One rained-all-day, three brilliant-sunshine-and-hard-frost. We had a good time, ate a dish of autumn raspberries, some sorrel soup and also an artichoke soup. That was the first harvest from the Jerusalem artichoke tubers the Fishwife gave me on Groundhog Day. It’s a bit early to lift them, but I was curious. Mine are pretty small (so far), compared to the parent tubers, but the soup was delicious.

We also had some perpetual spinach – tough and chewy. My husband wouldn’t eat it. I found it rather tasty, worth the effort. And a first picking of kale – again, too early to start taking it, really, but I thought, if the deer are going to come and get it, I might as well get in first. It was very good.

Not exactly living off the land, but fun.

I got some beds cleaned, manured and covered, including one where artichokes (real ones) are to go.

And I tackled the Japanese hat. It was rather odd, descending from the pure Olympian realms of pattern-decipherment into the heat and dust of needles and yarn. With no edging at all, the bottom edge of the hat curled atrociously and perhaps partly for that reason, but mostly because I had been cavalier about gauge, I didn’t notice until I had finished the top that the hat was seriously too small.

That stopped me in my tracks for a bit. Add some length? Regard the whole thing as a swatch and start again with some Rowan DK? (Two, at least, of the five exemplars on Ravelry were knit with that yarn, and, hey! it’s nearly November.) Eventually I calmed down and chose the first option. I’m adding length, although I fear it will spoil the neatness of the pattern. I’ll need to take a day off Amedro soon to finish it again, and to add a pompom and braids. And block – those earflaps keep trying to flip upwards – aiming for a bit of width.

In my musings about Japanese knitting, before we went away, I found this blog. She's Japanese, her English is fluent, she lives in London, she designs knitwear, she keeps cats. As they say, what's not to like? Maybe I Knit could hire her for a day-class in interpreting Japanese patterns.

Meanwhile Amedro progresses. I have turned the last page of the pattern. There are currently three motif-columns in each wing, and I am about to start nibbling at the outer ones. Pic soon.

I have done a bit of Christmas-browsing (Science Museum, IWOOT) and have retreated, depressed. There seems to be little anyone could conceivably want, and it costs £35. It makes me wonder whether I should try to knit somebody something after all, when Amedro is finished. Christmas knitting is against all my principles, but the situation looks desperate.