Dies Atra

 

Another fairly nice day, by November’s standards. Another circuit of the garden. I got a couple of trivial things done, too: I renewed the New Yorker, and wrote to my Italian tutor (which has to be done in Italian).

 

And I made  some progress on that Evandoon sleeve. I’ve decided that Magic Loop isn’t for me, after all. The only dps I can find without a Serious Search are half a millimetre too small, 3.5s instead of 4s. I think I’ll try them anyway, tomorrow. I’m about down to the elbow of this first sleeve. I’d really like to speed things up.

 

Kate Davies’ weekend essay this time was about patchwork, which the latest pattern strongly suggests. It is interesting, as has been the case with her essays all along.

 

I didn’t mean to suggest yesterday that women aren’t, often, very, very good at chess. I am proud to discover this talent among you. But they don’t yet play at the very top. My sister has suggested a Zoom meeting at the end of the week, at which she will tell me her thots on the subject. I tremble, slightly. Also, I am going – via Zoom – to a talk at her club in DC tomorrow, about Il Gattopardo. That can’t fail to be interesting.

 

I’ve finished Lucarelli’s “Almost Blue”. It’s the best thriller I’ve read in a while, really scary.

 

I’m going to attempt sourdough again tomorrow. It’s been a while. I’ve revved up my starter -- that means taking it out of the refrigerator and feeding it every day for a while, until it gets nice and bubbly. The innovation this time is going to be to make my “levain” tonight, so that I’ll be ready for the off when I get up tomorrow. My recipe says to leave it about 8 hours – that’s not quite long enough, the way I sleep. But other recipes say 12 hours, which would be fine. Advice is everywhere, and often conflicting. I feel a great loyalty to my recipe, because it has worked pretty well so far, starting from complete ignorance on my part. (Good Food Magazine, May 2020). But I think it’s time to be adventurous.