Archie and I went to Waitrose today – and the year has begun! Seville oranges (there’s no compulsion to make marmalade; use them wherever you would use lemons, the experts say), bunches of daffodils in bud, forced rhubarb.

I finished tidying the “Hansel” shawl. I hope to block it tomorrow. I have resumed knitting the 2^nd Dathan hap. I think I have about 535 stitches, out of a necessary 597. By the time I get them all counted and markers secure, I should be finished.

Carol sent me an email – another failed comment! – about Jared’s “Gilda” scarf,  and I’m very tempted. Originally I thought I had escaped – on the “Gilda” page one is invited to order pattern and yarn together. The yarn colours are listed so that you can choose one – but there is no hint as to what the colours might actually be. So you go to the Vale yarn page and choose a colour and by then you have forgotten the name of the scarf. But now I know both, and the scarf Carol knit is beautiful.

Mary Lou, yes, the sweater I am wearing in that pic the other day is a pattern of Gudrun’s from Brooklyn Tweed, in a Madeline Tosh yarn. Again, I have forgotten the name of the pattern.  

Reading

I move forward, slowly, with the Finzi-Contini’s. I am more than ever convinced that I didn’t read it to the end, the first time. We are now in the winter of ’38-’39. It is cold and rainy. No more tennis. Everybody sits around talking about politics and their theses – Micol F-C is writing one about Emily Dickenson. But nobody seems frightened, or even worried, about their personal safety as Jews.