I’m grateful for yesterday’s comments. www.skaska.com was indeed the yarn source I was looking for – why do you suppose Joe took it out of his blog, if he did? It’s just as well for one’s credit card balance and stash-cupboard-capacity that the page isn’t provided with add-to-basket buttons. Esther, I would be interested to know what response you get from her – jean at milesandmiles dot demon dot co dot uk. Or leave another comment.

Meanwhile, I’ve been bowled over in the last few minutes by another possibility. I followed Franklin's link to Sean's blog, and this morning I am in Harvard Square, contemplating Jade Saphire Mongolian cashmere. (The shop Sean runs there is called Woolcott and Company but their webpage hasn’t been updated recently and Jade Saphire isn’t on it; perhaps he’ll get around to that.) I Google’d on “Jade Saphire” – interestingly, Google corrected the spelling to “Sapphire” and then produced a number of URLs which made it clear that Sean was right in the first place. And, oh! the yarn.

Thanks for commenters’ help on my broken-link problem of yesterday, too. Alexander also weighed in on that one. This is the link to my webpage (I hope), and Helen Ogden’s shawl, if anyone is still interested, can be found among the knitting at the bottom of the page. When I first set up my webpages, I was still working in Windows 3.1 with DOS-type restrictions on file names, and I clearly went a bit wild when I got my new computer and the limits were lifted. As I keep saying, once this footnote business is out of the way…

You’re absolutely right, Dawn, that it’s an utter Forth-Bridge of a job. On the other hand, I am within sight of finishing the first coat. By Whitsun, insh’Allah, my husband’s magnum opus will be in the Palm Pilot, every one of the hundreds of files provided with solid endnotes at the end of the text, and the text itself ornamented with numbers in angle brackets, thus: <54>, where the endnote references should be.

After that, there’ll be an awful lot of files to revise, the ones that my husband has worked on since I started this mamouth undertaking. That’ll go on forever, indeed. But I won’t spend so much time on it, and the Palm will be useful in libraries, as intended, when he’s looking things up, even if the particular file under consideration is in an unrevised state.

So, knitting. Progress on my sister’s shawl went smoothly yesterday, I’m glad to say. I’ll photograph it again when I’ve finished the first repeat of the tricky centre pattern. It – the centre pattern -- is 46 rows long and I’ve knocked off 32 of them, so we’re getting there. Thirty-two rows means that my original 480-odd stitches have been reduced by 64 – it doesn’t, yet, feel as if things are going faster, but that should begin to happen soon.

The joiner who made our kitchen bookcase (see yesterday) mentioned that he was in the middle of a job of drawing, and said how much he disliked drawing, compared to actually making things. Just like me and knitting.

The new Knitting magazine is due out today.