Not much was accomplished today, either. I’ve renewed my Old Person’s Rail Card, which I will need for my trip to London almost immediately after Italy, for the Christening of the newest great-granddaughter. That's something.

And I’ve finished the Foldlines swatch. It’s slightly too big in both directions. I think I’ll try again with a smaller needle. It’s going to be a fun sweater to knit, but obviously requires a much lighter-coloured yarn. The emphatic diagonals are a one-over-one cross, done in a most ingenious way, new to me. No slipping of stitches off the needle and grabbing them from behind. They both stay on the needle throughout. The less emphatic diagonals are just purl stitches.

I’m watching, or re-watching, an Amy Herzog Craftsy class about “perfect fit”. She’s good, that woman. She is emphatic that what you want from a swatch is a fabric you like. Once you’ve got that, do the maths to make it fit instead of fretting about "getting gauge". I think my swatch is a bit looser than it might be. She had an interesting passage, too, in the lesson I watched last night, about how much ease you need for different shapes of sweater. “Foldlines” counts as a dropped-shoulder, I think; therefore plenty of ease.

The only other knitting news is that I ordered La Laine No. 6. I have one previous issue – it’s absurdly expensive. This one sounds particularly good.

Non-knit

I remain in a state of near-panic about Italy, but there was some good advice this morning in the “A Life in the Day of…” page in the Sunday Times. The actor, director, producer and DJ Idris Elba says, “I imagine myself out of my body and I look down and I see six other people exactly like me, doing exactly the same thing, and that makes me feel a lot calmer.” Sort of silly, but I think I see what he means.

Here’s a picture I took accidentally, immediately after photographing the swatch. That’s some of my madtosh DK stash, and my dear cat Perdita.