Tuesday, March 10, 2020


My Aga has been restored to me. I’ll never complain about anything again (unlikely). The electrician came first thing this morning. Alexander had suggested that, before calling him, I should change the fuse in the 13-amp plug with which the Aga must be plugged into the world – not a bad idea, but I had no idea where that plug is. It baffled the electrician for a while, too – then he asked for that ever-useful domestic tool, an old-fashioned wire coat-hanger. I had one ready to hand, of course, and he used it to pull off what might be called a foot-plate, or a kick-board, or something like that. And there were the electrics.

Here is my new kitchen table:



I shouldn’t really be using a chair. I must get used to perching on a backless stool. It’s a nice, solid table and its size certainly fits the room better. Notice the virtuous Lenten bottle of bitter lemon.

The Cameron Shawl knitting has progressed through row 67 of the borders. I think something is wrong – the pattern seems to be offset by two stitches. Row 66 is plain knit and I will try to use it to spot the error.

Often when I am idle (which is often, indeed) I wander around the internet. Today I went back to an old favourite, the Shetland Museum and their Lace Project. Recommended. I was interested to be reminded that it is meant to be a two-year project, which would mean finishing towards the end of this very year. The idea is to assign traditional names to Shetland stitch patterns so that their wonderful collection can be catalogued in a meaningful way. The difficulty is that different knitters use different terms for the same stitch.

Reading

My enthusiasm for Trollope’s “Mr Scarborough’s Family” is cooling off, and there’s a long way to go. The cast of characters is not uninteresting, and the situation has much to recommend it, but there is greatly the feeling of a cast of actors towards the end of a long run, when they are bored with the play themselves.

Has anybody read “House of Leaves” – a cult book, and hard to read, I gather? I am slightly tempted to try.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:06 PM

    Is it wrong to fancy somebody's Lenten bitter lemon? I went down with an evil bug on Thursday(ordinary, not the big one)Have only just tottered from my bed, and now I'm thinking "Ooh, bitter lemon..."

    Sarah.

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  2. I have never read "House of Leaves", but my library has a copy. It sounds like more of a challenge than I am up for, at the moment. Why a stool? Will it fit the table better?

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  3. Anonymous8:35 AM

    Great news on the Aga front. The new table and stools look very neat.

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  4. House of Leaves sounds too creepy for me.

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  5. =Tamar4:30 PM

    I'm in favor of back support, but if you can stand using one of the stools, it might be beneficial in some way. They look padded, unlike the chair.
    At first I thought the stools were a lower shelf, they fit so neatly under the table. Maybe you could put one of them in a different room to get a knee under the table edge.

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