Stalking isn’t getting me much of anywhere. Franklin posted four hours ago to say that the winter issue of the Twist Collective has gone live. Four hours ago would be 3:30 a.m. in Britain. More likely, it was evening in Chicago. It’s time he got moving. Catmum, I think it indeed quite likely that he’ll be signed up for one of those deals where you fly one way and sail the other. By now, we’ll have to hope that the airborne element is the eastward journey.

He said that the Twist Collective has an article by him on ripping.

Yesterday, an old friend and colleague from our Birmingham days came to call. It was wonderful to see him, and good for my husband to be able, as so rarely, to talk about things I don’t understand. He’s never been clubbable. It’s his own fault.

While our friend was here, I knit somewhat onward on the brioche scarf. At some point, either then or later, I dropped a stitch. Brioche stitch is next best thing to irretrievable. One can neither frog nor rip without the danger of making things a whole lot worse. I fiddled about a bit, and decided that it would pass the Galloping Horse test, especially if there are no similar flaws in a final seven feet. But I was cross at myself.

I’ve flipped through the rest of the Twist Collective, and I don’t think there’s anything there for me, although I’ll look again. A remarkably high percentage of the sweaters are cardigans, and the ones that aren’t, are close-fitting and bulgy. Not what I want, just now.

I downloaded movies into the iPad without difficulty yesterday – “Slumdog Millionaire” and Truffaut’s “Day for Night”, an old friend. (And  I put the earphones into my knitting bag.) I can’t even peek, because the films are rented and will swiftly and silently vanish away 48 hours after I start watching (or in a month, if I never watch them). An ideal arrangement.

I don’t anticipate any difficulty, but if it happens, I’ve still got the iPad with some good reading on it and the ability to whistle more down from the ether. I continue to enjoy Susan Hill’s Simon Serailler – she seems to have written seven books about him; I’m nearly finished with the second. Plenty ahead.

Today’s Targeted Event is to wash my hair. There are lots of little, unrecorded jobs piling up: to wrap my husband’s birthday present, for instance. Write in his card. The food from Cook is scheduled to arrive this morning and there probably won’t be room for it in the freezer.

I am planning to make my husband a summer pudding for his birthday. Today I will take the red currants out of the freezer (that will help). I can’t even remember whether they have been picked over – berries removed from the little soft twigs to which they cling when plucked from the bush. If that hasn’t been done, it will take time. Otherwise, summer-pudding-making is simplicity itself. I am awfully afraid that the bread I have been carefully stale-ing for the last two days, will be too stale.