Knitting

All goes smoothly forward with the borders of the Unst Bridal shawl, more or less. Stitch numbers are pretty consistently right (one counts all the time, with lace, even in the few plain-vanilla garter stitch rounds). The k3tog's are perfectly manageable – or maybe I'm getting better at them.There are few escapees. This newish J&S yarn is particularly good on that front – some fine yarns are absolutely determined to make a getaway, given the slightest chance. Sharon Miller warns that you need point protectors every time you put the work down. I'm not having any such difficulty.

I've embarked on round 67, only one short of the faux halfway point which is round 68. There are 136 rounds in all, but the halfway point about-to-be-achieved is faux because the next 68 rounds will add 272 stitches to those expanding corners.

I shall celebrate anyway, quietly.

What I must do today is absent myself from felicity a while to finish off repairing the top of my sister's Amedro shawl, as I meant to do when we were at Loch Fyne. She is going to be in London tomorrow. I need to dispatch the shawl to Rachel before she leaves. But I can't bear to do it until I've finished round 68.

Zite is a bit disconcerting this morning. Knitspot is having January. Just Be Crafty claims that St Patrick's Day is just around the corner. Naturalsuburbia.com finds that “autumn is definitely here” (well, she could be in the antipodes – that's not a blog I know). But Berroco comes right out and says “September is here – the school buses are back”. All four were posted yesterday, or more recently. What's going on?

Non-knit

Today's excitement here is my long-awaited NHS cardiology appt. By now, I don't know whether I'm ill or not. I'm a lot better than I was, certainly. My main anxiety is that I will find myself talking to the Great Man whom I paid to see a month ago – he is a consultant at the Western Infirmary where I am due. His name is not on the appt letter but that counts for little, in our experience.