Here we are: Lent is over. Nothing lies before me except a life of self-restraint, so it isn’t like some Easters. I have lost perhaps as much as ten pounds since Lent began, with no effort at all except for laying off the cider. It’s not enough to strike the eye of the beholder, but it’s enough to make me feel more sprightly, and cause waistbands to fasten more readily. Enough to point out the road ahead, I’m afraid.

On the other hand, if I turn out to be in the early stages of a wasting disease, I’ll go straight back on the sauce.

I continue to be enormously grateful to everyone for their help with my new cashmere passion. Karin has written to offer me a “golf-ball sized” oddball of Jade Sapphire cashmere-and-silk, and I have jumped at the chance to try it myself before committing myself to this ridiculous purchase. Silk takes dye so gloriously, as Sean said in his description of unpacking a box of Jade Sapphire. Thereby starting this whole thing.

June, those yarns on the Two Pointy Sticks website are – I’m afraid I’ve used up my superlatives. But they are. (URL in her comment of yesterday – do have a look.) They don’t seem to include any laceweights, so they won’t do for the current dream, but I’ve marked the page and I will often be back. It’s interesting to see, on that page, how different qualities of yarn take the same dye. To my eye, the merino often looks better than the cashmere in the same colourway. Brighter. Cashmere sweaters out here in the real world are so often dull, or dullish, in colour. Argyles for bankers playing golf.

So what’s going on around here?

Thanks to my new friend the MS Word “Select Browse Object” button, I’ve finished a first pass through my husband’s magnum opus already, and can now (a) start doing the files he has revised lately and (b) get to work seriously on scanning my mother’s mss about Brigham Young’s wives.

And I should, today, finish the first pass through the lace pattern in the centre of my sister’s shawl (46 rows) so I will try to smooth it out and photograph it for tomorrow. Thank you for your remark on the colour, Lorna. My sister chose it, although I tried to press on her the selection I could offer from stash. I like it too, and it’s nice to knit with. Heirloom Knitting's merino lace.

Tamar, that’s ridiculous about how much I get done. You should look around here and see what I don’t get done. And that’s an extremely interesting idea, which hadn’t occurred to me – to modify “Mrs Laidlaw’s pattern” in order to achieve an odd number of stitches and thus to be able to centre the spine-stitch precisely (for Ketki’s gansey, the current Strathardle WIP). I hope we’re going to get back there later this week. I’m meant to be charting that pattern before we do, and will consider this new option seriously as I do so.

Sue, it was a comfort to hear that you haven’t got Knitting yet either. I sort of gave up, when mine didn’t appear yesterday. And, Vivienne, I’d start with Suetonius’ “Claudius” when you finally get to a library. He was one for salacious details, I seem to remember. But my money is still on Robert Graves.