Thank you, Helen and Anonymous. I have told eBay and Abebooks to look out for Vogue Knitting Books for me, and will report results. It turned out I already had an Abebooks account, which simplified the procedure.

I am knitting away on the final rows of moss stitch at the top of my sister’s shawl. It’s easy, of course, except that I have to keep stopping every few inches to make sure that the work hasn’t mysteriously morphed into rib. My new plastic eyes (since cataract surgery last summer), superior in every other respect, aren’t as good as my old ones at focussing right-up-close. The seriously nearsighted will know what I mean. The yarn is dark, and of course fine, and I am having some difficulty in seeing whether the next stitch in the row below was knitted or purled.

However, all is well. I might even finish the knitting of this thing today. And will certainly, bar disasters, be able to have it blocked and ready to take to London with us when we go down on the 29th. I’ll leave it with Rachel to hand on to my sister. Then forward! to the shrug.

Non-knit

My husband suddenly came up with the idea that we should go to Strathardle today, mid-afternoon. (After Mass and lunch, we’re going to an auction view of a picture sale – that’s why we’re here in Edinburgh at all.) That sounds far too much like hard work to me, and fortunately the weather forecast is on my side. “Rain” for tomorrow, only “chance of showers” for Tuesday and Wednesday.

I weigh myself every morning on my new digital scales, mentioned here a fortnight ago. I no longer struggle with an oscillating needle, as on the old ones, but the answer differs quite a bit from day to day. There was a 4 ½ pound difference between the best and worst reading in the past week, in which I neither fasted nor binged. Life must be very trying for jockeys.

There's a good article about the Cultural Revolution in the current Economist, May 20-26. I assume it's by James. He has obeyed the famous schoolmaster's dictum, Be specific. I just spent a few idle moments clicking on interesting-sounding blog titles on that rotating list on the main Blogger page -- pretty uniformly, they turn out not to be interesting -- and happened on one which started off with a link to.........the Cultural Revolution article in the current Economist. My bosom swelled with pride.

The Economist is the only item in the considerable quantity of journalism we receive which arrives in a proper envelope, not in plastic.