All our worries have melted away. The Socklady is fine. Madelinetosh and Jimmy Bean are probably both continuing to do good business. And I had an email from our niece in Strathardle yesterday to say that the sun is shining, birds are singing, the house is fine, snow is lying but the driveway is navigable.

I am very grateful to her for forming the advance party.

As for Queer Joe’s wonderful yarn, I had pretty well been forced to something like the conclusion you present, Skeindalous – that it was, somehow or other, a one-off, not on general sale. I hope he knits it soon so that we can at least luxuriate in its progress.

So I am going back and forth through the madelinetosh website trying to choose a shade – but I am beginning to wonder, can I really order it from there? The “shop”  seems to confine itself to a limited selection of heavyish worsteds. Google has found me a place called EatSleepKnit which seems to have a good range, with a fair amount of it actually in stock. Has anybody dealt with them? I’m sorry about Jimmy Bean’s currently empty shelves. I enjoy buying from them.

The shade “lichen” is the front-runner at the moment.

Here are yesterday’s achievements, in one omnium-gatherum picture. I should reach the heel of the current sock today.

Sock-knitting

You’re still looking for the perfect pattern, Tamar. I was pretty satisfied with the basic one – I bought some instructions from Patternworks for $1 in 1996, when I had just discovered the joys of the internet and had decided to take up sock knitting again, after a long lapse, for our journey to CT for my mother’s 90^th birthday.

In those days I was terrified of flying. Sock-knitting wrought a marvellous transformation.

For years I went on with that pattern, and eventually internalised it. Top-down, heel flap, turn heel, pick up stitches along edges of flap for gussets. I can do all that, now, for any size, and also Kitchener the toe, without looking at any writing. The only thing wrong with the result is the tendency of those little holes to appear at the corners of the gussets.

Well, and the fact that my husband now finds the turn of the heel too abrupt, hard to pull on.

Then last year I had that big sock-session and learned a certain amount. The Strong-Fleegle heel may remain in my repertoire. It makes a less sharp turn, and the little holes are obviated.

It would take a long time to learn to do toe-up, Strong-Fleegle, stretchy-bind-off without consulting a book, and I doubt if it’s worth it for me. But I can see the point of toe-up to get the last inch of value out of a treasured yarn.