No mouse yesterday. My sister thinks the electric deterrent may have worn out. I have ordered a replacement – can't do any harm. Or maybe Sunday's mouse was hard of hearing.

Yesterday's prob was two light bulb failures, at opposite ends of the house, one in my computer room – I have been forced to move uncomfortably into the dining room; and one in the master bathroom. Both are the sort of lights that hang down from the ceiling on a string (so to speak). Both failures happened last thing at night. I may or may not be able to deal with them myself once I've had my porridge.

Knitting

As well as giving advice on mice, my sister also asks, gently, what about the Rams & Yowes blankie for her grandson Ted? Good question. I think I have formulated a Plan of Action, if strength and health permit:

I have now embarked on the 8^th repeat of the centre of the Unst Bridal Shawl. I'll carry on until I've done 10 – that's slightly over half-way, and should happen early next week.

Then I'll stop, I really will, and finish the Milano.

Then I'll go back to the Unst Bridal Shawl, finish the centre, and establish the borders.

Then I'll resume Rams & Yowes, in parallel with the shawl, just as I was working it with the Milano at the end of last year. Maybe designated days of the week for each, maybe a designated number of rows of R&Y every day before turning to lace.

I keep thinking about how to do the borders. I even had a few moments yesterday of thinking, well, why not just purl alternate rounds? But I had a look at the pattern charts – some of the alternate rounds are plain garter stitch, others involve action. Purling is one thing, working lace from behind is quite another. So that's out.

My thinking at the moment is that Fleegle's brilliant system is the future. Maybe I should have another go at it. Kate Davies' tutorial on the subject turns out to be the link I have just given you. Reading it again, I notice that Fleegle recommends marking not just the front and back of the work, but also the balls of yarn.

Zite produced this interesting article yesterday (far more intelligent than many) about knitting used as code in WW2.

Thots

We watched a program last night about the anatomy of the hand. What a wonderful thing it is! And what a wonderful thing is human evolution, to get all these systems going at once so that we could take over the planet. It's no use evolving to be intelligent enough to speak Mandarin or Swahili, if you haven't got the tongue and jaw structure to do it. And it's no use having big ideas for shawl knitting or building the Taj Mahal, if you haven't got the right sort of hand. Our fingers are shorter than an ape's, and our thumbs longer, and it makes all the difference.

My view of Intelligent Design, for what it's worth, is that Hashem set it all going very much like a snooker player gently tapping that ball that hits the next ball that eventually results in everything else.