I am now transcendently beautiful because of my new haircut. The experience had an energising effect – I spent the rest of yesterday morning attending to things and putting things away. There has been no discernable effect on the state of affairs here, just as knitting has no discernable effect on the stash, but I feel good.

Today’s start must be even earlier – I must take my husband’s spectacles into central Edinburgh to his oculist to be re-glazed (i.e., to have new prescription lenses put in the frame). If I get there in time, he will get them back this afternoon. So, brevity here.

There’s not much to say, anyway. I bundled up the pile of Shetland and put it in a plastic bag and labelled it “Japanese shirt”, the way grown-up people do. I’m glad you approve of the choice.

I put the Knitter’s Almanac in The Box to go to Strathardle next time, when the languishing project there will be, I hope, transformed into EZ’s golf shirt.

I have knit about 1/3 of the stripey bit of the second RtB sleeve. It’s lovely yarn to work with, but this part is pretty boring. The more so because the rest is so exciting. After one reaches that dark gusset, things happen constantly. I was re-reading “Knitting Workshop” yesterday and re-discovered the Rorschach Jacket, clearly the forerunner of Round-the-Bend. The instructions are on the sketchy side. Maybe EZ sensed that there was the germ of something better there.

I was wandering around the Schoolhouse Press the other day, as I often do, hoping for news of the new EZ book (there is none) – and discovered that Lady Gainford’s kilt hose book, which I mentioned here recently, is still available, but on the “Sale” page, presumably going out of print. It is the sort of knitting book which I most admire – serious research, in this case into a small corner of knitting but one which well deserved to be recorded and preserved.

Could it be done for cricket sweaters?