A good day. I advanced the Income Tax quite enough for one day, including finding last year's computer files. I have been flitting from computer to computer lately, winding up with my husband's neat little Toshiba. I doubt if he will use it again, and if he does, I haven't done it any harm.

But the tax files weren't there. I found them on a different machine, and copied to Dropbox. I'm ready to start on the actual tax return. The first question is about interest earned which will mean quite a lot of work gathering up statements from various banks although the total sum will be ludicrously small.

And I had a good day with the shawl -- I'm now on row 11 of 86 border rows. If I can do two rows a day -- and I did better than that, today -- I will finish the borders sometime in February, and the centre, surely, by Easter. That's fine.

I'm knitting the borders back and forth as one long strip. I realized that the three internal corners are going to look a bit odd compared to the fourth one, which will be seamed. I am used to borders which have mitred corners due to decreases every other row -- the decreases would form a line which would compensate, to some extent, for the lack of a seam. In the original, of course, four borders were knit separately and all four corners were seamed. No problem there.

But the borders of this pattern are knit straight for forty rows, and then fairly severe decrease rows are introduced. No mitres to form a line.

So I have introduced a little yo, k3tog, yo at the internal corners to form a degradation (to use a family word). We shall see.

Tamar, thank you for your comment. As always, your head is clearer than mine. I was a bit uneasy about that sentence as I was typing it last night. Knitting the first row tbl completes the attractive twisting of the row of picked-up stitches. It also, of course, produces a row of ordinary knit stitches from which one proceeds to the rest of the shawl.

Shandy, I’m sorry you’re thinking of abandoning your shawl. I think your standards are higher than mine. I also think I must now seek out YouTube or some other source and try to get a definitive answer to this question.

Change of subject

Laine, the Nordic knitting mag, is not cheap.  It really must be as good as it looks, to have sold out everywhere so fast.