It looks like a lovely day out there. I must contrive to get out soon.

 Knitting moved forward well today. There are 14 scallops of edging per side of Shetland shawl. . I’ve finished one side. (And started the next, but we’ll overlook that for the moment.) Rachel and Ed will be here in a fortnight. So if I can do three scallops per day, from now to then, I’ll be finished. A simple goal: I might even achieve it. I’ve done more than that today. I remain anxious about the danger of my mind wandering from the simple pattern, if I try to press on too fast.

 

One of my seven great-granddaughters was baptised on Saturday. When her parents, Hellie and Matt, were married, I knit pocket handkerchiefs for Matt and his groomsmen, at his request. (There was a fancier word for them, but I’ve forgotten.) But Matt lost his, when they went to a wedding in France once. I still had some of the yarn, and knit him another. And here it is:

 The great-granddaughter is Lola Kiernan. I am very fond of all of my grandchildren’s partners, but I love Matt the best.

 

My infirmities: Jenny & Anonymous (comments yesterday) – I haven’t looked back to see exactly what I wrote, but you’re right, Jenny, that the private surgeon said that the risk of surgery for me was high enough that the NHS would be safer. I may have said before: in England, a private surgeon can operate on a private patient in an NHS hospital. Not in Scotland. If anything serious goes wrong here, one would have to be whisked down the road by ambulance to an NHS hospital. The private surgeon we saw suggested that we go ahead and have the pre-op session – bloods and whatever – and only decide then whether to go ahead, but we decided against that. Needless expense. The trouble with waiting, of course, is that I am old and deteriorating.

 

Shingles: Chloe, Tamar, Jane – thank you for your concern. It is so difficult, these days, to have any contact with the NHS, and so difficult for me to move, that I am not going to do anything about getting an injection for shingles, but you are right, I ought to. My only acquaintance with that disease was one dreadful Christmas we spent with the poor Loch Fyne Mileses. The James Mileses were there too. Most of us came down with the norovirus and Christmas was pretty well cancelled. But Alexander, who had remained on his feet throughout, trumped us all, the day the miserable party broke up, by revealing his shingles. Had he been in contact with chicken pox? I don' remember that.

 

Wordle: I scored three, with a word which is not in my working vocabulary. But Theo and Ketki and Daughter-Rachel also had threes, so there was nothing to be smug about. Thomas struggled the most, with a five. I subscribed to the NYT recently, as I think I told you, and they rewarded me by setting my stats back to zero. That meant getting rid of a backlog of fives acquired in my early days. If I had kept my wits about me yesterday (alas! I didn’t) my threes and fours would be equal in my new stats chart.