I’ve started row 18 of the Mourning Shawl border – slightly more difficult than its predecessors. The great fun of border knitting is that every row is different but proceeds so naturally from the one before that chart-peering is largely eliminated. This was true even of the vastly intricate border of the Princess.

I’m getting on a bit faster than I anticipated, even without the bonus of stitches reduced at the corners. That doesn’t happen until row 39 – and even then, only 10 stitches per side disappear whereas the standard system – one stitch each end of each border every other row – would have got through twice that number by that time.

But I can’t count on continuing at this pace, what with the most delicious months of the year beckoning us to Strathardle. And this isn’t a project to take along – not at all the thing for grubby, rough hands to attempt after a day in the fields.

I will not worry about the calendar. At least, not too much.

Non-knit

Enid, thank you for the crib to the royal wedding video (comment yesterday). I’ve watched it again, and it all seems perfectly obvious now that you’ve explained it. I think I was confused by that scene just before the bride appears, when the minor royals reassemble and I felt that they couldn’t all be Beatrice and Eugenie. The Camilla lookalike is so good it’s hard to believe it’s not her. I didn’t recognise Princess Anne, on the other hand – I’m a great fan of hers.

And I’ve watched Jill and Kevin. A real wedding, I gather. It’s delightful.

27 Wives

Meg, thank you for your expression of interest. I finished scanning the second wife yesterday. My plan is to start publishing right away – I’ve now got two wives, and my mother’s substantial introduction. I figure I can re-edit the early chapters as life unfolds if I feel the need, as well as adding more. Doing it that way should be a valuable incentive to me to keep going.

So we’ll see what Alexander advises at the weekend. And I’ll have to write a brief introduction of my own.

My current printer will let me scan a set of pages into a single document, which speeds things along. (Maybe the old one did that too, but if so I never grasped the fact.) Every so often, a page comes out as complete gibberish, without a single recognisable word. Attempts to re-scan just that one produce the same result. This has happened twice. In both cases, the page in question was a nice clean one, not full of writings-in and crossings-out. Baffling. I gave up and typed them in.

Blogger

Page breaks continue to disappear when I post. I’m getting used to calling the text back and re-inserting them, but I find this baffling too.