Scotland lost disgracefully, in a largely boring match. I don’t know if I can go on with this. I suppose I’ll have to register a flicker of interest on Calcutta Cup Day.

I forgot, yesterday, to list the Spinning Fishwife among the blogs that Make my Day. I’m now up to a baker’s dozen. This is harder than it looks.

I finished the back of the gansey yesterday, remembering to make it just fractionally short so that I can lengthen and narrow it at the blocking stage. It’s looking good. I’m glad I stuck with so simple a pattern. Less is more.

Kathy, I loved the Barack Obama link you sent me yesterday. It’s when he unleashes that smile that one goes all weak in the knee. It wouldn’t work at all if he smiled all the time like a toothpaste ad. And my sister this morning reproduces a good ad he put on during the Super Bowl. I wonder what fraction of a split second of that my contribution would have paid for.

I’ve had an email from his campaign manager urging me to Phone Five Friends. I would drive them into the enemy camp, I am sure, if I attempted any such thing.

There is one dear friend, a master knitter, who with her husband has been working hard for Edwards. I could ring up Isobel and have a nice time talking to her – but it wouldn’t be of much use, politically, because she lives in New Hampshire.

However, I did a small favour on request today for a friend who lives in Brookline. She is of the what-does-it-matter-they’re-all-the-same school, rather like Joe and Mar. And when I wrote to her telling her that I had executed the commission, I asked her to vote for Obama. If he wins in MA, you’ll know that it was all my doing.

I continue to think about swallowtail coats. I’ve read the Poet’s Coat pattern, and it doesn’t sound easy. The gauge is pretty tight – 7.5 stitches to the inch over linen stitch. It’s knit from the bottom up. It does form a tail in the back, although you can’t see it in the photograph. There’s some elegant short-rowing right at the beginning.

That won’t apply to me, since I’ll be splitting the back. Maybe once Tuesday is safely behind us, I’ll try it out with something from the stash, a sort of pre-swatch swatch.