It has been what passes around here for an exciting day – a late lunch at Dishoom with Helen because it is her 55^th birthday, and a conference this evening with Jimmy who is in charge of the extra work connected with the new kitchen. I’m ready for my bed.

I’ve only done one row of shawl today. I hope to be able to keep my eyes open for at least one more. The decreases are beginning to make themselves felt, just as the returning light is. I started with 160 stitches per border (and there are four borders, remember, all strung together), and am now down to 142. The rate of decreasing has accelerated, and that helps too.

At Oberlin I did a Classics in Translation course, I can’t remember why. I do remember that when I was assigned to read, say, a couple of books of the Aeneid in English, I would think, that won’t take any time at all. But of course it did. I feel rather the same about the alternate garter stitch rows of this shawl.

I am increasingly sure that you are right, and my horrendous muddle is not going to be particularly obvious except to a lace knitter. I am now working completely from Amedro – using the mimeographed sheets from which I knit Archie’s shawl 21 years ago, rather than the modern one supplied with the yarn, just in case. I am a convinced chartist, but I am finding that it’s easier to keep the overall design in mind from Amedro’s text than from the new charts.

She and Kaffe are the designers I have knit the most patterns of, over a lifetime. I don’t know which would come out ahead, if I were to tot them up.

We've had a new West Highland Way pattern. I am enjoying this, as I expected to. This one is a yoked cardigan, with another unpronounceable Scottish name. KD says she has worked it out so that the colours in the yoke can each be done with one of the balls of yarn which came with our membership. You'd have to buy the base colour, of course.

It starts off with corrugated ribbing, something I've never mastered. I have tried, long ago, and thought I was doing it wrong because it didn't pull in. Now I know that it's not supposed to pull in, and feel that I ought to try again. I like the look.