Yesterday was magic.

Grannypurple is in town. I met her and her husband Joe at Kathy’s Knits. We spent money there for a while, and then went around the corner to Angelina’s for coffee. A simple programme. I’ve never yet met one of you whom I didn’t enjoy spending time with. But yesterday was special.

Here are Grannyp and I in the shop, flanking a Kate Davies design  which many will recognise. Grannyp is actually wearing the Relax! If I had grasped that sooner, I would have had her take her coat off for this picture. She has achieved exactly the fit I am hoping for.

In the evening, Joe also sent this picture of me -- utter magic. If my grieving heirs want something for the funeral leaflet, in the modern fashion, they could do a lot worse than this one. The sweater is that Araucania one which went on for years in Strathardle and which, at the very end, was crowned with success by your suggestion, Ron, of  EZ’s Open-Collared Pullover treatment for the neck. (Knitter’s Almanac, October)

But how was the picture taken? In Angelina’s, I assume. The camera was on the table – the purples were planning to walk on up to John Lewis where Joe hoped to see and handle a piece of recondite camera equipment. But it’s not as if grannypurple and I spent the whole time talking about knitting, leaving Joe to sip his cappuccino and fiddle with the camera. It was a three-way conversation about life and death and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[I remember it as a week of solid terror. They, interestingly, don’t. But they are younger, and Canadian which might make a difference, and I don’t think they had children at the time – I had three very small ones, and was substantially pregnant with Helen; couldn’t run, even if there had been anywhere to go.]

Grannyp gave me some yarn, most magically two skeins of a 50% merino-silk mixture from Sericin Silkworks of West Waterloo, Ontario. The shade is splendidly named: Faded Blue Raincoat. It appears to be laceweight.

I am resolved to attempt the Angel Cape I mentioned yesterday, from The Knitter 58. I suppose a swatch is called for – the pattern wants a 4 ply yarn. Lace being lace, the difference won’t be all that great. Jean S of West Allenhurst, NJ, learning to knit in the late 40’s with Vogue Knitting in hand but only Woolworth’s on Main Street from which to buy yarn, would have plunged straight in.

All I need is an extra pair of hands, and maybe four more hours per day. Just saying.

I have been feeling less than up to the mark for weeks lately, and had begun to suspect terminal decline. But I left Angelina’s with a spring in my step and have felt much better since. Time to go to Strathardle and get the tatties in.