Yesterday was the first day since the storm broke, that we had no contact with C. or her daughter. No news is good news, I’m sure, but one feels cut adrift. I’ll touch base with our niece this evening, to check on the visiting roster for this week when she herself is back at work. Maybe I’ll ask whether she has any impression of how successful the doctors are saying the operation may have been. Even my husband wonders out loud, he who usually avoids medical conversation.

Today is Vogue Knitting Book day. The bidding is currently up to £23, with a bit less than 2 ½ hours to go. There are four of us involved. Helen C.K.S., if you're there, I'm currently (at 8:25 a.m.) the underbidder.

I tried two silly low bids, just to see how long it took me to do it. Just under 15 seconds, is the answer. So I ought to be able to hold fire until the final 45 seconds. I doubt if I’ll be brave enough. 90 seconds, maybe. The close comes at what passes around here for a busy time of day, getting my husband up and breakfasted, getting lunch ready to snap on the table the moment we get back from Mass. Early rising and the climb up Broughton Street to the cathedral often deplete his blood sugar, sometimes drastically.

Knitting

I’ve mastered the trick of the twist, and knitting the scarf has become rather boring as a result. I may start the Wurm today, and then alternate days. I believe there’s comfortable time for both before Christmas. I finished the first ball of Cocoon at 19” of scarf – that means I should achieve 7’ with my five balls without undue stress. I can't stand worrying about whether I have enough yarn. A significant fraction of stash represents enough yarn bought to Be on the Safe Side.

Barbara, I don’t know whether the loops will make it extra bulky around the neck. It’s a good question. I’ll try, as soon as it’s long enough.

Shandy, you’re right, there’s not much difference in the prices of Cocoon and Big Wool, ball for ball, and also right, that Cocoon goes further. My five balls will make (we now know) a seven-foot scarf. If you buy Big Wool as instructed in the Rowan book, you need twelve balls for a ten-foot scarf. £100, if you include the price of the pattern.

And the weight! That ten-foot scarf would weigh 1200 grams, which amounts to two and a half pounds, doesn’t it? My seven feet will weigh 250 grams, not much above half a pound.

The one big drawback of this pattern is that it is totally not reversible. Last year’s Cocoon Christmas scarf-knitting, for Thomas-the-Elder, was one of Lynn Barr’s fiendishly clever reversible patterns. It worked awfully well. I don’t know how irritating non-reversibility will be in wear. Cocoon is 80% merino, 20% mohair, and is at least blissfully comfortable.


I looked up the pattern on Ravelry yesterday. There were only three specimens – I expected far more. One person had done it in a finer wool, like me. She had re-calculated the row numbers so that (I think) the twists were as far apart as they would have been in Big Wool. For a moment I thought, oh dear, should I have done that? Then I thought, no. a) I like the way mine looks; and b) the farther between the twists, the more yarn may have to be wasted at the end.