All went well yesterday, except that France beat Scotland.  My husband likes his Toshiba laptop, and worked steadily on it without constantly calling for help. The Surface has served us well, in a sense. Instead of complaining about the extravagances of the modern computer as compared to his good old DOS-based system, my husband was glad to have solid ground under his feet. And I had picked up enough about Windows 8 to broaden the cursor and dim the screen without fuss.

I’ve also learned (not difficult) how to search his entire oeuvre, over several folders. I'm pretty sure that can be done in DOS as well, but I don't know how.

Knitting (remember that?)

I’m now within a couple of rows of the shoulder and neck shaping of the Relax – real progress, if ripping doesn’t prove necessary. And a good thing, too, because a skein of Beyond the Whirled Pakokku arrived yesterday, colorway Just Figs, the gift of one of you – I set out trying to buy it from her stash, as advertised on Ravelry.

I’ll take the current sock along when we go to Loch Fyne for Easter. I’m doing the leg of sock-number-one, on that one. (And I love Mary Lou’s solution to the problem of Second-Sock Syndrome, not that I’ve ever suffered from it. I wish I had done the current pair that way.)

One way or another, either when I finish those socks or when I finish the Relax, the Pakokku should feature in my near future. I’d attempt a photograph right now, except that time is tight on Sunday mornings.

I mentioned the ebook of “What Would Mme Defarge Knit?” the other day. Does anybody know how to get it from an email attachment in PDF-form into my iPad book library? One of the very interesting things about it (I hope I haven’t said this already) is that it is illustrated throughout with line drawings, not photographs.

I was startled, at first. The introduction remarks, rightly, that you can see all the photographs you want of the various designs by looking in Ravelry. The drawings are very expressive. It is often the case in horticultural tomes that a drawing gives a more accurate impression of a plant than a photograph can. Does the same apply to knitting?

I didn’t get to the Wool Festival yesterday. I was needed here to supervise the first steps with the new Toshiba, and I didn’t feel up to seizing the day by the scruff of the neck, anyway. We eat at odd hours – the only way for me to go anywhere more ambitious than the St James Centre is to organise a sandwich lunch for my husband. That doesn’t sound like much, but sometimes, as yesterday, it is more than I can face.

I look forward to hearing about the Festival.