Continued progress on the Relax. Now that I have split the work at the underarm, the next instruction is to knit straight for 6 inches. Another two sessions should accomplish that. Then the shoulder and neck shaping starts, with pages of short rows. That means I will be able to strike them off one at a time, and sail forward. So far, I am still in the first half of the first page of the instructions.

I love these illusionary boosts.

Anonymous, I think what Kathleen Kinder meant by that remark about the “figure-hugging” tendency of a piece knit as a tube, was not a gauge change but the actual behaviour of the knitting – as contrasted to two pieces knit flat and seamed. The false seams should help. So should the fact that the Relax is so generously-sized that it can’t very well hug the figure.

To revert to sock knitting: day before yesterday eadaoine provided a long comment describing what I think is called a Turkish cast-on. It’s a very good one. I remembered as I read it, that I had done it during my sock-technique-learning phase last year. I kept notes, up to a point, and was thus able to put a name to the process. It’s worth saving the comment if you have toe-up tendencies and don’t know this one. Much, much easier than Judy’s Magic.

Religion

The New Yorker turned up yesterday. It was (absurdly) thrilling to find our own Cardinal alluded to on the cover and mentioned by name in the first Talk of the Town item. There’s glory for you! The New Yorker is a good deal kinder to him than to Mahoney.

Technical

Our lunch guest lasted all afternoon (as expected) and meant that there were no further struggles with the Surface yesterday. (I did get the skein of yarn wound while she was here, though.)

Thomas-the-Elder will be here for supper this evening, staying the night. He has come up for a friend’s birthday party tomorrow and the Scotland-Wales match. The Loch Fyne Mileses will be going to the match as well – they’ll drop in here tomorrow morning. All these tech-savvy people ought to be able to advise on the Surface. Alexander occasionally sells on eBay – he can advise specifically on that. We’ve got the original box and the little get-started leaflet. He’ll also know how to clean the hard disk – I haven’t done that since the days when an inadvertent “format c:/” would plunge you into the abyss.

Thank you for the suggestion of a Samsung, Tamar. I will remember. When our editor came to see us last week, he had a nifty little notebook, not a Samsung, with a solid detachable keyboard. Someone at Yale (the epicentre of British art) had recommended it to him. I remembered its name for a few hours, but foolishly didn’t write it down, and it’s gone now. I could ask.

Maybe I’ll live to see the Surface declared the Edsel of tablet computing.