I have been wandering around eBay, looking for old Vogue Knitting Books -- they’re getting very rare -- and then at Japanese knitting. Little time left for blogging. I am tempted by a book called “Flat Style of the New Sense” direct from Japan.

I found the article about Japanese knitting in the old IK mentioned yesterday. It didn’t add much to the information on the Wool and Wicker website (link yesterday), but was interesting nonetheless. It said in passing that there is no room in Japan to keep stuff, so people throw it away.

I was moved to face up to the problem of Knitting magazine, the British one. I subscribe, and it is not entirely without interest. But it is not worth archiving. Yesterday I threw them all away – I think I have a complete set, until the recycling men come around next week. Helen C.K.S. has valiantly agreed to let me pass on my copies in future. I have laid out the most recent half-dozen to take to her when we meet for coffee today (at a spot not far from John Lewis’s yarn department).

This decision feels good. The space on the shelf where they used to be, looks good.

Dawn, I google’d Habu and remembered why I admire but come away empty handed – all that cotton and stainless steel and tasteful pale colour. It’s not me. However the great thing about Japanese knitting, I now know after three days of obsession, is enablement. I can use any yarn.

I do hope I will finish off a bit of what is currently on my plate in time actually to do something about this.

Completely non-knit

A couple of weeks ago, I mislaid my keys. I had a painful 24 hours, and a restless night in which I kept dreaming of finding them, before my husband actually did. I resolved to get one of those electronic thing-finders, and I did, but it needed a teeny tiny screwdriver to open the battery compartment and I didn’t get around to doing it and then I lost the keys again.

This time for the whole weekend. More misery. I had a thing-finder, there it was -- but no thing for it to find. I found my keys yesterday afternoon, in full view in a room little frequented, and sat down at once to wire them up. I have done it successfully. Push a button on the control unit in the kitchen, and the keys will reply.

I bought a rather more complicated thing-finder than I really need, and am inspired to go on today to connect my Filofax and mobile telephone to the system. Maybe I will give everybody a thing-finder for Christmas, except that my husband thinks nobody but me ever mislays anything.

And I probably never will again, but the sense of security is wonderful. The keys could be replaced, and were obviously somewhere on the premises since I was myself, but I have on the ring a little stag’s horn thingamy which Rachel gave me when she was a child. Utterly irreplaceable, an essential talisman, endlessly reassuring in my hand, whenever I leave the house.