I’ve got to have my hair cut this morning. The appointment makes a grievous inroad into my day – I get little enough done at the best of times -- but I can’t go around looking like this any longer.

Marcella is helping me with Su Doku – I couldn’t do yesterday’s one in the Waffy, either. Maybe they’ve got a new setter this week.

Franklin (never less than interesting) is very interesting on the subject of manners this morning. Don’t miss the comment by “Mama Lu”, if you visit.

Knitting

I should finish the First Holy Communion veil this evening. I’m right up there on the top, and there are only a few repeats to go. The count came out as wrong as it could possibly be – if I carry straight on without fudging, I will arrive at the end with the edging at its maximum stitch count, 12; whereas I started, of course, with the minimum, 9. And the two ends then have to be fused.

I find myself in a sudden panic about what to do next – meaning, this evening. Usually, when I finish a long-term project, the next one has already slotted itself into place. This time, I’m not-quite-ready with a couple of important ones: I’m going to test-knit her “nudibranch” pattern for Lorna, and perhaps learn some biology while I’m about it. We’ve reached the stage of choosing yarns, but I haven’t got them yet.

And I’m going to knit a shawl for my sister this year, but final choices haven’t been made on that front yet, either. She’ll be here next week.

I want to do some more on the Princess shawl, before I go on to anything else. But I won’t feel like fine lace this evening.

I’ve got the current travel-socks, of course. I’m not destitute. But I think I decided as I was stating the problem just now, that what I will do is swatch KF stripe ideas in my Rowan yarns from the two recent Ebay purchases, thinking eventually of a sweater for Alexander.

Non-Knit – Haggis and Hamas

You’d feel even worse about haggis, Swapna, if you knew what was in it. And that’s a sheep’s stomach, or so they tell us, in which it is encased. I wonder if haggis would be any more than a curiosity in 18th-century cookbooks, if Burns hadn’t written that poem.

It’s funny how cross all these high-minded politicians with their enthusiasm for “democracy” can get, when people vote the wrong way. I’m talking about Palestine, of course. Clinton made me and Mrs Thatcher very cross when he welcomed Gerry Adams to the White House at a time when he (GA) was a terrorist pure and simple, without even a democratic mandate. Mrs Thatcher and I were wrong, Clinton was right, and things are at least marginally better in Northern Ireland these days because Clinton was right. Maybe it would do Mr Bush good to talk to Hamas.