Cold, largely but not entirely grey. Roger and sister-Helen are safely in London and she says it’s warmer there. My carer says that she has invited our Helen to lunch tomorrow. I thought she was goong to stay on in Kirkmichael for a couple of days after burying her poor dog.

   I have spent much of the day struggling with the new MKAL clue. I think I have achieved enough that I can face tomorrow, at least. The first instruction was to knit across half of the stitches already present and then to cast on hundreds more with a cable cast on, enough to go around three sides of the centre of a hap shall.

   A struggle. Could I remember the cable cast on? Having done so, I could see no way to do it except to turn the work around and cast on from behind. But if that was right, why did not KD say so? 

   In my shawl-knitting days, I preferred to knit the first few rows of border back-and-forth to be sure there was no twist. In this case, I couldn’t figure out how to do that, so I plunged in. I’m halfway around the first round of garter-stitch-in-the-round. I’m having trouble sliding stitches from the cord to the needle. (Does the word “hasp” come in there?) i’ve given up counting stitches or untwisting them, leaving that all until the next round.

    All of this took up much of the day, as you can imagine. I started listening to The Beckoning Lady, the last Allingham on the club list that I haven’t yet re-read. I’ve never cared for it much, but I suspect it of being the most autobiographical of them all.

   Wordle: a fairly quick and routine one for me today. The starters gave me three browns. Line three turned them into four greens, and I got it on line four.

   Three for Rachel and Mark. Four for Thomas and Ketki and Roger and of course me. Five for Alexander and Theo.