Cathy just sent me this interesting item about knitting for elephants. It can’t be often that the Times of India turns up here two days in succession (Mary Lou’s comment, yesterday).

All well. My husband seemed somewhat better today, and the cat continues in top form. I don’t know what Helen has decided about the consultation scheduled for Thursday.

I’ve reached row 72 of the border pattern of Mrs Hunter’s shawl. The end (of the border) is in sight. I still haven’t quite finished the first skein, but I’m down to the final couple of yards and it is a considerable comfort to know that when the end comes, as it must tomorrow, the winding has already been done.

Journalism

I think the only word for “Laine” is going to have to be “hygge”, although I realise that I am probably mixing up my Scandinavian nations. Nice photography, some nice patterns, some mildly interesting articles, but not really enough to justify the price. An interview with Stephen West, and a glorious shawl pattern from him, might be enough to reverse that verdict for some.

I am taken, however, with the idea of a loose pullover with a boat neck and short sleeves, to be worn over a shirt. Laine has a plain one on the cover, and one with very interesting cables within. No. 4 in the new VK is more or less what I mean, if you shortened the sleeves. Or 3, if you lowered the neck and shortened the whole thing a good deal.

I searched Ravelry for these ideas, and goodness! they have worked hard on their searching. They suggested Jared’s Wool People 7 which, indeed,  has several possibilities. I’m thinking, of course, of myself at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival buying yarn for a project probably never to be completed. Buying it, perhaps, from Jared himself!

VK is full of interest. Meg’s article on necklines needs to be copied and saved, perhaps in “Knitting Workshop”, before it vanishes into the piles of magazines. There is a very interesting article about the difficulties of creating American yarn – hundreds of mills, it says, closed in the latter half of the last century, due no doubt to “globalisation”. Just the sort of thing our new president fulminates against.  Full marks to Jared for his success in producing his yarns.

And an interesting interview with Nancy Marchant. Maybe when this shawl is off the needles, I will devote myself to brioche stitch. I have signed up for her Craftsy class, although I haven’t got very far with it; and I’ve got one of her books.

Non-knit

Rachel phoned today. Hellie has had her 20-week scan. Everything is fine. Everybody but me now knows the sex of the baby who will be wrapped in Mrs Hunter’s shawl.

Little to report, again.

I have reached row 69 of the shawl border, still on the first skein of yarn. Not much progress, but some.

The cat is in such ebullient health that even Helen wonders if we might skip the post-operative consultation on Thursday. It would worry and distress Perdita to have to go back into the carrier, and it would take up a substantial and valuable hunk of Helen’s Thursday afternoon. She’ll ring the vet tomorrow to discuss this.

My husband, meanwhile, has been droopy and sleepy all day. I haven’t called for medical help. Helen – not exactly summoned, but au courant with events --  came around in the evening and I am sure persuaded him to eat more than I would have managed. We’ll see what the District Nurse says tomorrow.

The big knitting news is that both “Laine” and the new VK turned up today. I’m not entirely convinced, on a first look, that Laine lives up to the advance excitement. VK has what is clearly a valuable essay from Meg about necklines. Both need a good deal more study before I can report properly. (Aren’t I due an IK? The subscription couldn’t have expired without their telling me.)

Comments

Mary Lou, I haven’t the faintest idea about the distinctions between snooker and pool and billiards. I never paid serious attention to any of them until this week. I was reminded at several points in the snooker final of a remark of Rex Harrison’s, back in the days of the Hays Office – that, when playing a bedroom scene, one had to keep one foot on the floor, just like snooker.

The winner, Ronnie O’Sullivan, is an interesting man, according to Wikipedia. His mother is Sicilian. His middle name is Antonio. (How did that happen?) His father encouraged and supported his brilliant son from the beginning, but was impeded in that effort during many of the boy’s formative years, by being in jail for no less a crime than murder. Something to do with the Kray Twins.

Shandy, yes, Perdita is a great nuisance at night. She still snuggles into my neck and purrs and kneads and pretends that I’m her mother. Before that, she wakes me up with gentle paw or chilly nose to say, Hi there! I’m your cat! But I always have to get up several times in the night to pee anyway, and I’m glad of her company.

Very little to report.

Perdita continues very well. If she still had that collar on, she would be only halfway through the ordeal, as her post-op appt with her consultant isn’t until late Thursday afternoon. I don’t know where she spent the first two nights after surgery – probably not in the comfortable bed I had made up for her in the kitchen – but last night she joined me again. My husband now has a hospital bed, so there is plenty of room for me and a cat in the marital bed, and it was grand to have her.

As for knitting, I finished winding that skein. If I have correctly grasped the numbers, it was more than half a mile of yarn. I normally like winding, as I think I’ve said, as a way of getting acquainted with a yarn, but these particular skeins must be among the longest I’ve ever done.

Isabella (comment yesterday), I didn’t know, or had forgotten, about the Teapot Trust ladies who wind yarn at the EYF. What a good idea! I hope by then I will be finished with the shawl, or very nearly. I see that I have a third skein, just-to-be-on-the-safe-side. Maybe I can somehow take them that one, and the remainder of the second skein, and they can find them a good home… I’m sure, wonderful as this yarn is, that I won’t want to do it again.

