We met our niece as we were parking yesterday – she said we would find C. reduced. And so it was – she was thinner, paler, more frail, slightly dishevelled. Her spirits have reverted to their depressive norm. Not comfortable, but not I think in pain. Is this how it will be? No Dunkirk, no morphine, getting weaker and weaker and finally more or less starving to death, like our old cat? She is trying to eat, without much success, and to sip high-calorie supplements which she says taste terrible.

I suggested wine, and she said that the pamphlets she has been given about Living With Your Stoma recommend it (full of pictures in which everybody smiles). But she won’t try because she is terrified of dhiorhea – (I can’t even spell that well enough to persuade the spell-checker to help. I was puzzled, as a child, when people said that you could use a dictionary to find out how a word was spelled. How can you look it up if you don’t know how to spell it? I could walk along the passage and copy the answer from something in the bathroom cupboard, but I think I’ll leave it.)


Knitting

Good progress yesterday – I am attaching the back of the RtB to the shoulder, and I think I’ve got it right. A 180 degree twist was all too likely. This is the point where the thing really earns its name. I was right to be suspicious of Meg’s numbers (I think) – when she says to knit back up 16 stitches from the corner, and then start the attaching, she doesn’t mean 16 stitches so much as four-inches-worth, 24 stitches in my case.

I think.

Front view:


Back view:

The DVD is not as much help as it might be on some points (including that one), brilliant on others, including the forthcoming grafting of back to sleeve – how to graft garter stitch, how to decide which colour to use when, as here, two are involved.

Both DVD and printed pattern haven’t much to say about knitting the second half mirror-image. We shall see. But it’s fun.

Shandy, thank you for saving me from the shame of commentlessness yesterday. As to projects, large and small, my salvation has been the discovery of the concept of “locational WIPs”. That goes back to my days on the Knitlist, and I don’t remember who to thank for it (“whom” is strictly called for there, but “who” sounds better). A sock on its needles by the telephone, sort-of-thing.

So now I have a sock, always, in an Edinburgh Botanical Gardens carry-bag ready for out-of-house knitting – waiting rooms, trips to London. I left it, one dreadful day, on the 159 bus in Regent Street, but it came back to me intact. And a Strathardle WIP – the idea there is boring, boring, boring, for knitting by the fire after a hard day in the field when I can scarcely stay awake. And something usually slightly more demanding, for here, as we watch our soap and the news in the evening while my husband has his tea.

The Japanese shirt will be a Strathardle project. I’m thinking about yarn. I’ve got lots and lots of Shetland jumper-weight, but not enough of anything. I think this will need a single batch of yarn. I might allow myself a look at the Posh website today.