The knitting lept forward yesterday, but that fourth corner is still untidy. I had a restless night during which I devoted the necessarily wakeful moments to thinking about garter stitch in the round, wrap-and-turn. Without much success. And googling doesn't help.

I've done it before. Why can't I do it again?  My only problem then was a strong line, formed by the wraps, down one of the mitred corners.

One of the places I went on Google said to wrap the stitch every round. But wouldn't that mean that it never gets knit? If I finish a round, wrap the next stitch, turn, that wrapped stitch may be said to be the first stitch of the next round. So when I get back there again, I...what? Knit it, turn, knit it again? That doesn't seem right. Turn just before it, slip it back to the left-hand needle, knit it as the first stitch of the next round? Perhaps.

I really ought to take a few days off and try this on a circular swatch of some sort. It takes so long to circumnavigate the shawl that it is hard to accumulate experience.

Otherwise, however, all goes reasonably well.

I had occasion to write a brief note yesterday, actually using a piece of paper. I was taken aback to find how unsteady my right hand seemed. Could this have something to do with the multiple problems I seem to be having with the Unst Bridal Shawl? I don't feel unsteady when I'm knitting.

Comments (non-knit)

Peggy, the picture went to Maastricht but wasn't offered for sale there. Don't know why. I don't know why she has come to Edinburgh, either -- she will soon go back to London and be put up for sale in the dealer's Bond Street branch. The Edinburgh leg of her travels may have been at least in part in order to show her to my husband. If a captious purchaser should say, But there's no record of the artist ever having painted a picture of this sort, the dealer can now say, Miles likes it. And he has also provided them with evidence that the artist did paint it.

I don't think this would be necessary. It's a stunning thing, surely self-authenticating.

Cat, I'm afraid I still think Alexander McCall Smith should have found time to speak to the Drummond Civic Society. Your happy meeting with him was at a book-signing. That's a thing authors have to do. It's business. We were asking a favour, to turn out on a November evening and speak to a couple of dozen elderly folk. His presence would have boosted attendance, but probably not by all that much. Apathy is a powerful force in Drummond Place.  We are his characters, and I feel he owed it to us.

Magnus Linklater spoke to us, when he first moved to Drummond Place. He hasn't got fully as grand a name as A McC S, but still, he's a name.