Here’s where we are:

…with the second sleeve very nearly to the point where it joins the body. I've also done the back, although it doesn't figure in this photograph. There is an egregious mistake in the middle of the sleeve you see, and a less serious one in the middle of the sleeve I’m still knitting. Miraculously, both mistakes are much less visible on the right side. Tinking brioche is virtually impossible.

The suggestion in the photograph that the sleeve is of a somewhat different tint to the body, is, alas, true.

I would be very grateful for your aesthetic advice. The pattern wants only ribbing (and buttonholes) at the neck. I am thinking, as I have said, of adding a collar. And I am thinking of doing all that in Roast Hatch Chillies. What do you think? Would that be too violent? I’ve got plenty of both yarns – that isn’t a consideration.

I’ve heard from Baa Ram Ewe so now I am fully equipped for the EYF. I remind myself that it would be wiser not to buy a sweater’s worth. We’ll see. And Nancy’s Vest might best be knit in Carol Sunday’s yarn.

I continue to watch Mary Jane Mucklestone’s Craftsy class on the Fair Isle Vest. I am increasingly enchanted by her. What fun it would be to go on the tours to Shetland which she leads with Gudrun Johnston! They stay at the wonderful house --  Burrastow – where Kristie and Kath and I stayed. One for my bucket list.

Mucklestone is devoted to swatching – not in a severe, schoolmistress-y way, but on the unlikely grounds that it’s fun. “You might never need to knit a garment again.” She says she knit all the swatches for her book “200 Fair Isle Designs”. By which I am rather tempted.

I will take the FT reproduction of Hopper’s “Gas” with me to the EYF to choose the colours I can’t supply from stash. After all this preparation, I think I will have to cast on a swatch-scarf even after we, predictably, lose the Calcutta Cup match on Saturday. That’s the day after the EYF, but it would be silly not to choose the colours there, eyeball to eyeball with the yarn, rather than wait and have to do it from a computer screen.

Here’s another job for you: I want to take squared paper with me to Hazel Tindall’s class. She suggests it as an option. I tried the stationery department in John Lewis yesterday: no luck. They’re busy knocking down the St James’ Centre, so Ryman’s is gone. But I know I have a knitting book – and probably more than one – which prints pages of empty squares. I’ve always thought that was a slightly cheaty way to pad out a book.

But now I want to find such a book and photocopy that page. Does anybody know what book it’s in? The chances are very good that I’ve got it, but I hesitate to start searching blindly.