Breaking news

Jenni and Theo’s son Theodore was born yesterday. 

It was a long, hard labour ending with a Caesarian, but all are well.  He shares Archie’s birthday – Archie was 17 yesterday. It’s rather an appropriate birthday to share – Archie, too, was born the year after an infant brother who died. And Archie, too, was born by Caesarian – in his case, because he was discovered at the very last moment to be upside down.

This new Theodore is to be called Ted as was my father, his great-grandfather.  Now I’ll have to sew buttons on that BSJ and get up to the post office.

So today Helen and her sons will head back to Athens, much missed. Mungo liked Glenalmond better than Fettes, an unexpected result. It ranks lower in league tables but that isn’t necessarily significant. He will be entering the sixth form: he wants to do an Ancient Greek A-Level, and to start Latin of which he doesn’t know a word. They seem happy to oblige. We shall see.

Knitting

Mary Lou, I think it’s pretty well essential to have someone else help you with measurements when you start on CustomFit. Some of them are easy enough to do for oneself, like the (hem, hem) inter-nipple distance. Others near impossible. I hope this scheme is a huge success and that eventually she’ll include men. I have a bad track record, fitting men.

(And on the other matter your comment touches on: I had to look up Simon Serrailler yesterday to check on how to spell him, and thus discovered that there will be a new book about him in September, 2014. Will I live that long?)

Knitting moved peacefully forward yesterday. I’ve made a good start on the centre chart of Rams & Yowes. I’ll show you, as soon as the pattern begins to resolve itself. The initial roll has finally given up. It stays put, and I make visible progress beyond its reach. I’m knitting more Rs&Ys than Milano these days, but both are still happening.

The fiddly Christmas knitting I have in mind is on pages 112ff of “Knit Your Own Britain”. I can safely assume that the intended recipient doesn’t have a copy. Tomorrow is November. Maybe I’d better start knitting little pieces of it from time to time.

It isn’t just knitting, either: Christmas is encroaching more and more on the year, like that roll at the beginning of Rams & Yowes. My husband’s birthday is just after the middle of November. When I was young, I used to regard that as the signal to get started on Christmas – and often didn’t do it. Now, everything seems to be in full swing in October. There was even a pull-out Christmas present supplement in the Scotsman yesterday (with some rather good ideas).