The weather has reverted to sullen grey.

 

Helen and I went to see the Kaffe Fassett exhibition at the Dovecot this morning. I had had a roughish night of hip pain and had forgotten all about it. It was almost entirely devoted to patchwork, and the majority of the items were by friends-of-Kaffe rather than the master himself. Helen had hoped for mosaics and I, of course, for knitting so that was a bit of a disappointment. 

There was at least a display of needlework cushion covers among which was one showing Swiss chard which we both admired. But I looked it up when I got home, and the kit is not to be had any more. One is available with beetroot which is almost as nice, and there are other nice vegetables and fruits available as well. but we agreed that there is not much use in spending £50 for something which would almost certainly go into a drawer and stay there. My sister occasionally has needlework phases. She will be here soon and I will talk to her about it.

 

All of that cut into knitting time. I’m not good for much after lunch. I got three long rows done today, however, making 27 in all, out of 73. Just keep at it, is the secret. It’s still not easy. If I take my mental eye off the ball even for a moment – to polish a phrase for use here, for instance – I find that I have no idea where I am in the pattern.

 

Mary Lou, I forgot to say yesterday that I wish I could take your design class based on baby clothes. When my eldest grandson was two or so, in the days when almost every women’s magazine published a weekly or monthly knitting pattern, I used to reduce some of the interesting ones to a two-year-old size for him. With varying results.

 

Thank you for your comments yesterday about politics., especially, perhaps, for your gentle remark launching the subject, anonymous. It’s a dangerous topic, all right, and I don't want to hurt feelings and provoke anger here.  Northern Irish politics are all the more dangerous. I am a Catholic by conviction but a Northern Irish Protestant in blood, at least somewhat, and I sympathize with that disagreeable and unlovable group. I think Clinton (whom I also don’t much like) understood how they feel when American presidents prance about with shamrock, and deserves an enormous amount of credit for the peace treaty: he kept himself out of it and sent us the wonderful Senator Mitchell. When it was all over, Mr. Blair suddenly seemed to think that he had done it all.

 

I subscribe to the NYTimes for Wordle’s sake. Today they are offering me “new recipes for peak asparagus” just to underline my disaster of yesterday (when I made hollandaise for what turned out to be Peruvian asparagus).

 

Wordle: another day when we were spread all over the place. I got four, my least favourite score. As often, I struggled mightily to think of anything for line 3. I had two brown consonants and a green vowel. Again, I inadvertently typed in a Jean-word, omitting one of the browns. It proved very useful, giving me a new consonant both green and relatively unusual. Thomas and Roger were fellow fours. Theo, Alexander and Mark all got three. Rachel had five, and Ketki failed. She got stuck with grn, ???, grn, grn, grn and there are an unfortunate number of possibilities.