Finished the scarf. It's five feet long -- the instructions say it will be 80", but it's hard to measure swirly, and maybe it will stretch, and five feet is fine, anyway. The cast-on edge forms a central spine, and I don't see how 150 stitches of Koigu or any sport-weight yarn can come out 5' long let alone 6 1/2', but such is the case.

I decided as I was driving back from leaving James and Kirsty at the airport -- they should be in Beijing by now -- that the Aegean blue yarn from Candace Strick was too strong, I'd knit in gentler colours for the second swirly. Then it got dark, and I decided I couldn't bear not to knit with Aegean blue. So I've cast on with that, but I'll bind and probably stripe it with variegated Koigu rather than black as I had planned.

I'll wait until the sun comes up (if it does) to photograph the first scarf, in the hopes of showing you something not too washed out.

The message below is from Thessaloniki, referring to the second orange Wallaby I knit for Fergus. The first one was his Christmas present last year. He was delighted with it. It shrank to Thomas-the-Younger size in the first wash. His mother took the second one back to Greece with her after the birthday visit last week.

"[Fergus] Is terribly pleased with his sweater. He has insisted on wearing it every day so far and i doubt he will ever wear anything else until it falls to pieces. He's that sort of boy. David says we will have to dry clean it (when he's asleep) so that it wont meet the same fate as the last one."

 

So that's nice. I'veasked for a picture.

 

Non-knit

 

James had time to look at the broadband-installing instructions before he left yesterday, and I feel bolder. Hey, I put a floppy disk drive in this computer with my own hands. I can do anything. The really good news is that he discovered a small sealed envelope with my broadband details -- including the new password, in clear. So that's all right. I remembered that I had used the password I use for banking, and that it was too long and I had had to shorten it in some respect -- what I couldn't remember, and foolishly hadn't noted, was exactly how I had shortened it.

 

The Mytob virus persecution has stopped for the last two days, establishing the source beyond doubt as an American computer, I think.