A better day, yesterday. As the Knitting Hour approached, the kitten was dozing, as often, on the kitchen table. I tiptoed out of the room and shut the sitting room door behind me, and got to knit and watch my silly quiz program without interruption. I turned the corner of the final pocket square, and got all the way back down to 46 stitches. I might even finish today.

There was no pitiful mewing, but she was waiting outside the sitting room door when I finally emerged.

The Arne&Carlos sock yarn arrived yesterday. It was with difficulty that I refrained from casting on.

A flicker of life from Zite – this blog entry about the Vintage Shetland Project. The illustrations are interesting – very unexpected, very Shetland, both at once. Zite has also shown some nice hats from Wooly Wormhead's new collection, Painted Wooly Toppers.

Non-knit

It's all go on the house front. Rachel and Ed are downsizing, now that the youngest of their four children has graduated from university. For weeks and weeks now, they have been trapped in a housebuyers' “chain”. No one can move, and no one is assured of being able to sell or buy at the price agreed, until every link in the chain is secure. In my day, one could get a bridging loan from the bank – but the sums involved are now astronomical, especially in London, and that has become (I gather) impossible.

In the Ogdens' case, the difficulty was the woman who was selling the house which the sellers of the house the Ogdens want to move into, want to move into. On Monday it all came right, contracts have been exchanged and are now binding, and poor Rachel has to figure out how to get a quart into a pint pot by mid-August.

And that same weekend, the Loch Fyne Mileses will be moving to Glasgow. Not abandoning Loch Fyne, but putting themselves in position for their sons, the Little Boys, to start at the High School next term. A neighbour will take the ducks. All this had been arranged, and the Little Boys had sat the entrance exam and been accepted, when Alexander and Ketki learned to their dismay that Saturday morning Games are compulsory at the High School – which will make a big difference to the hoped-for weekends at Loch Fyne.

Whatever my current difficulties, at least I don't have to move house.