I’m well into row 67 (of 86) of the border pattern and things should accelerate a bit tomorrow now that winding is finished. Snooker continued very interesting – I have at last grasped some of the essentials and can appreciate some of the skill and artistry involved. The geometry is amazing. I’m glad Ronnie O’Sullivan won.

Perdita seems entirely restored to us, scampering about like a mad-cat, and the wound looks clean. When she curls on her right side, I can and do lean over her and examine it close and personal, without touching or otherwise annoying her. And it's fine. And she isn't particularly interested in it. 

So two major problems have been disposed of – Perdita’s surgery and the income tax. I’m ready for 2017. But others come bubbling up from the ground.

A dear friend lost her beloved dog to death yesterday. 

I knew him only at the end of his life. He was disagreeable and incontinent and nothing much to look at. He was very much loved, and I am sure returned, with advantages, all the love he received. I knit him -- some will remember; he was a Parson's Jack Russell. Helen made a mosaic in which he figures. Neither of these cold objects will be of much use to our friend today.

I have reached row 66 of the border of Mrs Hunter's shawl -- not much advance on yesterday. That is because I have reached the point where a new ball of yarn will soon have to be attached, and this afternoon I faced up to the winding of it. 940 yards.

We put on the snooker -- an interesting sport, at a very interesting stage of the Championship tournament at the Ally Pally --  and I wound and wound. For a long time the skein around my knees was completely undiminished. Then, progress! and a new temptation. I may -- I probably -- I surely have wound enough to finish the shawl. Do I need to go on doing this all afternoon? 

I persevered until at last interrupted. I suspect, indeed hope, that I will have the moral stamina to finish winding the skein tomorrow. But if not, I'm sure I've done enough for present purposes.

Quite a day.

The tax has been filed, calculated, paid. I'm still dubious about whether an accountant would help. Our affairs are pretty simple, and pretty similar year after year. The job has got to be done, whatever. The effort consists of getting the papers together and if I continue with my resolution to file everything the moment it arrives -- and enter it in a spreadsheet if it's anything the tax man wants to know about -- if I can go on doing that, it should be easier in the future. Here we are, three weeks into 2017, and I'm doing fine so far.

Perdita seems well. She has spent the day dozing, and no longer actively hates me. She took off her collar herself during the night -- I think I told you that she's not stupid. She's not particularly interested in the wound, and it continues to look fine. I'll certainly keep a close eye on both these points. Even Helen agreed this morning that we didn’t have to put the collar back on.

There are no visible stitches. I think you must be right, in our case, Maureen (comment yesterday). There are two incisions, each scarcely half an inch long, not quite parallel, about an inch and a quarter apart. The leaflet Perdita brought home yesterday says that the "sutures" are all internal, and absorbable. An adroit piece of needlework. I agree that if there were stitches for her to pick at, the question of the collar would be rather different. The leaflet says that the cat must not lick or chew the wound. So far she has shewn no interest in doing either of those things.

That could change. The wound could start to itch. I will watch closely.

So I’m back in the saddle, as far as Mrs Hunter of Unst is concerned, and have reached row 65 of the border pattern of her shawl. I fancy that the decreases are beginning to make themselves felt. But maybe not.

AND I have succeeded in finding a copy of Laine, at Meadow Yarn, and it’s on its way.

What can I say about the Inauguration without causing offense?

1)     Mrs Trump’s dress was good. I hope tomorrow’s newspapers will name the designer.

2)     Eight years ago, George W looked like a balloon with the air being let out. The Obamas, whose behaviour throughout has been graciousness personified, looked today as if a weight were being lifted from their shoulders. And George W., whose father is on his deathbed or so we understand, looked positively cheerful.

3)     Poor Hillary.

Perdita has come home to us again. She has survived major surgery in remarkably good form, although she is not speaking to me. She is eating, and moving fairly comfortably, and the wound looks remarkably small and neat and healthy.

She is wearing one of those awful plastic collars. I don’t remember them from long-ago experience of dear cats being spayed. Helen (who has been carrying the can on this one) is adamant that she must keep it on until she sees her consultant again next Thursday. I wouldn’t be surprised if she succeeds in getting it off before then. And I am a bit worried, alternatively, that she may strangle herself in the attempt.

The house was astonishingly empty all day without her. Even a disagreeable cat in a plastic collar, which is what we have this evening, is better than nothing.

But it wasn’t a wasted day on other fronts. A letter from the Government Gateway has supplied my husband’s new Gateway User ID. It was far too stressful a day even to think of filing the income tax, but Helen is going to come tomorrow to deal with the early-morning door-answering so that I can attempt it. If I can log on, it won’t take more than half an hour. If I can log on.

And my Knitzi arrived! This time, again, it came when I was out – I only very rarely leave my husband on his own, but I did so for half an hour one morning last week and the postman, who must have been crouched behind a hedge and have seen my departure, sprang forward with the package. This time, thank goodness, he left a card saying that he had failed to deliver it. I arranged re-delivery for today. It came!

Now I really must start a pair of socks. 

Perdita is fasting before tomorrow's surgery. She is beginning to get cross about it. I am miserable.

