We’ve had a warm, heavy, depressing day, followed just now by a strenuous thunderstorm, but I don’t think it’s cleared the air. I got around the garden this morning when it was only warm and heavy, not pouring with rain.

 

I’ve finished the first of those Kaffe Fassett socks, and embarked on the second. When the first one began to look long enough in the foot, although still short of the number of rounds specified in my notes, I measured it against my own foot, and bore in mind what Kate Davies had said that very morning about negative ease in one of her sock essays for the new club, and did the toe. Ketki couldn’t have bigger feet than I do.

Miscellaneous

 

The refurbished Glenlivet distillery has opened up north somewhere, with Helen’s big mosaic successfully installed. You can easily find pictures of the distillery by googling, and even references to the mosaic, but no photographs. I should have taken pictures of it while it was here. She is working here again, this time on a private commission based on the famous Roman mosaic of an unswept kitchen floor. The link is to an article on Helen’s blog, with pictures of unswept floors in mosaic.

 

Shandy, I didn’t mean to brush aside your kind suggestion that cider-drinking is doing me down. I don’t suppose it’s doing me any good, but I don’t remember feeling much sprightlier during my dry January. I could go back and re-read it. It was in the middle of that impeccable month that I began regularly to walk with a stick in the house.