Back again, after a tiring but successful week. And no further hospital appts until Friday of next week.

Little to report. That Pakokku sock got itself into a bad tangle over Christmas. I tried to finish turning the heel while we were being driven to Loch Fyne, with disastrous results. I got it straightened out, by dint of substantial ripping-back, before we left, and yesterday while my husband was having his lung function tested, I advanced things further.

Next week's appt is diabetes – that involves a lot of sitting around. They do a blood test when you arrive, and you have to sit there until the result is available to the consultant before you can talk to him/her. That should get me well down the foot.

Both local knitting projects edge forward – two or three more days remain for the edging of the Unst Bridal Shawl, and Archie's sweater is very near the point where it will be divided for front-and-back flaps. I think the plan is that he and his cousin Alistair, formerly of Beijing and now an undergraduate at Glasgow University, will be here next weekend. I'd like to have the sweater ready for a second trying-on.

Greek Helen has sent some more boys-in-sweaters pics. Here are all four, none of them wearing anything I knit, but all in proper sweaters – taken in the Mount Pelion snow over Christmas.

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Mungo, David, Fergus, Archie.

And here is David's Tumbling Blocks sweater. The implication is that I knit it, although I have no memory of it. I remember knitting the pattern several times – Rachel's husband Ed has a rather natty sleeveless vest in blues and greys which will look particularly well at my funeral. (It's a shame I will miss it – and only by a few days, as Garrison Keillor once remarked.) I remember knitting David a sweater with broad horizontal stripes in wool from that British breed which looks as if it has dreadlocks. Lovely, silky stuff that I bought at a craft fair in Perth. But I don't remember the Tumbling Blocks.

Helen says that Mungo asked to borrow it when he was going to a party the other night. There's clearly a lot of knitting-for-boys in my future.

Comments

Ivy, I went back to have a look around Craftsy after a long break – but, alas, could find nothing about shadow knitting, by Franklin or anyone else. It's an obvious one to add to their list. Maybe by the time Scotland win the Calcutta Cup...

Linda, I couldn't agree more, about time in old age. All the ads sort of suggest that time should be hanging heavy. Not a bit of it. Part of the problem is that one is weaker, and everything takes longer to do than it used to. But it remains true that there are still an awful lot of things to do.