I remain very anxious about the tax. My sister points out that if I had an accountant s/he would be responsible for filing. I think a better (and much cheaper) solution would be to get it done earlier in the tax year. Whatever, I'm stuck now.

Thinking about (not that but) knitting charts in the night, I came to the same conclusion as several of you (although formless, in my case, and less well expressed) that it was advances in computer technology and desk-top publishing in the 80's and 90's, rather than the rise of common sense, which brought graphs to published knitting patterns. Traditional knitters must have been using them all along.

Mary Lou! I have knit Mrs Laidlaw's Pattern, too, in a gansey for Ketki in a tough pink yarn from Frangipani. It serves as something approaching a suit of armour. She wears it sometimes to rugby matches.That was when the question arose with my sister-in-law of whether the herring girls wore colour -- an issue I referred to briefly some weeks ago. I went to the shelf just now to get the book and to try to remember whether or not I charted the pattern. And the book wasn't there, although several lesser works on related topics were.

I am sunk even deeper into gloom. That is an essential book.

I knit that sweater in Strathardle. Could the book still be there? I find with the current shawl, too, that I can remember where I was when knitting different parts of it, but not how difficulties were resolved.

Actual knitting of the shawl went well today, as I had nothing else to do but knit and worry. I have reached row 61 (of 83) in the border. I am thinking about inserting a break pattern – k2tog, yo, all the way around – between the border and the centre. Mrs Hunter of Unst doesn’t have one, but need that stop me?

My sister also sent me this link to the Pussyhat pattern. You probably all have it already – somehow or other, I knew about the march and the hat but had missed the beginning of the conversation so didn’t know the pattern. My sister says someone is knitting her one, although she is not going to march.

My wonderful children are trying to arrange a weekend away for me. For awhile there we thought I might join the Loch Fyne Mileses in early March for the Calcutta Cup weekend. We could watch the match together, and then if Scotland win -- don't worry; they won't -- I could measure Alexander on the spot for his Fair Isle vest. It was Greek Helen rather than I who spotted the flaw -- that's the weekend of the Edinburgh Yarn Festival. 

If I’m not here tomorrow, it will of course be because I am trying to comfort my cat.

Well.

I finished the tax. I got it all printed out and all together. I sat down at the computer in a fairly composed state this morning – and couldn’t log on. I have been doing it without a hitch on-line in January for a decade or so. It is as if my anxiety, this year, about whether I could do it, has itself created the problem.

I floundered about for quite a while, finding various help screens into which I typed my husband’s Taxpayer Reference Number and his National Insurance Number, each of them a unique identifier, let alone in combination, and they kept saying they could find no such account. Finally I got through, and they are going to send me in the post a new Government Gateway User ID – I think that’s the problem.

There’s still time, although if the new number doesn’t get me in I don’t know what I’ll do.

And there’s still Perdita’s operation, scheduled for Thursday,  to worry about. She’s still in heat, although it’s subsiding. We’ll see, tomorrow.

Meanwhile knitting continues well, very comforting on so stressful a day. I’ve reached row 57, of 86, in the border pattern of Mrs Hunter’s shawl.

And I found myself wondering, when did charts come in? and why? Was there a pivotal moment? For lace knitting, Amedro’s “Shetland Lace” in ’96 – good heavens! as late as that! – must have been the last serious text-based lace book. Hazel Carter’s “Shetland Lace Knitting from Charts” – the title implies that that wasn’t then the norm – was published in 1987.

Mrs Hunter’s pattern is so easy that I haven’t had to chart it. It’s meticulously accurate. But – this is hard to express – the ()’s and the *’s don’t exactly relate to the motifs and it has been difficult, sometimes, in the modern idiom, to get my head around what’s going on. Whereas I have knit many of Amedro’s patterns and have loved the gentle rhythm of her “take”’s and “cast”’s.

I have knit a couple of things from the remarkable Bestway leaflet – “Traditional Shetland Scarves and Shawls” – which I hope Jamieson & Smith still sell. My only possible recourse, there, was to chart the patterns row by row. The accuracy of the proof-reading there is simply astonishing.

Somewhere in my extensive archives I think I actually have a pattern for a Fair Isle sweater, cut from a magazine, in which the pattern is written out row by row: K4blue, 5 yellow…. I think the first Kaffe Fassett pattern I ever saw, in a VKB of – what date? I’ll see if I can find it tomorrow – was more or less like that. “Glorious Knitting”, 1985, is firmly charted.

Maybe it was just the inexorable rise of common sense.

 A good day, certainly a busy one. The shawl has advanced to somewhere-in-row-53 of the border pattern: I think just about qualifying for my two-a-day goal. Last night’s catheter problem resolved itself satisfactorily – a nurse came fairly promptly, found that the catheter was draining successfully, deduced that it had previously been kinked. A fairly good night’s sleep was had by all.

And we had a splendid visit this morning with Anthony Bryer’s widow, my old friend Jenny

She told us a wonderful story about an obituary, in the Guardian, of some famous Greek, alas! unknown to me. The obituarist had submitted it with a photograph showing the dead man, Bryer, and the famous Byzantine historian Stephen Runciman. The Guardian, having the wit at least to recognize Runciman, had wrongly deduced that of the remaining two men, Bryer with his splendid beard and wild hair, was more likely to be Greek than the smoothly dressed third man, and had cut the photograph down to him.

