Oh, Shandy, yes: The Elk in the Woods it is. I agree about the wallpaper, and I wonder if one is encouraged to slip a couple of those elk-headed table knives into one’s knitting bag? Probably not. I read within the last few days that Jamie Oliver loses something on the order of 30,000 napkins a month from his new Edinburgh restaurant. Fancy his even serving that many people! The E in the W must lose quite a few knives, but we’ll be good.

I like the fact that the menu has a section – as delicious-sounding as the others – called “Smalls”. I find I can’t finish a huge plateful these days when I’m het up. Should we actually book?

The cardigan I was thinking of in Madeline Weston’s Traditional Sweater Book is the “Eyelet Cardy” in the Shetland lace section – page 120 of the (hem hem) first edition. It was designed by Margaret Stuart, I notice in the small print, so it may actually come from Shetland. It is worn by the (pencil-thin) model as I imagine it, comfortably loose even when buttoned.

It was from that book, for the record, that I first knit a shawl – the hap shawl, not so named, on page 128. I notice that that, too, comes from Margaret Stuart.

I finished off those loose ends yesterday and hope to get the mitered jacket blocked today. I then returned to the Cousteau hat and am within a few rounds of finishing that. The ends will take a moment or two, on that one, because it is knit of the oddballs the moths left behind.

That will leave me with a skein and a yard or two more. The beanie on the cover of “Weekend Hats”?

But the immediate next-project will be that little scarf done in sock yarn. I thought it was called “Windmill” but it clearly isn’t. That’s OK; I’ve downloaded and printed the pattern, and can tell you tomorrow what it’s called.

I’ve had an email from Jimmy Bean, wondering whether the 9 skeins of madelinetosh sport-weight “Firewood” they have in stock are too divergent – would I rather wait for the next shipment? No, I wouldn’t, but it was nice of them to ask.

Non-knit

Here’s the famous postcard. The kind seller sent it special delivery, which wasn’t in the contract, because it had cost me so much. That was kind of him.

It was posted in 1927. We always greatly prefer postcards which have been used.

I still need to do some figger’ing about exactly where we are. We are clearly looking across the river to the school (that two-storey grey building) and, above and behind it, the Menzies’ house, and behind that the spire of the Free Church which was abandoned before we got to Kirkmichael 50 years ago. It’s still there, physically.

But everything in the foreground of the picture, except the white house where Mrs Blair lives, is gone. What puzzles me slightly is the level – Mrs Blair is well below Main Street. You look down on her house and garden as you cross the bridge towards the school (and towards us). The bridge must be just out of sight to the left of this scene.