Today is the actual 90^th birthday.

Knitting moves forward, if slowly. I've finished the 23^rd band of the Tokyo shawl, and have nearly finished the 24^th, a small one. I'll go ahead and do band 25, and the first row of 26 as mentioned yesterday, before switching to the Dunfallandy blankie. There are only 29 bands altogether – not far to go. I can't remember how many percentage points I assign to each band for sidebar purposes.

There's going to be a Yarn Festival on Loch Ness next September. At the moment, no news seems to be available about teachers or market or what's actually going to happen. Ten months is not much time – they'd better get cracking. I've signed up to hear more.

Brooklyn Tweed have published an actual, physical book of patterns. I'm afraid I don't see the point. It is still possible to buy the patterns separately. The lookbook is as splendid as Jared's previous ones, if not more so. Why pay more and take up valuable shelf space?

Non-knit, or mostly

Here are pictures from our 90^th birthday celebration last Sunday.

Me in my beautiful Socklady gloves:

The group:

Most of us look unwontedly cheerful. If you're interested, from left to right:

Rachel's husband Ed; Greek Helen in Carol Sunday's wonderful “Milano” kit, but I think the knitting owed something to the Relax pattern I had already done twice; Rachel; James's wife Cathy; our niece Clare, my husband's sister's daughter; our grandson Alistair, James' and Cathy's son – grandchildren weren't meant to be included, but a few drifted by; Alexander; another grandson, Helen's and David's son Fergus; and finally James.

Perdita you know.