Bryer and Jenny were in an airport somewhere – Belfast? -- when she went to buy the paper and found her husband’s photograph on the obituary page.

And the other thing I learned was that in England – in Birmingham, at least – there is no social care for the prosperous middle classes.

That cuts both ways: it means that Bryer never languished in hospital as my husband did for so many weeks last year, and the year before. The family had to hire help, and they did, and he came home. The NHS, obviously, benefits as well: a bed un-blocked.

Whereas in Scotland, social care is available with no reference to a means test. Two carers come to us four times a day, free of charge. But my husband had to wait a long time for the “care package” to be put in place.

The odd thing about this is that, with all we keep hearing at the moment about Crisis in the NHS, the general feeling I get is  that things are worse in England than in Scotland. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? I am sure there are at least as many seriously poor people, per capita, in Scotland as in England. I need more figures, and am not going to exert myself to acquire them. I remember telling Rachel once (=London) what we pay in council tax, and she said, That can’t be right, Mummy. But it was. Maybe that’s all there is to it.

Here we are. My husband’s catheter is, apparently, blocked. A nurse has been summoned. He is fairly comfortable, and may sleep. I must stay alert until she comes.

Knitting went well today. I am embarked on Row 51 of the shawl border (of 86). The second branch (from the bottom) of the Tree of Life is beginning to appear. I’m terribly glad to know that your Houlland is progressing, Shandy. It does look like fun.

I have been rather taken by Veera Valimaki’s “Breathing Space” pattern – it’s on Ravelry’s front page at the moment, well down towards the bottom. I am greatly drawn to asymmetry, and have never actually attempted it. I am slightly afraid that this one would just look as if I’d done it wrong.

Non-Knit

My sister says she has had an income tax scam like the one I told you about the other day. We have been trying to think how the Bad Guys might actually get hold of any money. She found hers in voice mail – which presumably means that it wasn’t a recorded call, as mine was. If I had responded, the Bad Guy’s first job would have been to find out who I was: cat? butler? Jean? Ham*sh? Even in the interests of science, I would have been reluctant to divulge even that much information.

I suppose they go on to ask for a large payment into a government-sounding account and then they’ll drop the “case”.

I made some progress today with tidying papers and printing spreadsheets. I’m ready to roll with the actual return tomorrow or (more likely) Tuesday. The Money sections of the weekend newspapers are full of stories about how we need to get cracking.

Perdita is in heat -- which makes it easier to bear the prospect of the spaying. She has to sleep in the kitchen when she's in this state, because she's too restless for her usual place with me. But she has figured out how to open the kitchen door from the inside.(You just have to slip your paw under the door and pull it towards you – the latch won’t hold.)  I had to get up twice last night to deal with her, apart from getting up on other occasions to improve the position of my husband's pillows. I'll have to find a more secure place for her tonight.

Otherwise, nothing much. I did no tax today -- spent the afternoon time instead watching a very favourite movie, "King of Comedy". A tour de force for de Niro, directed by Scorsese, written by nobody I've ever heard of. It is often interesting, seeing a film one loves and remembers, to notice the shots one has completely forgotten. In this case, I was surprised to find a knitting scene. Not entirely plausible, but the knitter was meant to be understood as crazy. 

And I won't get the tax filed on Monday (although I hope to get more tidying of papers done tomorrow). Because a very dear old friend is coming to call -- Anthony Bryer's widow, but much more than that to me.

When we moved to Birmingham in the late summer of '70 (with a litter of kittens amongst the paraphenalia), I happened to see an ad in the local paper for a Latin teacher at the local school. They must have been desperate, just before the beginning of term -- I knew nothing about teaching. They bravely took me on. Jenny was the Deputy Head, and also Head of Languages. She was a pillar of strength, and has been a dear friend ever since.

Her husband Jess was a lecturer in French at the university nearby. He died young. So did Bryer’s wife Liz a few years later. And eventually Jenny and Bryer married. The only drawback on that happy occasion, to which the ghosts were as welcome as the living, was the thought that one or the other would probably have to go through such a bereavement again.

Jenny's sister, as it very happily happens, lives near here, on Dundas Street. Jenny is here because her sister's husband is celebrating his 80th this weekend. 

Meanwhile, the shawl had a very good day -- nothing like movie-watching. The Tree of Life is well established.

It was a comfort, Hat and others, to hear that you had suffered the very same scam I had yesterday, that recorded telephone call from "HMRC". Of course it couldn't be real -- what if the cat or the butler had answered the phone? And indeed, was it addressed to me or to my husband? But that deep, authoritative voice did rather shake me.

Alexander says that he never pays any attention to any recorded phone call. That's probably a good principle of life.

I think I've finished the tax. The final bit is always easier than I expect. I'll let it simmer for a couple of days while I tidy away all the paper and print out the spreadsheets -- then try to file on Monday or Tuesday.

And the shawl has had a good day, too. I've reached (although not finished)  row 43: the half-way row, and the one in which the final motif, the Tree of Life, is established.

