Moorecat, if you have given me that advice before – about putting Archie's sweater in the salad bowl and spinning it around on my lap – I must not have been paying attention. I tried it last night, and it works a treat. It also makes it much easier to get out from under the sweater when I've got to get up to do something, as happens fairly frequently.

I'm now within a couple of rounds of reaching the required length. I allowed myself to wind the red skein last night – that was fun. I could even finish the sleeve today.

I got up to John Lewis yesterday. I bought a ball of Rowan Pure Linen, and one of Cotton Glace. Despite the names, it's the linen that has a lovely sheen. The colour is too light and bright a blue, I fear – and the Rowan website offers nothing better. The website also says that it has a “relaxed drape” which may be too floppy for our purposes.

But I'll start the swatching there. Do I want an edging? Or just a neat six-inch square in seed stitch? I'd better browse the early pages os Walker I. Finding a yarn and a pattern is clearly going to be what takes the time here. Knitting eight of the things will be nothing, once those issues have been settled. Loop suggested a silk yarn called Jaipur. It comes in a wide range of spectacularly wonderful colours (colour loves silk even more than it does wool). It's a lace weight yarn, but I could use two strands held together – which often produces a nice firm fabric.

Non-knit

No more bulletins from Athens – surely good news. David was expected to be allowed home from hospital yesterday or today.

I had a nice talk with my sister in CT yesterday. They are covered in snow. It was just about a year ago that she and her husband made that valiant trip to NYC to try to buy a picture at auction for us – the one that's now in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. We decided that they had better go down the night before and stay in a hotel – rather than add the fear of snow to our other excitements.

So the groundhog will have stayed above ground in CT yesterday, if he doesn't mind burrowing through the snow. Whereas we have been having high pressure, with clear skies and bright winter sun and bitter cold – the sort of weather that encourages six more weeks of hibernation.