I love the light as well as the next man, but it is hard, with the equinoctial sunshine streaming in the window, to believe that it’s time to make myself something to eat, and write the blog. I’ll get used to it. I have done no knitting at all today, so I need an hour with some mindless television – “Civilisations” might strike the right note – before I go to bed.

I had my Italian lesson this morning, and then Helen and Fergus came over and we all walked down to the Stockbridge Sunday market which is always fun. Fergus’ school term has already ended – the more you pay for education, the less of it you get. The walk was close to the limit of my strength.

Helen’s husband David is currently driving about Turkey with Archie and Mungo (the brother studying in Jordan). Archie and David will come back here on Friday. They’ll have a weekend of cat-feeding and, if need be, hovering over the kitchen work, while I go to Loch Fyne.

I am sure you are right, Shandy, that the motifs in an OXO Fair Isle pattern need to be offset. It is interesting how pleasant is the appearance,  nevertheless, of Meg’s vest (where the motifs are not offset) and KD’s Machrihanish (where the v-neck isn’t centered over the pattern).

It is interesting to compare the Museum Sweater, where everything is perfect. Complete patterns end at the shoulder line. The sides “seams” bisect patterns. (That is not happening with Alexander’s vest because I have nine repeats. The vest is centered back and front, but not at the sides.)

The only way that could be done – I have read somewhere recently that it was standard Shetland practice – would be to design the whole thing, starting with the size of the motifs, for a particular wearer. Or to knit with a total indifference to the question of whom it might fit.

I have got some yarn to try again with socks for Archie – two different Kaffes. I’m not entirely pleased with either, and cross that the picture on the ball band doesn’t predict the sock that will be knit from the yarn within. The same was true of the Arne & Carlos yarn with which I was knitting before (and of which I have one thoroughly decent sock). I’ll choose the less unsatisfactory one, and perhaps get it cast on before taking it with me as I head west for Easter.