Oh, Tamar, you must try it. (That’s what everybody kept saying to me, and I kept resisting.) Just type “wordle” into a search engine, and there it will be. I used a completely new starter this morning – “triad” instead of “waste” or “waist”. The thing (I feel) is to have a couple of vowels, and some common consonants. When I worked on the Oberlin Review, back in the early years of the last century, it was printed next door, hot-metal – presumably that’s gone altogether nowadays. When a linotype operator made a mistake, he hit the first two columns of letters on his machine, to fill up the now-useless slug. They were the first 12 letters of the English letter-frequency alphabet: ETAOIN SHRDLU. Who would have thought they could have been of the slightest use, wedged in the memory 60 years later?

 

The important thing the New York Times must understand, is that there is only one Wordle per day. I did it in five today (one is allowed six, as a maximum), and could have eliminated one of my tries if I had been thinking properly.

 

I continue to feel feeble, and my left hip is not much use. Not painful, but constantly threatening to collapse beneath me. I had Daniela massage it this morning, and feel somewhat better.

 

And I made my decisions for Mary Lou’s “Aroon” pattern. I knit this sweater:

 

two years ago, and still have a complete yellow skein left over. It comes from the Ginger Twist Studio, near here. I probably have half-a-ball left over as well: I’ll have a look. It’s a delicious yarn, no longer on Ginger’s list, but she offers a machine-washable sock yarn now of similar properties and dimensions. I am sure there is a word for this sort of yarn, a not-quite-solid solid colour, but I can’t think of it. So, I’ll use the yellow for the contrast. I was seriously tempted to order grey for the main colour, even a dark grey: babies dress like grown-ups nowadays. But decided against it. I’ve ordered a darkish red: the colour of joy of more than half the population of the earth (China and India, at least).

 

I also measured the Machu Picchu and discovered that it in fact needs a couple more inches before the armholes – I must have stopped because I had come to the end of a ball of yarn. So now I’ve wound the new ball and am knitting peacefully on for a couple of days, until the yarn for the  Aroon arrives. Just what’s wanted. 

Even though the house is stuffed full of yarn, it is a matter of course that more must be ordered when one actually wants to knit something.