Forward movement, yesterday. I finished the ninth repeat of the pattern on the back of the Sous Sous. It remains (if I decide not to lengthen it) but to do an incomplete repeat, and shape the neck and shoulders. I have, alas, forgotten who of you it was who insisted that I frog and repeat, when I found that I had crossed a cable wrongly. I am grateful. You were absolutely right.

I then went on to the Tokyo shawl, and spent most of my time untangling. I think I must have started out pulling the mohair ball from the centre, and then, after a break in the yarn — whose fault would that have been, I wonder? — resumed work from the outside, with the result that the whole thing was tangled. I got it straightened out, without another break, and wound it into a neat ball still attached to the work.

(I was astonished to discover in my Craftsy class last night that Sally Melville joins in a new ball of yarn, if it's the same colour, by knitting a few stitches with the two yarns together. That's the way I do it, ever since somebody taught me to when I was at Hampton Elementary School. I thought all the grown-ups did spit-splicing, which I have never mastered and which Sally didn't even mention.)

Then, this morning, I went back in to the sitting room to tidy up a bit so that my beloved Polish cleaner could hoover with some effect. I thought it would be all right to let the cat in with me. It wasn’t. She went straight for that newly-wound ball, picked it up and ran with it. She may have a future playing rugby for Scotland. I got her out of the room, not without difficulty, and spent some laborious time unwinding the yarn from around the legs of furniture. It’s still, miraculously, unbroken.

I tried the other day to get that cat-game for the iPad where fish seem to swim. I’m sure Perdita would love it. But I am trapped in a vicious circle of Apple’s making. The game is available only from the American Apple shop. I can’t use the American shop because my credit card is British. I do, in fact, have a dollar card which I constantly use on-line, but Apple wouldn’t let me register it with them because I live here. Perdita loses. She is fascinated by movement on the computer screen, and I am sure would enjoy the game. If Apple would condescend to use PayPal, we'd be fine. And the game is free anyway, I think.

I can’t imagine what’s wrong with Zite. It must all be computer-generated, of course, and obviously I must expect a lot of dud items, and some that don’t relate to knitting at all. But at the moment the rate at which items are added seems to have slowed down radically. There must be something going on out there in the knitting world, but Zite won't tell me.

I’ve been enjoying, at least, the blog-tour of Susan Crawford’s Vintage Shetland project. Tom of Holland (tomofholland.com) — amongst others — includes a complete list of the tour stops at the end of his own interesting contribution. Can’t wait for the book!

I’ve got to go up to Boots this morning for some more rat poison. I’ll have a look in John Lewis to see if the new Rowan book has turned up.