Poor Perdita had her pre-op examination this morning -- Helen took her. She's booked in for spaying next Thursday. I will have a miserable week in anticipation. She will be spared that. But she will then be subjected to fear and pain, by my choice. And the worst, I feel, is that after depriving her of her God-given right to wander about peeing in our neighbours' finely-raked seed beds and munching their song-birds (because she is entirely house-bound) we are now going to deprive her of kittens.

But will we ever be able to get her back into the cat-carrier? She's not stupid.

I am surprised that I can't remember much about the spaying of our Dear Old Cat. She had had several litters and both she and we felt that enough was enough. But it must have been I who took her to the vet and Had It Done, and I can remember none of that.

Different subject: parts of GB have been having some rather strenuous weather yesterday and today. Edinburgh has got off fairly lightly. Alexander came over from Glasgow yesterday, where things were worse, and as we talked about it I was reminded of one of my favourite poems:

Where is the Weather?

The rain may fall in Aberdeen,

But in Dundee it can’t be seen.

In Derby the snow may be high,

But there is none in Hay-on-Wye.

In London the wind can’t be heard,

But there are gales in Hereford.

If you don’t agree with me,

Go somewhere else and you will see.

                        David Malcolm, age 9

                        Ledbury Primary School, Hereford

                        1992

Perdita has been booked in for spaying. Helen will take her down to the vet tomorrow morning for a pre-op consultation. I am deeply distressed. Fortunately the.poor animal won't worry.

Thank you for your kind comments. The fireplace, pre-mosaic, was a blank square of plasterboard. We have other open fireplaces (although we've never lit a fire in this house). I think Helen made the mosaic flat on a workbench in her studio. It came here supported from behind on some sort of adhesive mesh. Most alarmingly, on Installation Day, she cut it apart into six or seven pieces which she and the nice Grouting Man then assembled into the fireplace.

I suspect that mosaic-making, like knitting, takes so long to do that it's hard to make a living. 

I'm very pleased with the shawl. The colour looked a bit sepulchral to start with, but now seems like the sort of thing a costume designer would choose for a poor-but-honest character in a 19th century television drama. That's what I want. This is to be a shawl for use -- for bundling up a summer baby and taking it down to the pub for lunch.

I reached row 40 today, the first border decrease row. That’s a landmark, surely. And I'm nearly halfway through the border -- that'll be another. And I'm nearly finished with the second row of motifs and ready to start, in row 43, the third and final one. Yet another!

The tax went well, too. I think all the hard work is done -- Syngenta is no more, whatever it was. That simplifies things. 

I had a funny recorded phone call today. A man with a deep voice told me that HMRC (=Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) was initiating a case against me. "To speak to your case officer, press One." 

Phishing, presumably. The tax man may well come for me one day, but I don't think it will be quite like that. But the call was well-calculated and well-timed to prey on January's anxieties, and sounded almost authentic.

Non-knit, non-tax

The January 16 New Yorker pitched up here today. My husband and I increasingly find that we can’t understand the cartoons. My sister is coming for a visit in early Feb – it might be instructive to have her take us through the then-current issue.

But on page 56 of today’s issue is one we will cut out and keep in our current bedtime-reading book: “Look alive, Proust, you’re next”. We’re doing rather well with Proust.

Another good day, I guess, although I feel as though I am shouting to you from a distant shore.

I advanced the tax. In fact, I think the only remaining income problem is Syngenta. Who are they? Why does my husband have shares in them? And, more to the point, did they pay him anything in 2015-2016, and if so how much? And into which account? The rest, I believe, is all downhill.

I have been eager for a financial document to arrive in the mail, so that I could exercise my resolution of dealing with such things fully, and at once. Today one did, and I did.

And the shawl has achieved its two rows, or just about.

Here it is:

Not as expressive a pic as I had hoped. At least you can see that I'm getting somewhere.

And here’s the mosaic:

You will (justifiably) conclude that I need to tidy the sitting room. We need to rearrange it – the fireplace used to have a sofa in front of it. Now, we want to keep the mosaic fully in view. Neither of these pictures fully do it justice. 

The icon on the mantelpiece is Helen's work too.

A good day.

I have toiled through row 35 of the shawl border pattern, and am now somewhere in 36 – my two-a-day resolution fulfilled, although not by much. Row 33 was the one in which the second motif reached its widest point, but 35, paradoxically, was the one containing the most k3tog’s – four for each of the nine motifs on each of the four sides. That’s a lot of k3tog’s.

When this row of motifs is finished, that leaves only the Tree of Life, and I don’t think it goes in for k3tog’s much. I’m making progress.

And the tax went well, too – my next target is Unit Trusts, and we haven’t many of them. Once that’s done, I think it’s pretty plain sailing. My sister phoned from DC today – confirming my impression that an American tax return is vastly more complicated. The monthly fee she and her husband pay to their retirement community can be partly set against tax as a medical expense, she said. I don’t think wage-earners and pension-payees, in this country, can set anything against tax. The self-employed, yes, and the renters-out of property.

Including us, as the owners of 20 acres in Strathardle, farmed by a neighbour. We charge him so little that it’s not worth fussing about deductions, although of course we must, and do,  faithfully declare that little. Even when I'm not entirely sure that they have remembered to pay, this year.

I’m sorry to have no pics for you. The light is so brief, the moment slips by. Tomorrow, I hope.

