Eight edging scallops now done, of 14, on the final side of Gudrun’s “Hansel” hap.

Nancy in Wisconsin: getting someone else to block the hap is a good idea, and my local LYS, Kathy’s Knits, is just the sort of place to look for such a someone. But could I bear to hand my baby over to a stranger? My Personal Trainer was here this morning – not a knitter. I described the process to her and she seemed to think I was fully capable. We practised getting up from the floor.

I’ve taken the plunge and ordered Fee’s “Sweater Workshop”, the new edition, flesh and blood copy. I don’t like cookery books or knitting on the Kindle, although I make occasional exceptions for the former.

Reading

weavinfool, I think you can leave off War and Peace if you want to. We got through it as bedtime reading, but for that, soporific is what you’re looking for. We were well into Remembrance of Things Past, Scott Moncrieff translation, when my husband died. I am sure I will never pick it up again.

Rachel used to keep her books in alphabetical order by author (she was a librarian in an earlier life). When my husband and I went to stay with her, as we often did while he was fit enough, rather than take along our current book, we read Rachel’s in order, a random chapter from each in turn. If she had (as often) more than one book by a particular author, we only read a chapter from one of them, but that had to be the first book on offer. There is a note in my Filofax from 26/9/11 saying that we had done Garnett and were ready for Gaskell.

It was a remarkably satisfactory form of bedtime reading.

I am getting on reasonably well with Il Giardino dei Finzi Contini. I read it once long ago, but remember very little. It is about being Jewish in Mussolini’s Italy. The author tells us early on that the Finzi Contini’s were deported to Germany in ’43 but he hasn’t yet explained why he himself survived.