This will be almost entirely non-knit, as virtually nothing has been done. A couple more rows of Polliwog ribbing. I hope I’ll get to the exciting bit tomorrow. Helen and I went to Homebase yesterday and had a jolly time choosing things for the front step, and I spent a happy half-hour after Mass this morning establishing some of them. Isn’t May wonderful?

When my husband’s evening carers arrived just now, I was out on the step looking at my handiwork and John said that I was “walking in the grounds”. He was dead right. I’ll send you a picture when it’s all finished.

Mary Lou, the (too-thin) yarn I am using for my Polliwog is Sweet Georgia’s “Tough Love Sock”. The colour-way for the contrast stripes is called “phoenix rising”. I can’t find the other ball band.

Kirsten, no – the current implementation of Freecell, at least the one I’ve got, doesn’t have serial numbers as in days of yore. I don’t dare move on from my current game – that’s good – because I can’t see that I can ever get it back for my sister or my son – or for you. I’m getting close to the point of knowing the layout by heart, myself. My “winning streak” – thanks to the MLE system of employing Ctrl-Z when you’re really stuck – totals more than 3000.

Shandy, you’re right, I think, about Ella Gordon’s post. When I click on my own link of yesterday, I get only a single (rather splendid) picture. Will this work better? In despair, google “Ella Gordon Whalsay”.

In any event, under the first two Fair Isle pictures in that post, once you’ve succeeded in finding it, she says, “On the right two items made by Helen Hughson for her to be husband and her brother, each has 19 different motif’s.”

What I missed was the orientation. The motifs are all there, but turned the other way around, no more than one per row.

Non-knit

We watched the Pathe newsreel of the 1937 coronation yesterday. It was rather interesting:

(a)  The little girls behaved very well. Our present Queen would have been 10 or 11, her sister Margaret correspondingly younger. It was a long day.

(b) The whole carry-on was more than slightly preposterous. If I live to see another coronation, it will be interesting to compare. It won’t be like that.

(c)  The size and enthusiasm of the crowds was truly extraordinary. Kim Jon-un and Donald Trump could only watch and weep, although I don't suppose that either of them did. Given that the 30’s were tough – perhaps not quite as tough here as in the American Depression, but still, not a laugh-a-minute – and given the squalor of the Abdication Crisis not long before, it seemed very remarkable.