The carers were in better time tonight, but events have supervened and I will have, again, to be brief.

It wasn’t an entirely satisfactory day, either, on the two fronts in which we are primarily interested. I did finish two rows of the borders of Mrs Hunter’s shawl, but only just. The second motif is nearing its widest point, which means more k3tog’s.

And I did no tax at all. Realizing that that was happening, I thought, OK, I’ll log on to the government website (gateway/gov/uk, or something like that) just to prove that I can. The first attempt got me only as far as the first “g” before telephone or doorbell supervened. The second time, I did better – I was actually typing in the password (one of those Juliet Bravo Nine sort of things) before the interruption came.

The excitement which actually succeeded in happening was the installation of a mosaic by Greek Helen in the previously blanked-off fireplace in the sitting room. My husband, who has to sit looking at it all day, had been agitating for some time for something interesting to fill the space. Helen offered to make a mosaic. Its utter wonderfulness wasn’t entirely evident until it was installed.

Perdita had had no previous experience of the installation of mosaics, let alone of their grouting. She took a lively interest throughout.

Photographs tomorrow, as well as some of the shawl.

VK turned up today, to my great excitement, but there is little or nothing there to send me forward to the EYF. I do very much like No. 4, a smallish shawl. I’ll keep it in mind. I think I still have an IK to look forward to. They couldn't have terminated my subscription without warning me?

I increasingly get the impression that those little collections of six mini-skeins in graduated colours are The Coming Thing. I love them. But how to deal with them? Last year at the EYF I did Carol Feller’s class on that very topic, and came away not much the wiser. 

The poor carers were late again tonight, and I must be off to my bed soon.

It wasn’t the best of days, but I still did more than two rows of shawl border, and advanced the tax a wee bit. I think I remember from other years that I’m doing the worst part now, and when it’s finished, P60 and National Insurance Pension and even Gift Aid payments will slide past quickly.

The Sunday Times (filling up space) urges us to get cracking with acquiring the “unique taxpayer reference” and “activation code” we’ll need to log on and pay our tax. I’ve been doing it for four or five years, and ought to have all the codes I need, although I don’t actually remember having either of those.  I might be happier if I logged in tomorrow just to see if I can do it.

The single thing I can do for myself to make this easier, is to deal with financial papers as they arrive. I’ve been sloppy lately; papers are missing. The information can be found in bank statements, and if they’re missing, it’ll be on-line. But if I had dealt with every paper as it arrived, things would be much easier.

As for the shawl, I’m doing row 31, and it’s slow. Not difficult – there’s nothing remotely difficult here. But it’s a busy row, with lots of k3tog’s. I had a disaster in an Amedro pattern once in a passage with a lot of k3tog’s, when I discovered that the middle stitch of half of them had quietly tiptoed away. I centre such decreases now, unless there's a reason not to: slip 2 as if to knit them together, knit the 3rd, pass the slipped stitches over. It's a bit safer. 

Row 31 is the last on page 3 of the pattern leaflet, so tomorrow I’ll turn over to page 4, and that, surely, is a significant landmark.  

The new edition of Knitting has a paragraph about Stephen West’s new scarf book. It costs 30 euro’s which is a bit steep even for my extravagant self. But I’ve got a book of his, and his wonderful Craftsy class: a Westknit scarf might indeed be a possible project to plan and have in my pocket for the EYF market.

Non-knit

A near neighbour and dear friend knocked on the door today to say he had solved yesterday’s puzzle, as, clearly, have several of you. Catriona, you’re right: the link between Prunella Scales, Jeffrey Archer, and Siamese twins is the zodiac, in English:  Libra, Sagittarius, Gemini. The questions I couldn’t answer will have supplied the other signs. I didn’t get it. I had to look up the answer in the Financial Times magazine.

My husband’s carers were late tonight, coming to put him to bed – through no fault of their own, I am sure, nor did they grumble. But that means that it’s later still, now, so I won’t linger.

I didn’t manage much more than my two rows of shawl border today. I’m well across row 27, establishing the new lozenges. There are 86 rows in the borders, so my earlier calculation is looking even better, what with all this frantic knitting of late. 60 rows to go, at 2 rows a day, brings us to early February for finishing the borders. I could finish the whole thing before Lent! let alone before Easter.

And I moved forward with the tax. I am now wrestling with questions such as, why did we not have a payment from F&C Asset Management (whoever they may be) in May, 2015, although they paid us £2.48 in May, 2014? The tax return asks only for totals but I always imagine HMRC bursting the front door open with one of those sledgehammer things and shouting “What about F&C Asset Management?” (I found the answer: we have been bought out for a small sum.)

Totally non-knit

Here’s a puzzle for you. Every Saturday, the first thing I turn to in our armload of newspapers is “A Round on the Links” – a quiz in the Financial Times Magazine in which the answers to all the questions are connected with each other in some way. Usually, I can’t answer any of the questions, or perhaps only one. But there have been times when I have answered two or even three, and have grasped the link.

Today, I got three answers (and they were right) but I couldn’t see the connection at all. Can you? The questions don’t matter. The answers I knew were:

                Prunella Scales

                Jeffrey Archer

                Siamese Twins

Answer tomorrow. Of course, if you read the weekend FT – a highly recommended thing to do – you know already, so you mustn’t answer.

