All well.

My sister and her husband are expected tomorrow, from Iceland via London. You probably won’t hear from me again until after their visit, by which time I hope to have acquired a second cat.

The Soutache continues reasonably well. The front colour remains the same throughout, the background greys go up and down through a series of gradients. I joined in No. 3 today. If I’ve got it right, No. 4 is the one that goes around the back of the neck, so to speak, and then one counts down again, three, two, one.

That can't be right. There are five. So No. 5 must be the back-of-neck one.

I found today, to my considerable surprise, that it helps to write out a pattern row, not exactly in English, sort of in hieroglyphics with a bit of English. After all those years of transcribing lace patterns into charts….

As I’m sure you know, each row of brioche knitting requires two passes. All the exciting pattern work is done on the right-side pass of the dominant yarn. After which, therefore, you have three easy rows. Easy, at least, once you've got the hang of things. So it is only one row in four that needs to be transcribed into hieroglyphics.

But while my sister is here, I’ll retreat to Miss Rachel’s Yoke.

I’ve been thinking about the prospective great-grandchild, and can’t think of anything better (so far) than another of Gudrun’s Hansel haps. For its elder sister Juliet I knit the Dunfallandy blankie, so they (presumably) don’t have a shawl for carrying a baby around in. The other possibility would be a pi-shawl with goodness-knows-what for lace inserts.

Greek Helen’s mosaic conference is over. She will return to Thessaloniki tomorrow. Archie is still here – not going back to university until Friday. He will join us for supper tomorrow.