Saturday, I took Archie to the airport. Sunday, I cooked lunch for Lizzie. You probably figured that out. All went well. Archie survived his DoE expedition – “The worst experience of my life” -- and seemed in good spirits. Lizzie is enjoying American studies at B’ham University, and will soon be given the list of possible American colleges to attend next year. My husband and I both look keenly forward to advising her on that subject.

I told Archie Aeneas’ famous line, somewhere in Book I of the Aeneid. He and his men, fleeing the sack of Troy and on their way to Italy to found Rome, have pitched up on the coast of North Africa, cold, hungry, wet and miserable. “Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit,” he says to them. “Maybe one day we will enjoy remembering even this.” Archie liked it, and wrote it down in his telephone.

And knitting is going well too. I have begun the crown shaping of the Cousteau hat, and have run out of little balls of yarn. I wound the final skein, wondering if the moths had prepared some more for me, but it turned out to be intact, so I have gone back to the jacket.

Here it is. I’m very pleased. I have just bought Ann Budd’s “Top-Down Sweaters”, a book of basic patterns with some embellishments. She starts off at the very beginning by saying, “Knit with yarn that you really like”. It’s good advice. This is a good pattern, it has been a lot of fun to work out, but it’s the madelinetosh yarn that really does it for me.

I’ve also got the fiendishly clever Nicky Epstein’s “Knitting in Circles” – haven’t started on that one yet. And I have ordered “A Legacy of Shetland Lace” from the Shetland Times, and am tempted by their book of Fair Isle patterns “reproducing the known work of Robert Williamson”. Same link.

And by the “Sock Yarn Studio” book that Queer Joe reviewed with enthusiasm yesterday. I don’t need more books, I need more time.

It will be a particular pleasure to put “Knit One, Knit All” back on the shelf having knit something from it and thus having added it to a rather small and very choice subsection of my books.

Comments and miscellany

Thanks for “fewmets” (=deer dung). That’s a good one to know. And for advice on fencing, and on hoping for some broccolini in the spring.

Lou, thanks very much for the link to the Edinburgh yarn bomber story. Somehow or other, we managed to miss that one when it was printed in the Scotsman. I would like to have had it for my Knitting Oddities file. Maybe it only appeared in the Evening News. The trams are universally abhorred by the citizens of Edinburgh.

James and his family have decided to name their new cat “Mimi”. Apparently that is Chinese for “miaow” and also a homonym for “lost” or “stray”. Am I entirely sure I know what a homonym is? I think the cat’s problem will not be learning to go outdoors when he finally gets to Sydenham, but explaining to the other cats there why he is named Mimi.