My husband fully appreciates the resources of the internet, but I am the one who is sent to draw from the well. I have just spent the better part of an hour trying to find out what Lady Salisbury meant when she said, of an artist I won’t name, that he had the manners of Brancas. I think I’ve got it – not only who Brancas was and what his manners were (that was fairly easy), but how Lady Salisbury might have known about him.

It took time that might better have been spent blogging.

Tier Four of the jabot is finished. I hope to block it this morning. It will dry quickly, and I ought to be able to pin it in place in time for this evening’s Knitting Session, so that I can make a final decision about the dimensions of Tier Five. I’ve already made a good start on its lower edging.

The day is rapidly approaching – this week may even contain it – when I’ve got to take needle and thread in hand and sew this puppy together. I’m nervous of that moment. I am no seamstress.

This and That

Moorecat, thank you for the kind remark about our green room. It was scary, I remember. The painter himself thought we’d gone a bit too far, and we weren’t sure until the work was pretty far advanced that we’d got it right. And, yes, a squirrel swift.

I hate shopping except in LYS’s and bookstores – well, food-shopping isn’t too bad as long as my husband stays home. But he likes antiques and hardware and, in general, the pursuit of anything he has determined to find. Currently, an umbrella stand for Strathardle.

We saw the swift in an antique shop and it was only after we got home that I realised I wanted it, and phoned them. This must have been in my Knitlist days: I didn’t even know that it was a “squirrel swift” until people there told me.

It’s been very useful, not least because a job can be suspended in mid-operation. The current one has been in that state far too long. It was, I think, part of the original plan for Ketki’s Calcutta Cup sweater of 2008, discarded after swatching. The plan was discarded; the yarn is still with me. I must finish winding it, because Koigu-winding looms, and after that the KF jacket.

Donna Druchunas has a link on her blog to an appeal for funds for the Musk Ox Farm. I’d like to know more about what has gone wrong, and what the business plan is. But it is dreadful to think of it coming to an end.

I’ve started Steig Larssen #3. No spoilers, I promise. Reading Wallander, one is much impressed with how early everybody gets up in the morning. In Larssen, it’s how much coffee they drink.