We’ve got to start with this one – The Last Day of That Part of Their Lives:

Today they all, except for Fergus (second from left) will set off for Tomorrow. They’ll drive to their other grandmother in Cheshire and then, on Sunday, one car will go to Oxford with Mungo (right) and another to Lancaster with Archie (left). Other universities have been fully functional for a week or so. Granddaughter Rachel, at Leeds, studying Russian and Chinese, already knows the Russian alphabet.

And I am horrified to see those cigarettes.

Knitting

Another successful day. Five rows of Uncia is a tough assignment, but I managed it yet again. I finished the Whiskey Barrel sock – except for finishing it – and cast on a Regia colourway called “Mosaic” for Helen.

I managed two points of the Hansel Hap edging – and then counted the stitches to the end. Each point consumes seven, and apparently I am left with a remainder of four: about as bad as it could be. I’ll re-count today, and try to count how many points I’ve done since the third corner, and try to think what to do, if the first count is right: suppress four, or add three?

Flipboard came up trumps this morning, as it occasionally does, and I have pre-ordered this book  – “People Knitting: a Century of Photographs”. I wonder if it will include my all-time favourite, seen here before: that little girl, in the Shetland Museum archives, pausing to stroke the cat who stands beside her, tail absolutely vertical.

I shouldn’t go on ordering and pre-ordering books, if I ever hope to get out of this house. Twice this week, looking for something to take my husband to read in hospital, I have found things on our shelves which I didn’t know we had and which, bibliographically speaking, are probably pretty valuable (Henry Miller, Oscar Wilde). Those shelves will have to be cleared volume-by-volume.

Personal

All this talk of gardening tools has suggested to me that there is someone on my Christmas list who would make good use of the one we have been discussing. I hope I’ll order it today.

And, Shandy, thank you again for yesterday’s comment. I was too flattened, as usual, after hospital visiting, to go out in search of the Times. But Mungo and Archie came over to sit with me for a while at the end of the afternoon to say goodbye – and they bought it, on their way here. I’ll be able to take it to my husband today, and he will be very glad to have it.