My husband was shaken by his low-blood-sugar experience Saturday night, but is otherwise OK.

All went according to plan yesterday, knitting-wise. The Italian socks are finished. They are made from Candace Strick's book, "Strick-ly Socks". Those clumsy-looking heels are the basic ones, precisely identical to the toes. Candace goes on to offer pages of adaptations, including gussets and things. 

And the next ones have been cast-on:

I think I can say I have mastered Judy’s Magic Cast-On. The break-through moment, for me, lay in the instruction in my “Cast On, Bind Off” book to wrap the yarns around the needles “as if for a yarn-over”. I think what I was doing wrong was grabbing at the yarns with the needles, as I concentrated on top-yarn-bottom-needle and vice versa, in a way that wound them in the wrong direction.

Whatever, I’ve got it now.

I had some trouble as I started the actual knitting, including, on one attempt, the dread purl bumps. The answer to that one seems to be EZ’s maxim, look at your knitting. Those few little stitches, clinging valiantly to their needles, must be regarded as an incipient toe, to be knit around from the outside (not back and forth).

I also had trouble with a loose stitch at the far end of the circuit, so to speak – at the point where the casting-on had begun. Maybe I should start with a slip knot instead of just laying the yarn over the needles?

It is going to be hard to abandon the new socks, now that the agony is over. That’s a truly wonderful olive-green Crazy Zauberball you see above. But I mean to stick to the plan. The mitered cardigan begins with a provisional cast-on. I intend to use the one I regard as gold standard, that cat’s cradle affair. Surely it has a mystic affinity with Judy’s Magic Cast-On and I expect it to be easy, today.

Maybe.

Democratic National Convention

My nephew Theo is in charge of practical arrangements for the Convention, as you may know. When his parents, my sister and her husband, went to see him in February, he showed them the Convention Hall with its huge television screen.

All three of them are fans of the Strathardle Highland Gathering, and Theo’s father, in particular, is an expert at the Pillow Fight. None of us entered this year – it is a fairly savage affair. You sit on a log, suspended just high enough that your feet don't touch the ground, with one hand behind your back, and swing a heavy sack at the other player until one of you falls off. Roger’s secret is to let the other man swing first, and then clobber him while he is off balance.

In the upper left-hand panel of the big screen, you can see Roger in action, under the word TONIGHT!. What you can’t see, although I am assured it was there, is the banner reading “Coming Tomorrow: Tilt-the-Bucket”. Remember that, as you watch this week.