Everything is more or less in place, except that the towels are still un-ironed. I don’t have a dryer or any way to hang them out of doors. Un-ironed, they feel a bit stiff. Everybody (!) is converging here for a late lunch. Helen says that means baguettes, ham, green salad. I’ll go out scavenging soon. I don’t know whether I’m strong enough for this. We’ll soon see.

Shandy, I was very grateful for your pointer to Liz Lovick’s Pierowall vest, which does indeed use the technique I fumbled to describe yesterday in which the colour changes and the stitch pattern are not related to each other. What, or where, is Pierowall? Does she say anything about the technique in the pattern? I may have to buy it to find out. It would be a possibility for the great day when Scotland next win the Calcutta Cup. If Liz is changing colours like that, maybe it really is a northern tradition.

Or maybe she has Odham’s Encyclopedia of Knitting. There was a famous designer a few decades ago – for the moment, I really can’t remember her name – who produced a pattern based on that idea. I’m sure she was using the book, because her stitch pattern came from the same page.

Tamar, my way (as in the sweater illustrated yesterday) was to give each colour three rounds, never changing both at the same time. There was always one more pattern colour than background, so the relationship kept shifting.

Meanwhile, hospital knitting: the Whiskey Barrel sock is nearing the heel. And I can't remember whether I used to knit 75 rounds, or 90, for a gent’s sock. I can’t get any sense out of my basic computer – the one with the sticky keys which I have temporarily abandoned in favour of my husband’s one. It won’t respond to its mouse, and I can’t find Lotus Organiser anyway (in which the answer is held), and I can’t remember how to turn it off.

Life is needlessly complicated. I’ll count the rounds in one of the socks in my husband’s drawer.