Mary Lou, I forgot to tell you --  but surely you know already – “Knitter” magazine has given a copy of Drop Dead Easy Knits to its star letter this month!

Which reminds me that I discovered the other day, wandering the internet in the evening, that Knitter’s has ceased publication although all the other X’y activities will continue. That’s mildly interesting. I haven’t missed that magazine since I stopped it a couple of years ago.

I’ve had a wonderful day knitting Fair Isle. I won’t show you, though, until I’ve done a little more.

I’ve finished one lozenge, and the accompanying peerie, and am nearly halfway through the next. I think that dash of red across the middle is going to work rather well. For the next one, as I’ve said before, there are going to be two rows using red, on either side of the central row.

The big discovery of the day, however, was an accidental one. I have two light greys among my Shetland yarns. I’ve been using the darker one of them as the partner of the darkish green. Today I picked up the other, lighter one by mistake and discover that it is much to be preferred.

I ordered some more yarn today. Jamieson and Smith have a shade among their Heritage Yarns called Flugga White. It’s simply got to be the shade I want, that’s all. Standing on the northernmost point of Unst and looking across to Muckle Flugga was an unforgettable experience. I thought I was just there to humour Kristie and Kath, who are keen on lighthouses. I am too, now.

I took a rough stitch gauge from my swatch-scarf the other day, and did some arithmetic and discovered – no surprise – that Alexander’s vest will either be too big or too small. In the end I will wash and block the swatch. That may produce a slightly different gauge (fewer stitches to the inch, I would guess) but not enough of a difference to change things much.

Mucklestone has an interesting paragraph about curtailing the “X’s” in an OXO pattern by cutting off their feet, Procrustes-fashion. What I will do in fact – it will probably have them fainting in coils, in Lerwick – is centre the front and, separately, the back and let the side seams fend for themselves. I’ll show you how this is working on the swatch-scarf. The effect is not bad at all, to my mind.