Another three followers! What's going on? Welcome, welcome!

The only way to get more knitting done, I decided, is to do more knitting. I got in three rounds of Rams&Yowes yesterday, slipping them in during the day so that evening-knitting-time was still reserved for Milano/Relax3. On that one, there are about 9cm to go before the underarm increases.

I cast on for a pure Milano, of course, and have six fewer stitches than if I’d aimed for Relax3 from the start. It doesn’t really matter among so many, I don’t think, but it might be a good idea to measure gauge today and then increase or decrease surreptitiously until I have the precise number for one of the Relax sizes. It’ll make that short-row shoulder shaping a lot easier if I know what I'm doing.

At least I’m not at Rhinebeck this weekend, where I’d be sure to buy a whole lot more yarn. Maybe I could order that Carol Sunday scarf (see yesterday) and think of it as my at-least-I-wasn’t-at-Rhinebeck purchase.

Non-knit

My sister has reached DC safely. All is well.

The New Yorker came yesterday, with a new story by Alice Munro. I’m sure it would be there whatever had happened, but also sure they timed it in the hopes of being able to say (as they do) in the little notes about contributors, Alice Munro just won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I “met” her first in the New Yorker, as also William Trevor and Jhumpa Lahiri (shortlisted for the Booker this year). And there have been an awful lot of others, through the years: Updike; Hersey’s “Hiroshima” and Carson’s “The Silent Spring”. “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and Capote’s “In Cold Blood”. Shirley Jackson’s very remarkable story, The Lottery. Two brilliant stories by Stephen King, of all people.

That’s not meant to be a comprehensive list for the New Yorker, just a partial list of things I vividly remember reading in its pages.

Munro has published 57 stories there, it says. A real New Yorker author, then. A well-deserved prize, for both.

New topic: my husband is a member of the London Library. The annual subscription is distinctly expensive -- £460 per year, about to be raised to £475. Now that we don’t go to London, we don’t get much for our money. He used to spend frequent scholarly afternoons there.

It’s a very good cause, and we have looked on the payment as a charitable donation. And my husband still enjoys and uses on-line access to the Dictionary of National Biography, provided by the Library. But yesterday we decided to pack it in, and take out a life membership.

That’s going to cost us £1100. It would cost my sister £2300. It would cost Rachel £10,200 and each of her sib, £12,300. (Rachel has recently passed what is clearly regarded as an actuarial milestone.) As for the grandchildren, forgeddaboutit. It is really rather disconcerting to face up to the implications of the fact that the London Library actuaries rate us so cheaply.