World Affairs

I don’t entirely feel that those men (and that woman) in Washington in their suits have quite come to grips with the problem. I would expect them to be sitting up all night in their shirtsleeves, and there doesn’t seem to be much sign of that.

I’m not greatly enamoured of our Prime Minister, either – a basically good, moral man, I think, somewhat corrupted by the desire for and eventual taste of power. But I think he knows what’s going on, unlike, say, G.W.Bush, and I have therefore a smidgen more hope for the emergency meeting of European leaders today.

Robert Peston’s latest says that depositors in the Royal Bank of Scotland – hey! that’s us! -- needn’t be spooked by what he has just reported. The world is full of such comforting remarks just now, and they don’t entirely comfort.

Tamar, I couldn’t agree more with your comment yesterday. There’s nothing to do but carry on carrying on.

On a happier note, I found this yesterday while wandering aimlessly around in search of news and entertainment. That’s the old McCain, the man I used to feel would do pretty well as president if push came to shove. There’s a video at the end of the item.

Knitting

Well.

In spite of yesterday’s fine words, I offset row 37. I discovered the mistake in what might be called “time” and only had to unpick about 80 stitches. I didn’t enjoy it. It made me wonder again how much disorder I have already knit without noticing. Everything below looks all right, without pursuing the question too closely.

The second half of the pattern is a series of what might be called parallel chevrons. They don’t overlap, and so the potential for trouble exists every time a new one is set in place.

The moral here is, I think, that creating acres of a fairly simple lace stitch invites inattention.

I’m now embarked on row 42. By now, each row is an event; even so, I may well finish the current (8th) repeat – 46 rows – today. If so, tomorrow both a pic and a report on the result of a new application of (what I shall continue to think of as) Cynthia’s Formula – what percentage of the entire centre have I knit so far?