My money is all right, you will be relieved to hear. I wasn’t really worried (for once – I’m good at worrying), but it is disconcerting when one’s old familiar credit card is refused especially when one knows one is nowhere near a limit. It had to be checked out.

I got the new card up and running with an automatic freephone telephone call. It is a replacement for the old one, not a supplement for it, as I eventually suspected – they might have told me. I then acquired a PIN for it with a different freephone call. I didn't have one before, and that will be useful. I was clumsier at that, and needed help. I then set it up in PayPal and Amazon One-Click. I’m ready to spend again. I bought Zadie Smith’s new “NW” for the Kindle app, just to see if I could.

This took up most of yesterday morning.

And in the evening I leapt forward with the mitered jacket. The bottom band is grafted to itself, rather successfully if I do say so. Stitches have been picked up. I have started knitting upwards, incorporating stitches from the front bands at the end of every row. I did the arithmetic involving the row gauge of st st as compared to garter st – the calculation which determines how often I have to grab two stitches from the front band instead of one.

I had kept the swatch for my husband’s v-neck vest, also madelinetosh DK, complete with a note of the needle size used for it. How’s that for efficient? So I used that for the calculating.

Today’s knitting should reveal whether I have done it right.

(The knitting is around the back of the jacket, and scarcely visible in this picture.) It was all rather difficult because the garter stitch strip seemed enormous and it wasn’t easy to keep track of which was meant to be the right side or even to be sure that one wasn’t grafting it into a moebius strip. But I think we’re all right.

I believe it will need to taper a bit – there may have to be some decreases before the underarm. Or maybe not. But I think I can knit peacefully at least for today without worrying about that.

Thinking about the future, it occurred to me yesterday that if I want one-row stripes I could knit them into a vest for myself. I am messy, and I spend a lot of time, perforce, in the kitchen. My usual winter costume is a cosy hand-knit vest under a succession of cotton sweatshirts which go happily into the wash.

So that Unspun Icelandic Overblouse, whether in st st or garter, wouldn’t entirely work for me. Unless I took it to Strathardle and just let it get dirty. A possibility.

But I could devise a one-row-stripe vest pattern, I think, without too much difficulty. I could even do it the Kirigami way, with vertical stripes knit sideways on a dp needle down to the underarm, and horizontal stripes knit circularly below. I’ll give it some thought.

Marcella, thank you for the offer of finding and translating that Bergere de France pattern for me. It’s pattern 179.46 (snappy title) from the magazine Origin’ 4. But for the moment, at least, I am laying that thought aside in favour of one-row stripes of madelinetosh sock yarn. Apart from the expense, moths absolutely love cashmere.