“Rather fetching” is perfect for the Gioacchino Lanzi Tomasi of today, Shandy. (comment yesterday) Here is a relatively recent picture of him.

I watched the rest of Visconti’s “Gattopardo” – I’ve rented it on one of those arrangements which means it will vanish like a Boojum tomorrow, 48 hours after I started watching. It’s much better than I remembered. I saw it once in a cinema, many years ago.

I vividly remember when, as a child, perhaps at the age of 9 or 10, during the war, I first saw a movie made from a book I loved. It was “My Friend Flicka”. I had thought that the movie would show me the beloved book as I visualised it in my head. They got everything wrong. Visconti is better than that.

Knitting

What I can no longer avoid telling you is that I am in bad trouble with the baby shawl, and am resorting to my old, old mantra: it’ll be all right from here on out. (I am knitting the four borders of a traditional Shetland shawl in one long row.)

If I went in for lifelines, I would rip back to the end of Chart C. But I don’t. In Charts A, B & C I knit across the chart (rightly or wrongly), repeating as necessary, until I got to the marker for the corner, and then started again. I set out happily with Chart D in the same spirit, and soon saw that all was wrong.

And soon saw why – this time, I was supposed to knit the first section three times, then the centre section once, then the final section three times. I did some laborious tinking and set forth again, but the first border and (inexplicably) the second border are not right at all. The stitch count is right, but that’s not much comfort.

I have reverted to Gladys Amedro’s original pattern – not in her book – and I think things are going slightly better. I like her “T” and “C” – “take” and “cast” – for K2tog and YO. Those were the traditional Shetland terms, she says somewhere, and I find them easier to keep in one’s head.

Let’s hope for better news tomorrow.