The sweater moves forward. I’m pretty sure, by now, that the change of direction of the decrease lines, when I grasped that I was decreasing too fast, won’t hurt. It’ll be a feature, in fact. The lines start off for the first inch and a half going inland at a brisk rate, and then turn north, but it looks OK. I was greatly comforted, Mary Lou and Ron, to learn that you both make that kind of mistake. 

I re-measured and re-calculated yesterday, like the prissy lady in a GPS, and all continues to seem well. As long as the total length I am aiming at, is an appropriate one.

Hat, it’s a kind thought, but I couldn’t lay the Gardening Sweater aside. Nothing is more fun or more soothing than going round and round a yoke, even if the result is fit for no purpose.

Non-knit

Life intervened yesterday morning with my grand plans for the Income Tax, and it did so in rather a stressful fashion, so that by the time a clear half-hour presented itself before lunch I emphatically didn’t feel like approaching the task. Instead, I renewed our New Yorker subscriptions. That proved a very satisfactory expedient. It was a job that was high on the January to-do list, although not quite as high as tax.

But if Knitlass hasn’t done her tax yet, there must be plenty of time.

I give the New Yorker to all four of our children. Three or four years ago, the annual renewal letter failed to turn up. There was some sort of semi-postal-strike in December that year and a few things went missing. I had the letter from the previous year, with everybody’s account number and address label. I logged on to the New Yorker website as each of them in turn, assigned a password to each, and renewed that way.

It’s tedious, but it works, and now I have selected the renew-automatically-and-debit-my-card option on behalf of each of them. That will simplify things in future years but this year I had to go through the whole rigmarole anyway because my credit card number had changed. 

So that’s done.

This morning I must go up to the centre of town, and fear I will be too tired after lunch for much tax-doing. All the hard work, however, is finished: collecting up interest payments and unit trusts and Gift Aid payments and things, entering figures on spreadsheets, printing the spreadsheets and clipping them to the supporting evidence. The tax man wants only the totals, these days, but I always do it conscientiously in case he suddenly swoops.

All that remains is to put the single-payments in order (pensions state & professional, “wayleave” from the Hydro-Board for maintaining electricity pylons on our land; I love that one). And take a deep breath and log on.