A good night’s sleep seems to have cured the computer of any wish to speak Greek, but I am proceeding with caution.

Barbara (comment yesterday) – you had the same idea as Duffy, who emailed me privately. And of course you are both absolutely right – I should get in touch with Hazel Tindall before the class if I want her to show me how to pick up stitches from a lace edging. I’ll think about it. I mean, I may be so embarrassed as to abandon the idea altogether.

And, Shandy, I am delighted to hear that your Houlland is to be reprieved, and agree absolutely that what you have hit upon must be defined as a workaround. The Blind Followers I was grumbling about, were the modern knitters, with the world at their fingertips via the Internet, and with all the wonderful books now available, who would still follow an old pattern that told them to knit a Shetland shawl – any shawl – in six pieces and sew them together.

In 1958, when I did exactly that, even “Knitting Without Tears” was still 13 years in the future.

Knitting went well again today. I have reached, indeed almost finished, row 24 of Mrs Hunter’s border pattern. A major landmark looms – the next row will finish off the first set of motifs, and row 27 will establish the next one, lozenges again, but different lozenges. And I am more than halfway to the first decrease row, namely row 40. There’s still a long, long way to go, but this is definitely progress.

And the tax continues well. My ambition is to finish it in the next fortnight, so that if anything goes wrong with the terrifying task of logging in to the government website through multiple layers of security, and actually filing the return, I will have time to panic before the January 31 deadline.

The thought of Hazel Tindall and my class has focused my thoughts on the Edinburgh Yarn Festival. I am sure I will spend a foolish amount of money, and for the next few weeks I can enjoy thinking about what patterns I might like to buy yarn for. Brooklyn Tweed is coming this year – do you think that means Jared himself? – so one thing to do is to wander through his recent lookbooks.

It might be salutary to look in the stash cupboard and see how much EYF 2016 is still there. I’ve looked at my Ravelry queue and find that either I’ve got the yarn already, or I’m not sure I still want to knit whatever-it-is.

News: I’ve had an email from Nick LaPensee (what a wonderful name!) of Knitzi to say that mine has just been returned to him from the Royal Mail, marked “Not Called For”. Nobody ever told me to call for it. He will send it again, marked as a gift. I have replied with delight, urging him to bill me for his extra costs.

I had completely given up.

I had another good day. I have finished gathering in interest-received for the tax man, and am ready to go on to the next question, which concerns dividends. I didn’t do quite as much shawl-border as on previous days, but I did get past my self-imposed requirement of two rows a day.

Beth, thank you for Donna Smith’s remarks about picking up stitches from an edging. I’m sure she’s right, that if it looks OK, it is OK.

But I had a thought today. I have signed up for only one class at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival this year (to leave plenty of time and strength for the market). But that one is with Hazel Tindall. What if I knit six or eight inches of lace before the class and took it in with a spare needle and just asked her how she would do it? Of course she’s not primarily a lace knitter, but she is a Shetlander and must have knit some lace.

But then I thought that such an action would place me precisely among Franklin’s Ten Knitters You Meet in Hell. (Go read it, if you never have.) I would be the Game Changer, the man who turns up in the class on Introduction to East Andalusian Four-Way Intarsia and wants help with his cabled socks. So maybe I had better not do that.

I have been having a lot of trouble this evening with the computer suddenly changing into the Greek alphabet. I had better stop while I’m ahead. Was it something to do with Franklin's article on the Twist Collective website? I was writing in Word, and thought that everything would be all right once I went back to the wider world, but it wasn't. EVERYTHING I typed came out in Greek, even "Help" which the system, understandably, didn't recognize. I felt a bit like King Midas. What did I do wrong?

That was another fairly good day. I did nearly four rows of the shawl border. The first motif is a lozenge and I have passed the point where it is at its widest -- a first milestone, of a modest sort. The object is beginning to look like a piece of knitting.

And I made some progress, at least, with identifying and entering into a spreadsheet the miserable sums of interest we were paid in the past tax year. I had been slightly concerned not to have had a reminder from the tax man by post – but today it arrived in the form of an email.

I was very interested in your comment, Marion, about the Paton's Cloud Drift baby shawl which is the same pattern as Mrs Hunter's. Sure enough, it is. Some of the knitters on Ravelry even illustrated their projects with pics of the very leaflet I am knitting from, inherited from mother or grandmother or aunt.

I was surprised at how many of them were doing it the way the pattern says -- knitting it in six separate pieces. I even shared, for a moment, EZ’s exasperation at Blind Following.

LizM, I will try to find the correspondence about how to pick up stitches from the Houlland edging. I pursued it for a while without success, but I think I was getting close. Thanks for that.

And speaking of KD, the latest pattern for the Inspired by Islay club is a wonderful all over patterned sweater called Oa, the name, apparently, of part of the island. 

A good day. I advanced the Income Tax quite enough for one day, including finding last year's computer files. I have been flitting from computer to computer lately, winding up with my husband's neat little Toshiba. I doubt if he will use it again, and if he does, I haven't done it any harm.

