I‘m beginning to be afraid that I haven’t got the picture of me being carried down the steps. I’ll have to get it from Helen.

 

Knitting: I think I neglected to report on that at all yesterday. I haven’t done much lately. I have, however, left the sleeves behind on waste yarn and assumed the rest into a cylinder. I’m fond of fisherman’s rib. I knit a whole dress in it from a VKB when I was young, and never wore it but once because it instantly stretched to ankle-length or beyond. In my middle years I knit a two-colour half-brioche sweater for myself twice. I loved them dearly until the moths got them. Two-colour half-brioche is easy: you use a dp and slide the work back and forth when necessary.

 

I was a bit taken aback last night to discover that single-colour half-brioche – which is what is required for the Spalding – is not quite as easy as I assumed it would be. You’ve got to remember how to move the yarn back and forth with every stitch. It’s not quite as obvious or as easy as k1, p1. There are two separate pattern-rows, too.  Full-scale fisherman’s, however, can be done from one side only, I think, by alternating k1 and k1below. I should be able to do a bit more this evening and report more fully tomorrow.

 

It has been a quiet day here, dark and cold. We even had a brief bit of slushy snow. Helen came, and we advanced life a wee bit. The current carer has been a short-order cook in her day. The professional touch lingers and is very welcome. I had been losing appetite with the stress of recent days. I begin every day with wilted spinach upon which is poached an egg, With Abiola, the egg is poached to perfection and – even more welcome – the spinach is not served in a little pool of water.

 

“The Secret of Cooking” (see yesterday) continues well. I’ve just hit a patch of delicious-sounding salad recipes. Which reminds me that I have recently signed up for a Substack (new word) called The Department of Salad by Emily Nunn. That’s recommended too, if you like Substacks and like salads.

 

Wordle: Another pretty easy one. I scored four, but that was because I got line three wrong, by sheer bad luck, as often happens. (Good luck often happens, too.) My line three was grn, grn, brn, brn, grn. All I had to do was reverse the two browns, and I did that, of course, in line 4. Mark, Thomas and Ketki also scored four; three for Alexander and Rachel.  Four for Roger, three for Theo.