A pretty good day, yesterday. Greek Helen came with me to the hospital, where we found my husband alert and fairly cheerful, although with his heart set on getting home to his cat and believing that it could happen within a day or two. It can’t and won’t, but we had a good talk with a doctor. The “care package” has been applied for – the process is in motion.

I’m not sure I can manage, under any system of care, but we’ve got to try.

I’ve just deleted a comment from the blog which gave the email of someone who casts wonderfully efficacious spells. There was nothing about knitting; it had to go. But I was tempted, as my finger paused over the button. Although I don't know what I'd ask for.

As for knitting, I’m doing the toe decreases for the first Whiskey Barrel sock. I’ve got to try again to fire up that other computer – the one with the sticky keys – and get back to Lotus Organizer where all my notes about sock sizes reside. Or find the program disk and the memory stick and transfer everything here.

And I had a pretty good day with the Uncia. Six rows remain of Chart B. I have more or less mastered the right-side rows, but the wrong side remains a struggle. The difficulty is the slipped stitches. On the right side, they present as sloppy-looking knit stitches, and you knit them. From behind, they are hard to distinguish from ordinary purl stitches.

Then one turns over the page and allows oneself a look at Chart C, and recoils in horror. I thought that perhaps by then the knitting would guide one, as it does in Shetland lace even of the most complicated. Chart C is full of unimaginably-difficult-looking symbols never encountered before. Keep calm. Take it a row at a time. Master the symbols before beginning the row. 

Lucy Hague knit the prototype herself. There are designers who design on computer screens and farm it out.