Twelve rows to go. But today’s excitement is that I am going for a walk with our niece, so there will be no opportunity to nip in and knock off a row or two between domestic chores. Indeed, since she is the Intended Recipient, I’ll have to bundle the whole operation out of sight before she comes – we’re starting from here and planning to walk along the water of Leith to the Galleries of Modern Art where we will have something nice to eat and perhaps cruise the gift shop before walking back.

Our route from here to the nearest Water-of-Leith access point takes us past the little post office to which my Package should have been delivered by now. We’ll stop by and see if it’s there. If it is, I doubt if I will be able to resist carrying it about all day. The Post Office will be shut when we get back in the afternoon. The premises are also a shop, and they’re nice people – maybe they could put it under the counter for me. More likely, I won’t be able to part with it.

On sober reflection, I think a swatch is the way to go. I did one for the Grandson Sweater, I seem to remember, and it’s one of my more successful recent efforts.

The trouble with a sleeve, if knit bottom-up, is that the ribbing pulls the work in and you’d have to knit quite a lot of sleeve before getting an accurate reading on the gauge. The same trouble applies to a “swatch cap” – so you have to cast on a circle and knit for a while without ribbing. It could be turned into a cap eventually, by picking up stitches and knitting the ribbing downwards. But you can’t do that right away, because the swatch might need to be ripped to supply yarn for the end of the sweater. I don’t know what happened in the end to the Grandson circlet. I suppose it must be in the stash cupboard somewhere.

(Round-and-round gauge is slightly different from back-and-forth – hence these stratagems.)

It would be interesting to discuss these problems with Meg. I do envy your great good fortune in having been to Knit Camp, stash haus.

Maybe she knows her yarns well enough that gauge can be largely assumed. That’s how peasant knitters must have operated – you spend your life knitting Fair Isle or Aran, you get to know your gauge and can indulge in flights of design without anxiety.

Contract knitting

“Inverallan” – see yesterday – is still in business, but only just. According to a supplier of their sweaters, The Mandon Store, location unknown, prose uncorrected:

”Inverallan is one of the last remaining few original hand knit companies left in the Aran district of Scotland. originally set up by a consortium of Fisherman's wives who made purely for there husbands. the brand has continued in its cottage industry fashion, hence the knitters signature on each garment. the company has however called it a day so this may be the last chance to ever own an piece of history.”

The sweaters retail for £200, so the knitter gets 10% if things haven’t changed since 2003. I have a couple more observations to make on the subject, but right now I’d better get on with sourcing some sandwiches for my husband’s lunch.