But the tax files weren't there. I found them on a different machine, and copied to Dropbox. I'm ready to start on the actual tax return. The first question is about interest earned which will mean quite a lot of work gathering up statements from various banks although the total sum will be ludicrously small.

And I had a good day with the shawl -- I'm now on row 11 of 86 border rows. If I can do two rows a day -- and I did better than that, today -- I will finish the borders sometime in February, and the centre, surely, by Easter. That's fine.

I'm knitting the borders back and forth as one long strip. I realized that the three internal corners are going to look a bit odd compared to the fourth one, which will be seamed. I am used to borders which have mitred corners due to decreases every other row -- the decreases would form a line which would compensate, to some extent, for the lack of a seam. In the original, of course, four borders were knit separately and all four corners were seamed. No problem there.

But the borders of this pattern are knit straight for forty rows, and then fairly severe decrease rows are introduced. No mitres to form a line.

So I have introduced a little yo, k3tog, yo at the internal corners to form a degradation (to use a family word). We shall see.

Tamar, thank you for your comment. As always, your head is clearer than mine. I was a bit uneasy about that sentence as I was typing it last night. Knitting the first row tbl completes the attractive twisting of the row of picked-up stitches. It also, of course, produces a row of ordinary knit stitches from which one proceeds to the rest of the shawl.

Shandy, I’m sorry you’re thinking of abandoning your shawl. I think your standards are higher than mine. I also think I must now seek out YouTube or some other source and try to get a definitive answer to this question.

Change of subject

Laine, the Nordic knitting mag, is not cheap.  It really must be as good as it looks, to have sold out everywhere so fast.

I knit on, although I did no paper work today. That was not good. I will have to work tax affairs into my mornings, when I've got some oomph. And that's not entirely easy. But I did look in the place in the file where the P60 ought to be – and it’s there! If I’ve got a P60, I can probably wing the rest.

I've reached row 8 of the 86-row border pattern of Mrs Hunter’s shawl. It's a start.

Shandy, why should picking up those stitches be so difficult? Admittedly, you've got an awful lot of them.

I do it from right to left, slipping the needle, from back to front, stitch by stitch into the back loop of each link in the chain edge. That leaves a neat little ridge of the front loops, but that doesn't worry me. The resulting stitches are all backwards -- with their leading edges to the back of the needle. Hence the next instruction, to knit the whole lot tbl thus uncrossimg them. That’s the row I find slow and difficult.

Why does one not slip the needle through the front loop of each link in the chain? I somehow think that would be harder. But the picture on page xxiv of Amedro perhaps suggests that she took a different approach -- I think my stitches sloped in the opposite direction. Maybe she's coming in from the front. Maybe she has eliminated the little ridge thereby. 

But this is all very 20^th century thinking. There must be something on YouTube.

I think I have decided to go on with the shawl exclusively at least until I have some sense of how long it is going to take. And maybe I'll just carry straight on until it’s finished.

But what I need to do is choose the next pair of socks. It is very rare that I don’t have a pair of somewhat-knit socks in a bag somewhere, ready for snatching up, but such is the case at the moment. And medical emergencies can come suddenly, and nothing would be worse than a long tedious stretch in a&e without a sock to knit. Yarn, needles: that’s all I need, but I do need them.

Ysolda, too, is sold out of Laine -- the Nordic knitting magazine. Did you find one, Mary Lou?

A very good day’s knitting – a great way to start the year.

Sliding the needle through the chained edging stitches was easy and fun. Then I had to knit a round tbl, which was a bit fiddly but produced that nice little row of stitches with their legs crossed. Then two rows of plain knitting during the second of which I put markers in every 50 stitches and got a proper count done.

Then the thrilling row in which the lace pattern was finally established. That went well in borders One, Two, and Four. A silly lack of concentration during Three led to a miscount which in turn led to quite a prolonged tinking session before it could be put right. But it was done. And now I have progressed to row 5, plain knit again. The lace pattern, now successfully established, will itself prevent future egregious mistakes.

I haven’t yet joined the shawl into a circle, and now I don’t think I will. I am going to knit back and forth anyway. Garter stitch is required, and purling on that scale would be intolerable.  I had planned to wrap and turn. But that will make a strong line at the fourth corner; a seam could hardly be worse, and might be better. And by leaving that corner open, I am spared the anxiety of joining without twisting which is not as easy as it sounds with hundreds of stitches.

I did it wrong once, and only discovered the problem when I was several inches into the shawl. I took the scissors to it. Cutting open the corner, I mean – not destroying the whole thing.

I looked Mrs Hunter’s pattern up in Ravelry. There it is – not much gets past Ravelry. It’s available free in some archive. But so far there are no projects! I really must bestir myself. I am a poor Raveller – relying on them as we all do for information, and very rarely contributing anything myself.

So lots of knitting, but I also sorted some more paper as a preliminary to tax-filing.

Non-knit

Jeanfromcornwall, together we will crack the question of Eliquis. I have launched myself into a Dry January (so far so good) with the thought of eliminating Weston’s Vintage Cider as a cause of my fatigue. I don’t take any other medication. That still leaves old age and stress as possible causes – nothing much I can do about them.

(Easter is late this year – I’ll have time for a whole Wet February before Lent starts on March 1. Or maybe I’ll abandon abstinence once the tax is done. We’ll see.)