I was re-connected with my funds at about mid-day yesterday. The experience was rather like those dreadful moments when one’s ISP goes down and the whole world is suddenly denied one. I don’t need, or want, or deserve a suede shirt – the link to the shirt is in yesterday’s post, and for the sentiment, see this old friend – but I do need to know that my credit card is on my side if the mad impulse should strike.

Anonymous, I am much attracted by your theory that it was geographical spread which alerted the silly machine to my credit activity – both Jimmy Bean and the Shetland Times were paid directly, not through the decent obscurity of Paypal.

So I’ve now got two Paretsky’s on the iPad and “Risk” by C.K. Stead, which I’m actually reading. Hat, at the risk of sounding like an embedded ad, could you treat yourself to a Kindle? One of the many plusses is that you can change type size ad lib. My eyes are of eagle sharpness since my cataract operations, but I switch to big type when I’m knitting-and-reading: makes it easier to keep my place.

I wonder if I actually heard Paretsky speak at an Edinburgh Book Festival once? I went with Cathy, then as yet unpublished. She wanted to hear female thriller-writers, and soon thereafter became one herself. As we settled into our seats I idly read the program and discovered with a thrill of something like horror that Thomas Lynch was speaking at that very moment somewhere nearby.

Nothing to be done, but afterwards I found him (sitting alone, as I remember), and bought a book I already had, and took it to him to sign, and said I was a t’riffic fan and hadn’t known he was here and went to the wrong talk. He signed the book, “Well met in Edinburgh”. Maybe he did that for everyone, but I like to think it was a response to my girlish babble.

He is an essayist, poet, and undertaker. He lives in Michigan.

On the subject of female thriller-writers, watch out for Clare Donoghue, but not for a while yet. Granddaughter Hellie works for a London literary agent, and has just sold her first book (first sale for Hellie, first book for CD). It seems to have generated some excitement, publishers competing. But CD won’t see the light of day until early in 2014. Maybe I’ll see Hellie when I go to London next month and can learn the back story.

I’ve now got my rail tickets to London and my new Senior Rail Card. It's sort of fun to think that Franklin over there in Chicago must be beginning to think about his own arrangements for his trip to London.

Still, we’re here to talk about knitting.

Here’s the mitered jacket, being blocked. I must now try it on and see how it hangs and think about that i-cord edging and buttonholes. The baby jacket in Franklin’s long-awaited blog post is finished so simply and elegantly with i-cord loops for buttonholes... It's the details that count.

Here’s the Cousteau hat, with loose ends still not secured. In wear, it doesn’t stand up in a peak like that. At least, not on a head as big as mine.

And here’s the Wingspan, looking rather well.