Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

I always feel rather pleased to be out of it. Christmas, here, involves a full-scale ritual meal as well as all the rest of it. The idea of another full-scale ritual meal a month earlier is Just Too Much. In practice, I think it takes some of the pressure off Christmas. Anyway, have a good day.

I didn’t, yesterday. I saw a doctor of oriental aspect and severe mien. I have got Retinal Vein Occlusion, which is like having a stroke in your eye. (I suggested this very analogy to the first doctor I saw six weeks ago; he patiently explained the difference between blood vessels in the brain and those in the eye and said it was really quite different. Maybe he was just trying to cheer me up.) They took various bits of blood to test for various things that might have precipitated this – diabetes, high cholesterol, anaemia, etc.

But the big one is that I have been sent away for a whole three months with a leaflet about RVO which contains the killer sentence that laser treatment – it may still be wanted, down the road – will not improve my sight.

I will eventually start googling, and will probably take further human advice. It’s all a bit distressing. Is spontaneous improvement still possible?

Knitting

Much brighter news on this front.

I knit on, on Ketki’s sweater, getting more and more anxious about the colour. I liked it, I liked the way it worked with the other colours, but was it (like Thanksgiving) Just Too Much? Could I imagine the finished sweater being worn?

You will remember that the original plan was a two-colour all-over pattern, so I bought enough yarn to knit the sweater in each of the two colours, not knowing what else to do. A circular swatch showed that a two-colour pattern wouldn’t work – the colours were too similar and I couldn’t see where I was going. I tried another swatch, striping them, and felt that they didn’t speak to each other. So I chose one, and put the other away.

Yesterday I went back to the cupboard and found that the other colour now looks perfect, much more subdued. I ripped out what I had done. It’s a nice, crunchy, stand-up-and-speak-for-itself yarn and I had not too much difficulty picking up the stitches and knitting a round, catching one or two escapees and settling everybody the right way round on the needle. Orientating things by the Calcutta Cup in the area just below means that I am sure I have picked up everybody. I will press ahead and have a picture soon.

I feel much happier.

If in doubt, rip it out.