So – the sleeveless vest is finished. It fits to perfection, and I have kept adequate notes. Not only could it be replicated, but I could knit a full scale sweater for my husband without much further cogitation. As long as I knit it in madtosh DK which is no hardship.

It has seemed so long since an item has been subtracted from the WIP list that I scarcely know what to do with myself. In fact, I have cast on the front of the Sous Sous – 179 stitches by the long-tail method, and I wound up, first try, with an end about 8” long. I was rather proud of myself. I have knit the preliminary rows and established the cable pattern. The plan is to work on it for a few days, finish the first full pattern repeat, perhaps, or run out of yarn and have to wait for the package from Webs, and then resurrect the Tokyo shawl in similar fashion.

Then return to the Dunfallandy blankie – I'd like to have the cabled bits finished and assembled before the end of the year, as I've probably said before. I don't understand why mailing myself that picture of it from the iPad didn't work. Perhaps I should try mailing myself a different picture. It goes off with the usual WHOOSH and then disappears into the void.

The hat will take care of itself. All it needs are a couple more sessions in Kathy's Knits.

Gosia and I made a good start on the stash cupboard yesterday, but didn't actually get as far as discarding any yarn. It is a walk-in cupboard off the sitting room which also serves as a stationery store. Whenever something arrives in a sturdy cardboard box which might be re-used, that is where it goes. I had far too many cardboard boxes. Our first job was to cull them, and that is done. The top shelf is empty. Think of it full of nice clear plastic containers of yarn.

As for grammar, the shorter Oxford says that “knit” is a weak verb, end of story. That means, if I've got it right, that the past tense is “knitted”. Webster's derives a lot from the OED and I thought that maybe so womanly as verb as “knit” would be undeserving of Mr. Webster's full attention. But that was to underestimate him. He says that the past tense of “knit” is “knit or knitted” – with “knit” first, note.

I am myself confused by now. The difference certainly isn't one I noticed when I first came to live among the British. Maybe I use both – “I knit the Princess shawl a few years ago”; “I knitted all through the lecture”.

I have never cared for calling verbs “strong” or “weak”. I feel it simply encourages misbehaviour. When the nice German woman found “knit” as a past tense in the book she was reading in Kathy's shop, she said, “I didn't know 'knit' was an irregular verb”. That is the way I would prefer to approach it.