I finished the inward mitre, updated the Progress Bar, and have started increasing outwards. It is with great reluctance that I resist the temptation to take the ASJ along to Strathardle today. Only the fact that I would have to take a whole bag of yarn, to provide stripes, deters me.

I got seriously worried yesterday about whether I have enough yarn. The two-row separator stripes seem to be eating up “Charcoal” at a great rate, and I want it for the final edging and perhaps collar. And each of the colours seems to have taken a substantial hit if I have used it for a stripe of any width. I’ve got plenty of Roadside Gerry and Amy’s Vintage Office, but the others are one-skein-each.

So I set to and discovered Get Knitted, which lists a considerable range of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock yarn, much of it alas “currently unavailable”. But what she does have is “Franklin’s Panopticon”, so I got two more skeins of that, and a couple of other colours that looked compatible.

What she doesn’t have is Charcoal, or any solid colour. I tried to find a UK source, and failed. Yesterday afternoon, as so often, was a collect-prescription-from-Boots and wait-half-an-hour-in-the-Post-Office day. These duties put one close to John Lewis’ yarn department, so I had a look there. Nothing remotely suitable among the sock yarns. So I finally went back to Angelika, who has a vast range and who supplied me in the first place (but who doesn’t have any more Panopticon) and ordered two more skeins of Charcoal from her. The package, if I’m lucky, will be small enough to slip under the Customs & Excise radar. Maybe.

So here’s where I am. I have had a couple of sessions with the double-headed crochet hook, retrieving dropped stitches, and I haven’t mastered it yet. The struggle results in a visible scar.

Front view:

Back view:

Audio Books and Onions

Thank you again for all the help. Alexander and Ketki will be able to explain about MP3 players and iPods when I see them in Strathardle at the weekend. I like the idea of putting the iPod into a radio-sized thing for kitchen listening. I don’t have a laptop. Your ideas for the sources of audio books will be most helpful, if/when I get that far.

Dawn, my mother in retirement used to record books for blind students, at a place called Reading for the Blind in Princeton. I think it’s rather a shame to restrict the service to actors, especially when specialist scholarly books are requested.

Fishwife, I will remember and employ your onion-growing tips. Mary Lou, I don’t know about Egyptian Walking Onions, and will investigate. You remind me that there are various perennial solutions. We used to have something in our garden in Birmingham with leaves like salad onion leaves and a good flavour, and which stood all winter. Very useful. No bulb, though. And there is a peculiar onion – the Welsh onion? – which produces a bulb at the top of the leaf, rather than underground.

I am determined, as I said, to grow spring onions like everyone else. But it’s worth looking at other possibilities.

I have some questions to ask about Jerusalem artichokes, but that’s enough for today. Back on Tuesday, insh’Allah.