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A successful day, yesterday.

My husband’s appt was with a respiratory dr. He said, as our GP had, that my husband’s oxygen saturation is better than might be expected. The CT scan, compared with one four years ago, shows some decline, but not very much. He has referred my husband to a breathing-physiotherapist. Who would have thought there was such a thing?

Here are the Into the Whirled skeins at the beginning of the day.

 Beautiful, no? I wound the right-hand one, and cast on in the Respiratory waiting room. The previous Pakokku socks were done on 64 stitches, and came out striped. So this time I went for 56.

And it was obvious after five or six rounds, that I wasn’t getting anywhere. When I heard Kaffe speak here at the end of last year, he said something about hand-painted skeins which look beautiful and turn out like a dog’s dinner when you knit them. Except that the phrase he used was ruder than “dog’s dinner” – but I can’t remember what it was.

That’s what was happening. So I ripped it out and started again. That is most uncharacteristic of me. I live almost entirely in the I’ve-started-so-I’ll-finish camp. For the second attempt, I cast on 64 stitches. I do this, for socks, by casting on on one needle (on two, actually, held together, for extra stretchiness) and then knitting back, dividing the stitches among three needles but not joining the loop until the end of the first round – less danger of a twist.

That’s where I was when we were summoned to the Doctor’s Presence, and when we got home everything was in such a mess that I had to start a third time. Success! Not boring stripes but a beautiful swirl! I knit on, and therefore did nothing on Relax2 yesterday. I’ll return to it this evening.

Today’s excitement is a meeting in the John Lewis yarn dept, and subsequent lunch, with one of you (whom I’ve met before). So this morning I must provide my husband with a sandwich lunch and make arrangements for some tasks which can only be done at the top of the hill, where John Lewis is: wrap a birthday present for dispatch at the post office, fill out a deposit form for some cheques to go into the bank. Doesn’t sound like much, with a whole morning to do it in, but everything seems to take a long time these days.