World Affairs

The world seems, just at the moment, to have embarked on another roller coaster ride. Share prices and – bizarrely, to my mind – the value of the pound fell briskly last night and are continuing to do so this morning.

Theresa, I’ve added that site you suggested to my Favorites. It looks encouraging. Justin Webb seems to think McCain might win in the Electoral College although he will lose the popular vote. My sister saw a CNN presentation yesterday where some rather convincing Republican commentators predicted a McCain win. She came away worried. The newspaper articles on the he-is-going-to-visit-his-grandmother theme are all we could ask for.

I remain confident. I think. It’s very hard to grasp, after all this time, that it will soon be over.

We have had two new donations to our thermometer, one of them with a message about my eyes. I am very grateful. I haven’t matched them yet – and if I do, it won’t show on the thermometer anyway because I now have to come in from “abroad”. Someone claiming to be from “Obama for America” rang me up the other evening and asked for my passport number all over again – I have had to supply it with my last two or three donations. I didn’t divulge it again. She said she’d send me an email, and never did. It was odd. Her voice sounded absolutely right for a keen young Obama supporter.

I’m having trouble with red and blue. I don’t think we had them when I was young. I associate red with left and therefore expect it to be the Democratic colour. I have to re-think things from the start every time I see one of those maps.

When I was young the Democrats could count on the “solid South”. I gather Lyndon Johnson signed it away with the Civil Rights act (and good for him). It would be rather wonderful if Obama could reclaim even one Confederate state.

Knitting

The non-junk e-mail I get included this, this morning, about a new wool-and-silk Koigu. Mmmmmm. I bought some cashmere Koigu last year, some may remember, and learned the never-to-be-forgotten lesson that cashmere doesn’t take dye all that well. (I knit up all the yarn, though; at least it’s not languishing in stash.) But silk does, and of course wool does.

Theresa, I can never get stitch and row tension (gauge) to coincide, and have long since given up trying. How do they do it?

I’ve finished row 38 of the 9th repeat of the Princess centre. The rows are definitely getting long and slow – and November looms. It now doesn’t seem very likely that I’ll achieve my aim of knitting the first 17 rows of the next repeat, the moderately tough ones, before switching to Ketki’s sweater.

Perhaps I could take a picture of Alexander’s socks for tomorrow. Cynthia, you can count on me not to attempt the Princess with dilated pupils. There should be a report on my eyes tomorrow, too, even if it’s only “no news”.