All well, I guess. My Personal Trainer came this morning, so I am well exercised. The sourdough turned out all right. I’ve packed my knitting (both projects) and the cats’ requirements for tomorrow’s departure; I ought to be able to manage the rest tomorrow morning. In the Good Old Days there was separate knitting at Kirkmichael at all times, and no cats.

I haven’t quite finished Clue Two of the MKAL. I had a look at the Ravelry group. I think I like it better when the stripes – in the oft-repeated stripey sections – are crisply distinguished. If I were starting again, I might deploy my three colours differently. But I’m certainly not going to start again.

Here is the sketch my friend sent, for his hoped-for Orkney Flag hat. I’ve already told him that the pattern can’t extend into the ribbing:

But I’m also worried about the top – decreasing while maintaining the flag pattern. I think the first thing is to chart the flag, and perhaps even practise it; and see whether it can be completed before decreasing for the crown. Comments very welcome.

Life

I got a delicious book in the mail today, via Abebooks, called “Mr Hardie”. It’s just the sort of thing my husband and I would have liked for bedtime reading. Sybille Bedford mentions it in that fragmented autobiography I have just finished reading (and is thanked in the introduction). It is the biography of his father, Mr Justice McCardie, by his illegitimate son, Henry Archer. Very well written.

You can get through a lot in sixty years, if you keep at it. We read a lot of big-league stuff, “Ulysses”, “War and Peace”, but also often noticed the obituaries of interesting-sounding authors we had never heard of, and tried them. “Mr Hardie” comes close to that category. We had embarked on the Scott-Moncrieff translation of Proust when my husband died. I will never resume it.

Thank you for all your help with "A Woman of No Importance". It's there on YouTube, but blocked in Britain. Maybe it's not as good as I remember.

So: off to Kirkmichael tomorrow. I don’t know when I’ll be back. About a week, probably.