Alexander came to see me this morning. The Calcutta Cup scarf by now should be safely in Glasgow.

I went on knitting the new Dathan, although there were other things I should be doing. It looks well. I’ll take a picture for you tomorrow. The colour collection I bought on Shetland is awfully autumnal – or, gloriously autumnal, depending on the point of view. But it doesn’t include any red.

And I think it needs red. Here’s a link to its Ravelry page. Maybe it’s just that I need red, in these dark weeks.

When I was a pupil at Hampton Elementary School in Detroit, we would occasionally have “coloring” – presumably when teachers were desperate. And the Bold, Rude Boys always secured all the red crayons. What is it about red? It is not especially prominent here in the west, although it is the colour of joy and celebration and art in (at least) India and China.

Anyway, I have located the oddballs from my first Dathan – sometimes I can find things, sometimes I can’t – and have introduced two rows of red Milarrochy Tweed. There is enough left for a couple more appearances. And I could order more.

Thank you for your help with my problem, namely, how to know where I am in that simple 4-row pattern. Anonymous, I thought for a glorious moment that your idea would solve it – but it won’t. KD’s recipe adds 10 stitches every four rows: 4,2,4,0. Yours would add 12. I don’t dare change the rate of increase. Mary Lou, there’s no difficulty here (unusually for garter stitch) knowing which side is which: one of the few Dathan rules is to start every new colour at the same edge, so there is already a friendly fringe there to identify it – and, anyway, the right side has the colours nestling neatly together, whereas on the wrong side there are those attractive garter stitch bumps.

Tamar, your suggestion comes closest, not least for its reminiscence of EZ’s “Look at your knitting”. If I peer closely at the end of a right-side row, I think I can discern whether the previous row involved an increase or not. I remain puzzled – why was it so easy last time?

Life’s Other Problems

Southern Gal, my fishmonger is a one-man band, the 5^th generation of his family to sell fish in Edinburgh. No delivery. I’ll set off early tomorrow, while still feeling strong. The bank is up there at the top of the hill as well, and I can always find something useful to do there.