I've started on round 126 of the borders of the Unst Bridal Shawl – another little landmark: after this round there are only 10 to go. The final, easy half-motif will start in 127.

Comments

Ellen, I meant to get the first scarf book out when I read your comment, and look up that other Kathryn Alexander scarf. I forgot, but will certainly do it today. (It's in the bedroom, where my husband is still asleep.) I am tempted by your suggestion of doing a colour a week and finishing by Christmas, except that I feel I need every ounce of strength and every second of time, to finish the Unst shawl.

Shandy, I did a salad with my Waitrose ten-bean mixture. I can't remember where I got the recipe. Bits of celery and grated carrot were involved, and a pretty straight up and down oil and vinegar dressing. My bean phase began earlier this year when Archie was here for lunch and I gave him tuna with beans (tune and beans go well together). I had soaked and cooked the beans, I remember, instead of just opening a tin. But where is the recipe? Archie was delighted with it.

Other non-knit

Lizzie phoned yesterday – from Streatham! She's safely back from her year in the US, and now has a week or so to rest before going to work at Wimbledon, that great source of emergency income for the young of south London. She flew back from Vancouver in an antique Virgin plane. Some really old planes, I told her, still have little ashtrays in the armrests. “Yes!” she said. “We didn't know what they were.”

I am making a big push (still, or perhaps more accurately, again) to get my accounts in order. I had a thoroughly unnerving experience yesterday on the old computer with that old copy of Quicken, when I was trying to reconcile a bank statement and couldn't do it and struggled and finally grasped that Quicken wasn't adding the numbers properly. It was as if the Ardle flowed in the wrong direction – quite against nature. I'll try again today. Maybe I need to give up computerised account-keeping.