I’ve got a little, tiny green tomato on one of my tomato plants on the doorstep! How’s that for exciting?

I got on well with the Polliwog yesterday, first sleeve finished, sewn bind-off completed – I didn’t even have to look up the technique. I’ve made a good start on picking up stitches for the second sleeve, but I discovered at the close of play yesterday that I am doing it wrong.

I thought I wanted 90 stitches. I only need 6o, so I’ll have to double back. Over-confidence bred of the successful sewn bind-off.

The decision about What Comes Next now looms. Marie Wallin’s Lovage, I think.

Carol: Orla's shawl is the Paton's pattern designed by "Mrs Hunter of Unst" to which KD devotes a chapter in her Haps book. I knit it for Orla's grandmother Rachel many years ago. In Ravelry, it goes by a slightly different name -- but I've forgotten what. (One of you told me.) Once you find it, I think it's a free pattern. 

Money

For many years I kept accounts with Quicken. I even wrote a book about it. Then I upgraded to a faster computer and found that, although it would load the program, it refused to import the data. Intuit, by then, had deserted the UK. I struggled, and then sort of gave up.

Then at some point I moved on from that computer to my husband’s laptop – it won’t even load the Quicken disk. Microsoft Money has also deserted the UK, and the homegrown program once provided by Sage seems also to have melted away. It was a bit kludgy. Sage and Intuit still offer small business software. Maybe Microsoft does, too -- who knows?

Google’ing seems to show that nothing else in the personal finance line is available here in the UK. People use apps on their telephones – but I am not that advanced with mobile telephony, and anyway what I want is an overview, over all the various accounts we have squirrelled here and there, of what is actually happening. I’ve got plenty of money just now – don’t worry. But incomings will now be reduced, as pensions are cut; and outgoings, although lower, won’t be that much lower. As I say, I need an overview.

Yesterday I gave up, and went back to the computer mentioned above which will load Quicken but refuses to import data (too late now, anyway) – and started again from the beginning. It’s going to take more than a bit of doing, but I feel wonderfully invigorated by having made the start.