All well, except that it’s Friday evening again and I haven’t done my Italian homework. My trainer came this morning and as always I feel better for her visit. 

Greek Helen is going to London next week, for an Old Girls’ reunion. She’ll be staying with her sister Rachel, Ruby’s grandmother, and Archie (Helen's son) will be here on Monday. So I can send the sweater down from him to his mother to Rachel to Ruby. Alternatively, C. is going to be there (again, staying with her cousin Rachel) at the end of the month. All I’ve got to do is wrap it up and find a card.

I’ve finished the plain-vanilla rows at the beginning of the Spring Shawl borders, and have embarked on the first real pattern row. I’ve passed the centre point, and can report that the stitch count came out right for the first half. Once the pattern has been established (as with Fair Isle) the stitch count becomes less of a source of anxiety.

Mary Lou, the fascination of this sort of thing is very like that of a jigsaw puzzle. I can’t entirely remember my own progress. Lots of Amedro, certainly. Straight from there to Sharon Miller? Sharon herself says somewhere that it's addictive.

Wandering around the internet yesterday as one sometimes does, I discovered that Meg is about to go to Florence to teach some workshops. She clearly has some Italian, like me, but will have an interpreter. That should be fun all round. She must be a bit younger than I am, because her parents didn’t arrive in the US until 1937.

She had some interesting Faroese books, too. I must examine my shelves.

Reading

A dramatic event has suddenly occurred in “Phineas Redux”. It is as if – and why not? – Trollope himself realised that it was all getting a bit turgid. I am sure we had it as bedtime reading, long ago, but I can’t remember a word of it.