20-16

Not much knitting, today.

The New Yorker review of the film “Carrie”, years ago, said that that final scene in the sunny cemetary, when everyone in the cinema first screams and then laughs [I don’t think it works if you see it at home] – that that scene sent you out of the cinema feeling as if you’d just seen your team win the ball game.

That’s how we feel in Scotland this morning, all right (except for Helen, who affects indifference). We’ve entered the annual season in which the Six Nations play each other at rugby – England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France and Italy. In recent years Scotland have been the easy-to-beat team in that list, almost as bad as Italy, the Philadelphia Phillies of rugby. So it was assumed things would proceed this year. Yesterday we astonished the world by beating mighty France, in a thriller.

And today’s non-knitting consists of the fact that a friend is coming to lunch and I need an ars-est-celare-artem sort of menu, tasting delicious but suggesting that little or no effort has been expended. I think I’ll go with braised sausages. We’re hoping to go to Strathardle tomorrow or Wednesday, and on Friday evening friends are coming to have supper with us there. Same sort of thing, and I may well produce the sausages again. The secret ingredient is a glass of Madiera in the sauce. Weeks of such strenuous social activity are very rare around here.

Knitting

I just logged on to DHL. They have an all-singing, all-dancing website and it took me a while to figure out what to do – but when I succeeded, they claimed they have already delivered the veil and that James himself signed for it. It’s still pretty dark in Edinburgh, but the day is well advanced in Beijing and I suppose it’s perfectly possible. It left here on Friday morning. Chinese customs must have nodded it through. Well worth the money if true, considering the weeks of anxiety which would have been involved if it had gone by post.

I’ve reached row 28 of the Princess shawl, and I finished a ball of yarn. Mar said in a comment yesterday that two people are knitting it as a team effort, and recording their progress in a blog. I’ll now go try to find that via Google.

Thank you Cat, Judith and Aarlene for brightening my day with your comments.