Kristie (and everybody else) (comment yesterday) – for the size of the plane that gets you to Shetland, or at least, gets you about once you’re there,  have a look at Liz Lovick’s latest Northern Lace blog post. She’s one I always read, for the flavour of island life as much as for the knitting.

And there’s another interesting and odd tidbit in that post of Liz’s – a sheep which seems to have been born with the same syndrome as my grandson James, Alexander and Ketki’s son:  both are missing their right ear, and their skulls are slightly misshapen. Do animals have Downs Syndrome, then? (This syndrome isn’t Downs, of course; it has another name – I’m just thinking aloud.)

James makes regular visits to Great Ormond Street children’s hospital in London. He was there a couple of weeks ago. The Great Man showed him pictures of possible cosmetic ears which could be constructed and attached, and James said no, thanks, and that was that for now.

Being that far south, the Loch Fyne Mileses went on to Paris by Eurostar for a weekend, along with Rachel and her husband. This was in mid-Lent and Paris isn’t much fun without a sip of wine. Ketki (who is brilliant on many fronts) had the solution: start Lent early, so that there were a couple of extra days in the bank when they were needed. Rachel is the fiercest Lent-keeper of us all, but she was willing to buy that.

Very miscellaneous

 -- I learned from Zite this morning that Kate Gilbert founded, owns and runs the Twist Collective. You probably knew that all along. I knit the Clapotis once and feel I know her.

 -- The last time we had a Papal Conclave, my fishmonger told me the day before the election that he had had a dream in which they elected a Frenchman who took the name Benedict. The next time I was in the shop, I asked if he had anything for the 3:30 at Kempton, but he couldn’t oblige.

 -- I was chatting to a neighbour yesterday about the Troubles of Life, and learned that she recently installed a new aerial for her television – at a cost (£180, I think she said) which makes a cable subscription seem, if not cheap, at least reasonable. I figure that a year of Virgin Media will cost about what one of our little art-seeking trips to London used to cost (they charge you for breathing in and out, down there). And we used to do that two or three times a year.

 -- My husband went back to the Surface yesterday, and finished polishing another document. I tried to retrieve it this morning to en-cloud it, and was told I couldn’t have it because it was locked by another user. That must mean that it is still open somewhere or other in the machine. But where? I will have to return to that problem. Sometimes touching the little Word icon at the bottom of the screen produces a menu of open documents, but not today.

Knitting

I finished the back of the Relax, as hoped, and now have a comforting few days of mindless knitting up the front. I actually kept count of the number of rows in the back between underarm and shoulder-shaping.