It has been spring again today, and a bit warmer than yesterday. The National Gallery has finished taking books. I’ll go in there tomorrow – it’s a particularly cold room – and see what can be done about shelf space by moving things around.

There have been no workmen today, and I have done lots of knitting. I finished the corrugated rib; it got a bit more comfortable towards the end. I watched Meg’s video  again, on the subject of setting the pattern. I counted and counted and counted. Even so, I got the first row of the Calcutta Cup somewhat wrong, and had to move the base of the cup two stitches to the right each time on the second row.

Colour knitting can be corrected on the next pass, much as one could replace a knit with a purl. The trouble is tension – the wrong-colour yarn which now drops behind threatens to form an unwanted loop, while the right-colour yarn, fetched from a float, will be too tight if you try this over more than two consecutive stitches.

I think I’m all right, and the third row went fine. When I knit this motif previously, on the swatch scarf, I did it upside down because I was approaching one end of the scarf and I thought it would look better with its feet towards the outside world. And I think I was right.

I was tired that evening (as often) and hesitated for fear that knitting it upside down would also knit it backwards, but that didn’t happen. But the inevitable result is that knitting it right-side-up feels like a whole new Calcutta Cup.

So the only problem that remains – well, apart from establishing the Fair Isle motifs themselves – is the question of whether the vest is going to be too big. If I keep industriously at it, I ought to have enough done by the time I head for Loch Fyne on Good Friday that I can thread it on something slippery (remembering your advice from long ago, Mary Lou) and try it on Alexander. If I do have to start again (oh, horror! horror!) it’ll have to be done with incomplete motifs, starting and stopping at the “side seam”. There certainly isn’t enough spare fabric to take out a whole repeat.

Here is Archie’s not-quite-big-enough sock. I ordered some more yarn last night, something of Kaffe’s with a name involving chilli’s. Perhaps even wilder than this, certainly redder.

Is this the finest tail in the Second New Town?