All fairly well on the knitting front.

I spread the jacket out yesterday morning – a time of day when the synapses are firing, as far as they ever do. The problem was, too few stitches. If I had gone for the overlap, there would have been a few more. The part I was knitting had to be grafted, ridge by ridge, to the garter stitch above – that determined the ultimate number of stitches which had to be there.

In the end, the only thing to do was to cut back a bit on the underarm decreases. That was (and remains) worrying, tightness of upper sleeve being distinctly undesirable.  But otherwise it went well. Grafting st st to the edge of garter stitch going at right angles to the direction of knitting, proves to be a doddle. Slip a needle through the edge of the garter stitch, bump by bump, and graft as if you had st st on both needles. I am pleased with the result.

One day soon I must master the technique of drawing a circle around the part of the picture to which I want to draw attention.

I’m now finishing off the back – I may or may not get it done today. In that case, there will be 84 stitches to graft. I’m not complaining – I love grafting. But it’s slow work. Here's where we are so far:

(Never mind the colour -- consider the overall effect.) Next come the sleeves, which again involve instructions I don’t understand. Pick up stitches, make a cap at the top with short rows and wrapping. (I don’t mind short rows, but I don’t like wrapping.) Knit the sleeve down – something about knitting 2 tog every so often which I don’t entirely grasp. Finish with a garter st border.

Solvitur ambulando.

(In looking up that phrase to make sure I was using it appropriately, I found this, which brought tears to the old eyes.)

My scam

(If you're starting here, you need to read my blog entries for the last two days.) I emailed the bank yesterday. I got back a prompt, automated response which assumed I was reporting an email. It included a number to phone if I felt I had compromised my security. But that wasn’t the case – worrier that I am, I still can’t imagine that I have done myself any harm by pressing 9. So I didn't phone.

The message also said that my email would be read (eventually) and investigated. I’ll leave it there. An interesting experience.

I can’t find, this morning, the message or comment from one of you about the Money Box Live BBC programme on automated calls from banks. I went to the BBC website in search of it. I meant to listen, but I found a long written account – a quicker way to assimilate information.

The scams they talked about all involved the telephone-ee being asked to provide security details. The truly fiendish cleverness of mine was that it didn’t ask me for anything (except to press 9). And then provided a telephone number I could ring if I was worried.