There she is – Orla K., born last Thursday, the day before the funeral. All is well. All of us, youngest to oldest – well, maybe not Juliet, who was there and toddling most engagingly about – will remember fractions of that remarkable weekend – Orla’s birth, and the funeral, and the rather extraordinary result of the General Election.

Here is Matt, facing up to his new responsibilities:

I finally resumed knitting today. On one of his last days in his chair in the sitting room – Perdita has since commandeered it – my husband: what verb to use? I’ll go for “complained” although there are stronger possibilities. OK: My husband complained about my knitting “…on and on and on.” It was a fair comment, but is not a good memory. I wondered if it were that which was paralysing my hands.

What I did was to fish out KD’s “Northmavine Hap”. It was my final purchase that happy day at Jamieson & Smith, on Kristie’s urging. I did a few rows and put it away in a shoebox.

It took me a while today to get back into the swing of things, but I’ve got it now. The pattern is a clever riff on the Shetland shell pattern, in five colours, looking like the lines a retreating tide leaves in the sand. The pattern is a 24-row repeat, and I’m well into the second one. But each repeat adds 72 stitches – it’s one of those. Altogether, there are five and a half repeats. (It’s in Kate’s “Colours of Shetland” book.)

I think I should at least finish this repeat, in the hopes of being able to pick it up again with less difficulty than I had today. You’d have to get down from your galloping horse to spot the misplaced yo’s, I think, but I would rather not introduce any more.

Then I will finish the Polliwog – so close – unless it turns out to be too imbued with death.

Miscellaneous

A new episode from Andrew and Andrea today – she’s still not knitting. I thought the previous episode (No 30) a bit dull but this one is a corker.

What has happened to the Twist Collective? There’s nothing there but the Winter 2016 issue.