Another follower!

Medical

I had a nice time with my young dr yesterday. I got there terribly early, due to anxiety about parking – and left the building shortly before my own appt time. Someone must have failed to show. So, not much sock-knitting.

My bloods are fine, as I expected. No diabetes, no anaemia, etc. I thot that would leave him with no alternative but to refer me forward for uncomfortable hospital tests, but no, he has thought of something. I take a weekly osteoporosis pill – my only medication; and nausea is a very common (10%) side effect. I have been taking it for years and thought I was out of side-effect territory, but he says it can be cumulative. So I am to stop taking it and he has prescribed a month's course of a “proton pump inhibitor” which reduces stomach acid and is used, among other things, to treat stomach ulcers.

 I am feeling cheerful. The osteoporosis-pill routine is that you have to take it first thing in the morning and then it's nil-by-mouth for half-an-hour BUT you are not allowed to dive back into bed. You must remain upright. So I am delighted to be relieved of that beginning to my Wednesdays. And hope is inspiriting, too. I don't feel any better this morning, but I wouldn't expect signs of that for at least a fortnight.

Calcutta Cup

The newspapers, yesterday, at least some of them, said that Scotland didn't deserve to stay in the Six Nations tournament, since we don't have a team fit to play or a pitch fit to play on. We're “Italy without the excuses,” according to the Telegraph (which also complained about the tawdry pre-match entertainment). What would happen to the Calcutta Cup if they threw us out? It can only be contested in a rugby match between Scotland and England. They'd have to retire it to Twickenham.

Knitting

I am within a row or two of finishing the third (of 19) pattern repeats for the centre of the Unst Bridal Shawl, and I am repenting of my promise to stop. I need the Milano for a specific date in March. I'm about halfway down the first sleeve – they're short, since the shoulder hangs down so far. I would think another week would suffice to polish it off – so if I allow it a fortnight, I can safely go on with the shawl for now, until sometime near the end of this month.

It's something about the way each row of lace builds on the last that keeps one knitting on as if turning the pages. I've achieved only about 3” of the centre (much more, of course, when blocked) but that doesn't matter compared to the exhilaration of stacking row 17 carefully on top of row 16.

Looking at the picture of the finished thing just now, I realise how much knitting there will be in the borders, when the centre is finished. Like the centre of the Princess, which lures one in with easy, short rows at the point of the triangle and then stretches out to the end of time. That's OK, I think, in this case. I've allowed the borders 48% in my calculations for the sidebar – that may be about right.

Reading

I'm enjoying Persuasion. That was a good tip.

Mary Lou, do you remember where and what was the spooky New Yorker story you read recently? I like spooky. Stephen King had two (at least) stories in the New Yorker, quite a while ago now. I gave the issues away to a neighbour – clearly, many of us do that; James, in Beijing, passes his on to the Financial Times. And then regretted not having them, and sought for years, and found them in the collection “Everything's Eventual”. They are called “The Man in the Black Suit” and “That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French”. I think perhaps New Yorker editing is good for Stephen King, not that he's not pretty good on his own.