorecat, I found dozens of thing-finders by Googling on “electronic key-finder”. Mine is a “SmartFinder” made, needless to say, in China. I went ahead yesterday and used up all the parts they sent me – I’ve attached one to dangle from the Filofax, and the two slimmer thingys I stuck on my mobile telephone and Palm.

I find that the slim receivers don’t work as well as the slightly chunkier dangly ones. The one on the telephone often doesn’t answer at all, and when it does, its cry is fainter than the one from the key-ring. This doesn’t worry me, since keys are my problem. But someone prone to mislaying telephone or iPod might want to shop around.

Tamar, I don’t think – famous last words – that there’s any real danger of losing the control center. It stands neatly at the back of a kitchen shelf, and there it can remain.

Moorecat, I wish you’d go back to blogging.

I have added a couple of blogs to my Google Reader list lately, since old friends seem to be posting more and more rarely. A new fave is Nerd Knits who inspires me this morning to covet a set of Signature sock needles. Does anyone know anything about them?

Weight loss

V stone 13 ¾ this morning! (As opposed to X stone 12, when my New Life started.) No doubt I’ll be back up there in the low-W’s tomorrow, but for today it feels good. My weight is now in the upper reaches of the range where it was in youth and middle age, although rather differently distributed. I always used to find January-March the difficult months, weight-wise. We shall see. Or maybe I’ll break my arm this afternoon and abandon the whole project. One never knows.