Again, very little to report.

Here is a first pic of the Sky Scarf – and I get to award myself another percentage point today! I introduced a new refinement this morning – the sky was essentially a pale blue, another cold, fine day in the making. But translucent in the east, and with a few pink clouds in the west. What one knits every day is in fact two rows, one garter stitch bump, using two yarns together.  This time, I changed translucence for pink at the halfway point.

That dark blue at the beginning is a pre-dawn reading, made while Helen was here. She wanted me to do it at 8 a.m. every day. I am sliding towards 8:30. Presumably as the light strengthens and spring approaches, there will be more and stronger blues.

As for the sock, the gusset decreases are finished and I am Oliver’ing along.

Zite came up with a couple of knitting podcasts this morning. Both were a quarter of an hour long, “The Pauly Knits” and “Knitting Samurai”. Both were episodes in on-going series, and both started so slowly, with the presenters hard-pressed (it seemed to me) to fill up the time they had allowed themselves, that I never got to the knitting in either of them. I think I prefer prose, but I am willing to be confounded. Can anyone recommend a podcast?

Zite’s other contribution this morning was an interesting post from knittingyarn.com about vintage patterns, including a link to the Vintage Purls website where choice out-of-copyright patterns can be downloaded free.  Knittingyarn.com goes on to recommend the new second volume of “A Stitch in Time”. I am tempted.

Were people really all that much smaller 70 years ago? Or did designers just design for the Duchess of Windsor and expect everyone else to be able to adapt the patterns? Extreme slimness is very conspicuous in early Vogue Knitting Books.

Non-knit

The tax is ready to roll, I hope. I logged on to the government Gateway site yesterday, just to make sure I still could. “Tayside00” and the name of one’s cat won’t do as UserID and Password when one is dealing with the government.

The operation with the car went smoothly yesterday. The cathedral is not far away, it’s just that it’s uphill. We left 20 minutes before the off, and that was time to drive my husband up, bring the car back, and walk up myself.

Shandy, you are right that it would be sensible to call a taxi, but it goes against the grain. All our prosperity in old age is owed to the fact that we never take taxis. (Follow that link for a fascinating post from Shandy about samplers, and an account of as bizarre an accident as you are ever likely to hear of.)