Archie is in Athens. Helen phoned from there last night to say he was in rare form, enthusiastic about going to Merchiston – why not name it? – in a way she hasn’t seen him enthusiastic about anything for a long time. This is wonderful news.

Today’s event will be delivering my husband to the National Gallery for lunch with the Director and a curator friend. He will hand over that picture we bought some months ago, an adolescent work, a portrait of his brother, by ????? ??????. The idea being that the Gallery might be interested to have it as a document, since the artist in question was one of Scotland’s greatest, in his maturity.

The Acquisitions Committee has to OK acceptance. Today's handover is to let the Director see it before the committee meets.

So last night we packaged it up. My husband is fussy to the last degree about the physical welfare of works of art. It is now ready for a rough sea crossing. And today I must figure out how to drive from Drummond Place to the National Gallery. A week ago – when Helen and I took Archie to Merchiston – one drove across Waverley Bridge, up to the top of the Mound, and then down to the Gallery, if required.

Yesterday there were electric signs all over Edinburgh saying there was no access to Waverley Bridge. The Mound is open to busses and taxis only. Websites are not helpful, at least with my limited understanding. The simple answer would be to send him off by taxi, if he’d let me.

We have had the picture on a table in our bedroom all these weeks. It grows on one. We’ll miss it.

Knitting

Picture-wrapping consumed the evening, and little was achieved knitting-wise. The two halves of the front of the v-neck vest are getting farther apart as I progress (as they should) and last night the feared disaster struck – I finished a row on one side, and found that the yarn on the other was not where I expected to find it, but at the far end.

I panicked, I think. Quiet, calm deliberation was needed at that point, but what followed was a little frenzy of frogging and re-inserting the needle from the wrong direction. I think I’m back on track. It is easy to see the decreases, they are even, and I have the same number of stitches on each side. Must be all right.

Thank you for the reinforcement about the three-for-four ratio for the nexk ribbing (three stitches picked up for every four rows). I didn’t consult the Zimmermanns on this point, not entirely trusting EZ. I’m glad to learn that that’s the way Meg does it.

The reason I didn’t entirely trust her was that when I first knit the Seamless Hybrid Sweater from KWT – I  regard it as unspeakably beautiful – I followed instructions as written, and the saddle shoulder puffed up in a most unattractive way. EZ says to join shoulder to body at the end of every row. It doesn’t work. You’ve got to allow for the difference between row gauge and stitch gauge in st st.