I finished Ketki’s socks. Most of the rest of yesterday’s knitting time went on darning – the socks in question must be well into their second decade, and the holes were large. I got it done, and glow with virtue. Today, socks will be dispatched to Loch Fyne and a certain gansey to Denver.

The new socks:

The old ones:

Tamar and Rosesmama, don’t worry. The tumble dryer will only come into play if the gansey, already on the generous size, stretches into the absurd. It is encouraging, in a way, that the cashmere baby sweater you remember, Tamar, the one that started life as a woman’s size 38, was soft and perfectly proportioned. Theo’s girl friend is perfectly sensible, and he is not devoid of sense himself.

What happened yesterday was that my husband had a dentist’s appointment in the afternoon, and at the last moment asked me to go along. There was nothing for it but to snatch up the nearest knitting. I polished off Ketki’s sock in the waiting room, and cast on KF’s 4253, Fog – the one you’re knitting, Mary Lou. It doesn’t look like any fog I’ve ever tried to drive through. This pair will be for Helen in Thessaloniki.

The Yarn Yard August offering, meanwhile, is still on the swift. That’ll be next in line, for Rachel.

My husband has to lose two of his few remaining teeth, in the wake of that abscess. That’ll happen next week. He’s still not as sprightly as he was before this started. He wants to go to London soon for some art; I want only to get cracking on my vegetables. The good thing, in a gloomy way, about the present situation is that he doesn’t feel up to London but could manage Strathardle.

Art History (see yesterday)

The story is slightly better than I realised – my husband knew that there was such a picture, because the artist wrote to his framemaker in 1815, “You will oblige me by getting ready the small portrait for Mr Gourl*y…” That must be why he, my husband, was reading “Robert Gourl*y, Gadfly” in the first place.

I must charge the camera battery today, and perhaps have the old camera ready for action as a back-up. I will know when I see it whether we’re in the ball park (I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dous and Zophanys), but my husband is the man from Del Monte.