The poor carers were late again tonight, and I must be off to my bed soon.

It wasn’t the best of days, but I still did more than two rows of shawl border, and advanced the tax a wee bit. I think I remember from other years that I’m doing the worst part now, and when it’s finished, P60 and National Insurance Pension and even Gift Aid payments will slide past quickly.

The Sunday Times (filling up space) urges us to get cracking with acquiring the “unique taxpayer reference” and “activation code” we’ll need to log on and pay our tax. I’ve been doing it for four or five years, and ought to have all the codes I need, although I don’t actually remember having either of those.  I might be happier if I logged in tomorrow just to see if I can do it.

The single thing I can do for myself to make this easier, is to deal with financial papers as they arrive. I’ve been sloppy lately; papers are missing. The information can be found in bank statements, and if they’re missing, it’ll be on-line. But if I had dealt with every paper as it arrived, things would be much easier.

As for the shawl, I’m doing row 31, and it’s slow. Not difficult – there’s nothing remotely difficult here. But it’s a busy row, with lots of k3tog’s. I had a disaster in an Amedro pattern once in a passage with a lot of k3tog’s, when I discovered that the middle stitch of half of them had quietly tiptoed away. I centre such decreases now, unless there's a reason not to: slip 2 as if to knit them together, knit the 3rd, pass the slipped stitches over. It's a bit safer. 

Row 31 is the last on page 3 of the pattern leaflet, so tomorrow I’ll turn over to page 4, and that, surely, is a significant landmark.  

The new edition of Knitting has a paragraph about Stephen West’s new scarf book. It costs 30 euro’s which is a bit steep even for my extravagant self. But I’ve got a book of his, and his wonderful Craftsy class: a Westknit scarf might indeed be a possible project to plan and have in my pocket for the EYF market.

Non-knit

A near neighbour and dear friend knocked on the door today to say he had solved yesterday’s puzzle, as, clearly, have several of you. Catriona, you’re right: the link between Prunella Scales, Jeffrey Archer, and Siamese twins is the zodiac, in English:  Libra, Sagittarius, Gemini. The questions I couldn’t answer will have supplied the other signs. I didn’t get it. I had to look up the answer in the Financial Times magazine.