We had a grand weekend, in appalling weather. Snow on high ground, Sunday night, and from Alexander and Ketki’s house, you could see it.

The ducks have made great strides since Easter, and look full-grown, although it will probably be a couple more months before they start laying. They do everything together. Alexander means to put coloured bands on their legs so that he can determine whether one of them is the ringleader: Now we will have a nap. Now we will go to the kitchen window: 

Now we will play in the bath:

Or whether it’s just that a random one decides to do something and the others go along.

They stay very near the house. Ketki thought they would enjoy the trickle of a stream which flows along the edge of the garden at least in wet weather, but they were not to be persuaded.

Putting them to bed isn’t too difficult, when Ketki is at home:

I made a good start on Relax2. My new KnitPro needle was too long – I wouldn’t have thought that possible, with nearly 400 stitches. EZ says somewhere that a 24” circular needle is all you’ll ever need, and I suspect she was right. Mine was 100cm, which is appreciably more than 24".

So there was a lot of awkward tugging of the stitches to get them to move around. And my brand new KnitPro needle came apart. I put it back together and it came apart again. I put it back together and hit it with the handle of the kitchen scissors. It came apart again. I put it back together and got Alexander to hit the hasp – if that’s the word – with a hammer. It held.

A certain amount of time had to be spent rescuing the stitches which had fallen in the three disasters, and I had to proceed with caution and not apply pressure to the join, so progress thereafter was slow. I moved everything to a shorter and sturdier needle last night.

The design incorporates four columns of simple eyelets, two on each side. I’m putting them in every 15 rounds. They make very welcome milestones for the knitter toiling through a desert of round-and-round st st, and they also have a remarkably effective decorative effect in their understated Japanese way. I've done two eyelet rounds and am well on my way to the 3rd. The yarn is wonderful, better knitted than in the skein.

I also had a pleasant time wandering around cyber space, in the absence of meal-planning. I am greatly taken with the yarn of Rhichard Devrieze although what is the point when I have a boxful of Koigu already?

I got caught up reading The Knitter on my iPad. I like “A Twisted Little Raglan” in issue 57, from Ann Budd’s “Knitter’s Handy Book of Top-Down Sweaters” (in madelinetosh DK, no less) and Bergere de France’ “Angel Cape” in 58, for throwing on over a summer shirt. It’s lace, which would be sort of fun to get back to.