I think I’ll give the Stephen West shawl one more day, to get those slip-stitch cables moving.

A mildly interesting experience yesterday. The cables are two slip-stitches wide. One such, which doesn’t move, runs up the spine of the shawl. In the recent excitement, new cables have been created on either side of it – they are about to move away.

But for one row, one has to slip all six stitches in succession. I can’t remember my thinking now, but I was firmly convinced that the pattern had it wrong. I had done it my way, and knit on for several stitches, when I had to leave the work for one of the other obligations which press in on me.

It was perhaps when I was washing up after lunch – I find that washing-up, otherwise tedious, is often productive of good thinking. And my thought this time was, this pattern is meticulously written, row-by-row, stitch-by-stitch. Perhaps I should go back and try again – maybe it was right this time, too.

And I did, and it was. So perhaps it’s just as well that my day is broken up. If I were free to sit and knit and knit, there might be many more follies.

Chilli-growing

Kristie, I am interested (and astonished) to learn that it is possible to grow chillis out-of-doors “north of 49”. But they do grow very fast, and if the plants were started under glass...

My British book, “Growing Chillis”, lists “jalapeno” as a single variety with a fairly low heat rating, 6-8000 SHU.  My American book, “The Complete Chilli Pepper Book”, lists the authors’ “five favourite” jalapenos --  two distinctly hot, two distinctly mild, one, “NuMex Jalmundo”, unspecified. And we must also remember that chillis cross-pollinate readily and that supermarket Customer Services counters, even in Waitrose, can’t be trusted implicitly.

It will be very interesting to see what my Apaches are like when they redden. The British book puts them at 60,000 SHU. The American book doesn’t seem to include them.

Non-knit

Plans are intensifying for my birthday party. I am delighted to see that “local wild venison” is one of the menu options, and have suggested adding rabbit terrine.

Part of an email from Greek Helen this morning. Wonderful!

I forgot to mention the really exciting news of yesterday which is that we stopped by the side of the road for a swim on our return from a trip to Mycenae and Epidavros to find ourselves, quite by chance, swimming over the half submerged harbour of Kechries where St. Paul landed and had his hair cut before heading off to Corinth.