Today started grey and dark, but morphed into a beautiful September day, remarkably warm. Daniela and I got all the way around the garden. Despite that feat (or because of it) I had unusual difficulty getting up the six steps from the pavement to my door when we got back. I think my hip is getting slowly worse.

 

However, mercifully, that doesn’t affect knitting. Lying in bed this morning – a good time, I find, for applying the mind to life’s problems – I thought maybe intarsia was the answer. I have tried it – semi-intarsia, anyway: I continue to carry the main colour across the back of the Calcutta Cup motifs. And it’s working a treat. The cable patterns are vastly easier when I don’t have to worry about carrying the Calcutta Cup colour along. Your idea of duplicate stitch is excellent, Mary Lou, and, as I don’t think I’ve ever done it, it would have the advantage of adding a new craft to my repertoire. We’ll see how things go. There’s still quite a bit of the Calcutta Cup panel.

 

A priest came to see me yesterday, a new acquaintance. I have been drawn into a web of holiness lately. He comes from the Borders which is a hotbed of Scottish rugby and thus was able to talk about my knitting with enthusiasm and interest. “What did you do in 2019 when the result was a draw?” (Ans: knit half the cup into a scarf for Grandson Thomas Mile.)

 

I am intermittently reading Elizabeth Bowen’s “Bowen’s Court” about her family house in rural Ireland. “Intermittently” because I have temporarily abandoned it for the new Kate Atkinson, “Shrines of Gaiety”. What a strange and interesting writer she is! But my question today concerns Bowen. Describing the offices below-stairs she says, “Off the axis passage are the kitchen and larder, the wool room, the game room, the servants’ hall, the laundry, the wine and the coal cellars.” What is a wool room? Google is useless here.

 

Wordle: Almost everybody did it in four today, my favourite score. The exceptions were Thomas, three; and Rachel and Theo, five. My statistics today show 71 fours and 73 fives. I’m working at it!