I did pretty well with Life, yesterday, except for not sending off the driving license application. That will have to be top of the list today.

Knitting

I lack but five rounds before the ribbing, so two more sessions should see this job finished. Here are the socks, a bit blurry, and I’m pretty pleased with them.

Thanks for the suggestion about using a contrast yarn for the ribbing of Alexander’s socks, Roobeedoo. His socks are to be Van Gogh’s famous Bedroom at Arles. Ketki’s were the much less famous Restaurant de la Sirene. I had planned to use her leftovers to finish off his socks, the colour ranges being not dissimilar. I’ll get the leftovers out and look at them with the new yarn – if you can’t hide it, make a feature of it.

If you follow the link to Roobeedoo’s blog (well worth doing), you will find a link to the Sock Report, news to me and so wonderful that I have put the link here as well. A Twist Collective for socks.

I did bake the moth-y madelinetosh yarn last night, successfully at least inasmuch as it doesn’t look or smell scorched. I’ll put it away today in one of the ziplock bags my husband keeps for his sweaters. Moths seem particularly fond of him, as well – I agree – as having a sense of which yarn is expensive and beloved. He wears the green madelinetosh I recently knit him pretty well daily. When he lays it aside, it will be as well to wash it and put it away very promptly.

Vegetable-growing

Thank you for the vegetable-growing comments, Mary Lou. It is indeed worth remembering that nature – and the weather – are capricious. I have looked carefully at the soil requirements for the “easy’s” which defeat me (onions, beets, kale), and see that all need lime, whereas the “easy’s” that I can grow, don’t. I think I had better pay a lot more attention to alkalinity.

I spent a jolly half-hour just now trying to find some skirret seed. It sounds just my sort of thing. I think I have finally succeeded in ordering some from Germany.

Life

I got on well with the dining room problem yesterday. It has been obvious for some time that it is far easier to deal with the firms which actually do things than with the ones where people push paper around. I count eight separate organisations in this game so far, starting with our insurance broker. No wonder insurance is so expensive.

At any rate, both the putting-up of scaffolding and the knocking-down of ceiling will happen on the same day next week, namely Wednesday (freeing us to go to Strathardle on Monday, I hope). The knockers-down will come in first and put down protection on the floor from front door to dining room, before the scaffolders move in. Alexander will be here to make them tea and to seal off the rooms at the far end of the house which neither he nor they will need access to.