I didn’t mean to frighten you off – if anyone really left a comment on an old blog entry, I would recognize it and welcome it and pass it. They are individually scrutinized, albeit through glazed eyes.

I was interested, Rebecca, in your “nonsense” comment that turned out to come from St Nicholas

a) because that sort of nonsense comment is the oddest of all. Often they don’t contain a link. What is the point? And then there are their first cousins, the slightly illiterate ones that say that your blog entry was a great help with their college assignment. Junk comments like that tend to be attached to current blog entries, whereas the multiple-link ones go for the archives.

b) because I grew up reading bound volumes of St Nicholas, presumably ones my mother or father had brought along from childhood. I’ve never “met” anyone else who had heard of it. I don’t remember asking my parents about those volumes, just enjoying them. There was a serial story about a little boy who was keen on a little girl who was referred to as his “affinity”. It was a new word to me at the time and from my current perspective, I think it an excellent one.

I was also interested to hear of your Oberlin connection. I was there from ’50 to ’54 – would I recognize your parents’ name? “Angel”, who comments here often, was on the Oberlin faculty in a junior post until recently, but is now in Texas.

I have had another crazy – i.e., surely virus-sent – message from my Oberlin friend, this time with the subject-line “Jacques Bourglan”. (M. Bourglan has a Facebook page, and looks rather sweet.) This time I didn’t click on the link. I did do “Reply All” to look at the list. It’s not very long, eight or ten addresses, and is clearly the “g-to-j” section of someone’s address book. I would be especially interested to hear from anyone who has heard of a virus which sends Viagra ads in messages captioned with the names of non-famous Frenchmen.

But we’re supposed to be talking about knitting.

I have finished tiers Two and Three, but haven’t blocked them. I’ve even cast on Four, and will try to get a minimum lower-edge done even before I pin Two and Three into place and decide on sizes for Four and Five.

I find that knitting the Doris edging is a case of four steps forward and three steps back – progress, in other words, but slow.

I have already mentioned my tendency to let my thoughts wander and find that I have forgotten which row I just knit. Also – this has happened three times – if I falter at the point where I need a slip 1, k1, psso at the end of a return row, to join the edging to the main body, and a stitch escapes, there is no recovering it. I pick it up, easily enough – but suddenly there is another one below, and another, and…

and the whole thing comes unzipped, and there is nothing to do but to rip all the way back and start again. Fortunately the edges are short. Mercifully that never happened when I was edging the top of the Princess, yards and yards of it. I haven’t figured out the mechanics of this phenomenon, being too cross when it happens to pay attention.