Kirsten (comment yesterday): I’ve got that newspaper pattern for the Baby Surprise somewhere. That was back in the days when you sent in a Stamped, Addressed Envelope and they sent you a mimeographed copy of the pattern. My one is tattered and torn and has written on it the pre-birth code name of many a person now old enough to vote. That version of the Baby Surprise is double breasted, and I rather like it that way. Except that it doesn’t quite work, and the side seams (or where the side seams would be if it had such things) are pulled slightly forward. I’ll have a look.

That was when I first heard of Elizabeth Zimmerman, that newspaper article.

The 2^nd Dathan is nearing its end, but I’ll go on saying that for several more days.

I spent some more time thinking about What Next. Thank you for the tip about the Anisa Wrap, ml (Comment yesterday). But what I am really looking for – what the Spring Shawl was intended for – was something for a bride to wear. I have three unmarried granddaughters. One of them has her Christening shawl so I wanted to do something for the other two. My knitting has figured more often, up to now, in the weddings of grandsons than in those of granddaughters, but I don’t have enough lifetime left to worry about that.

I have tentatively chosen something by Elizabeth Lovick which seems to me to strike the right note of impressive but not-too-complicated. I’ve got Sharon Miller’s “Nesting Shawl” pattern but it looks alarmingly complicated. I’m tempted by her “Cameron” pattern, which I haven’t got. She says she knit it in a month!

Why does everybody want to knit their shawls centre-out? Sharon says that she has copied the “Nesting” pattern from an old postcard showing shawls being dressed on Shetland. She says that the shawl on the postcard was knit edges-in (she’d know) but that she has changed it. My idea (and I think I could apply it to the Lovick pattern) is to go back where I started and do it the way Madeleine Weston does it in her Traditional Sweater Book – knit half the edging; pick up an appropriate number of stitches for two borders; knit them; leave the stitches live; do it again; knit the centre from one set of live stitches, taking in a stitch from two other borders at either end of every row; graft the final centre stitches to the one remaining border; sew the open corner seams.

Kirsten, I found my “Sweater Workshop” on Abebooks. I’ve forgotten what I paid – about £15 I fear. There is a sticker on the back saying that it cost 99p at the Goodwill Shop.

Tomorrow it will be February I have been impeccably “dry” all through January. Now what?