It’s been snowing wetly in Edinburgh this morning – is this going to be our day? Probably not. The depressing thing about all this is the absence of the slightest note of milder-weather-is-on-the-way from any forecast. I’m sure it’s desperately good for the garden to have a dose of real winter weather, but I long to get outdoors. In Strathardle.

There are about 430 stitches in the Princess centre at the moment – half the border number. And about 150 rows to go, I think. The only thing to do is to plod on steadily. When I applied Cynthia’s Formula at the end of the 9th repeat, I was still less than half-way. I’ll do the same at the end of No. 10 and will surely have achieved 50%.

Meanwhile I had a nice time yesterday tidying up after Ketki’s sweater. Tidiness does not figure hugely in my normal programme, but I love tidying up after a knitting project. Picking up scraps of yarn from the making-up process. Putting the left-over yarn away. Dating the pattern and putting it with any notes and swatches and a ball-band and a sample of the yarn in my “Knitting Actually Done” folder. Adding a photograph – in these days of digital, that can be done right away.

I started that folder, I see to my surprise, thirty years ago. Every so often it gets full, and the contents are moved to a box file. It is time to do that again – it will be the fourth. I have been repeatedly surprised to find how often I go back to look for something. I was also surprised, in the early days, to find how much that folder kept me on the straight-and-narrow. Not entirely, but more than somewhat. The number of UFO’s fell precipitately once I started keeping that record.

The never-forgotten remark of Helen in her adolescence helped, too: “What’s that going to be – if you finish it?”

Wedding-journey miscellany

I booked Lizzie’s and my flights yesterday. Trailfinders, as ever, very pleasant and efficient. (The poor man was taken aback, however, to find that I had only one telephone number.) Wren, thank you for the note about tulips in Amsterdam airport. July might indeed not be the ideal month for buying them, but they’re clever, the Dutch, and I’ll certainly look. Mel, I agree that species are what to look for.

I am very grateful indeed for all the reports about Kindles, including Cynthia’s, ex-comment. I had been sort of anxious, when I stopped to think about it, about whether I would ever use the gadget again after July 28th (when I get back to London, insh’Allah). But everything you say about devotion to your Kindles makes me suspect otherwise. I hadn’t known that there were any free books up there in cyber-space, either.

I first saw one a few months ago when I peeled off, on arrival in London, to spend an evening with an old friend (an Oberlin friend, Angel!) while my husband made his way to Streatham alone. She had a Kindle and was full of enthusiasm.

eCommerce moves fast. I think my best bet is to wait patiently and see how the cookie crumbles. If they are available in GB by the summer – and the rumour you have heard about a new one, Holly, brings the possibility closer – I’ll probably pounce. The notion of running out of reading matter in CT doesn’t bear thinking about.

(My Microsoft Word spelling-checker, which has never heard of “woad”, has no trouble at all with “eCommerce” which I thought I had invented.)