Helen has gone to Greece, to teach a mosaic course on the slopes of Mt Pelion. Ten days. She will be much missed. She was here this morning, and we got all the way around the garden. It was the perfection of an early autumn day. She was dreading the Greek heat.

 

I watched more royal funeral while knitting. This time it was the procession from Buckingham Palace to the lying-in-state in Westminster Hall. Just what we had on Monday in Edinburgh, from Holyrood to St Giles’s, but it felt very different. I wonder if Prince Harry regrets his decision, seeing English pageantry at full stretch like that, pageantry that he was once a part of. Maybe he just feels glad to have got away from it. There were brief glimpses of Meghan, looking subdued. The whole thing teetered dangerously on the edge of Gilbert and Sullivan from time to time, but always managed to save itself.

 

I got stitches picked up for the neckband of the new Evendoon. It took a while – there were no nice selvedges to knit into and KD gives only an overall stitch total. But I hit it, and am moving forward. Three or four more rounds to do. Then loose ends, then blocking – we mustn’t get too excited.

 

I have written to Fergus about choosing yarn for his Calcutta Cup sweater. I hope he’ll go for KD’S Schiehallion in “Rhubarb”. It’s a nice, gentle red, and I particularly like knitting something red in the darkest part of the year.

 

Wordle: For the second day running, everybody did it in four except for Thomas. But this time, Thomas needed five. Alexander, Rachel, Thomas and I all had four greens and guessed wrong, the missing letter being in the middle. I think our wrong-guesses must have been the same word. Having guessed wrong, I was very hard put to think of any other possible word. The interesting thing is that the first two letters are pronounced somewhat differently depending on which middle letter you decide on. What a dreadful language English must be to learn!