A quiet year, so far. I have been somewhat seized by melancholy; I trust it will pass.

Gudrun’s hap continues well – the stitch count is nearly down to 100 (from 144), the product lovely and cosy. I’m now using a third ball of yarn; it won’t be enough to finish the central square. I’ve found a nice, long circular of the right gauge for the next phase.

I’ve had no luck with finding the Spring Shawl. If the disappearance was the cats’ fault, the chest of drawers on which I think I left it, is far and away the best hiding place in the room, either under or behind. But it’s not there. The cats often drag knitting out from that room into the hall – but it’s not there, either, and there are no hiding places in the hall.

Perhaps I’ll try looking behind the chest again. It is a valuable principle of searching, to keep looking every so often where the object ought to be. And that’s where the empty cardboard cone was found, around which the yarn was previously wrapped. There is a ball of yarn wedged back there, but it’s orange. There is a heavy, valuable, breakable object on top of the chest, so I can’t pull it recklessly forward from the wall.

I think you are going to be proved right, Tamar, that I'll just have to start again.

Non-knit

I’ve been reading “Northanger Abbey” today. Goodness, it’s delightful!

Mary Lou, that Ruth Rendell in which a character notices a mis-crossed cable in someone’s knitting, is one of the ones I’ve been reading recently. Is that the same one in which Inspector Wexford suspects (rightly or wrongly, I can’t remember) that the victim was garroted with a circular needle?

I knocked my beloved iPad off the kitchen table yesterday and have somewhat damaged its display. Perhaps that is all that is necessary to explain my melancholy. I am as attached to that machine as everybody else is to their telephones. Archie is coming tomorrow and we will address the problem.