Cool but largely sunny today.

Ketki and Alexander say that a man is coming to mend my gas leak on Friday — which rather contradicts what I had been told earlier, about how difficult it could be to locate it, with much ripping-up of floorboards. We shall see. I am so slow and unsteady on my pins these days that there can be no question of my leaving this dull and comfortable place until gas and floorboards and live-in help (and CAT) are back in place.

Knitting went well, spurred on by the sense of self-satisfaction gained from a necessary ripping-out. I’m not as far along as previously, but nearly so, and it certainly looks better with the twisted rib on the outside. I think the size is better, too. The main pattern, when I finally  get there, is twisted stitch, too. I did a course on it at Camp Stitches in (I think) 1999with Candace Strick. Although I went back to Camp Stitches the following year, and to Stitches itself a year or two later, Bavarian Twisted Stitches were the only subject I ever learned anything about.

Helen and David came to see me this morning. They are going to Kirkmichael soon, perhaps tomorrow — but Perdita will have Archie and Fergus to talk to, so that’s all right. It sounds as if they might have a breakthrough in the neighbour-problem there (involving driveway and ditch).

Wordle: Yesterday’s word was OLDER. By line four I had four letters, two of them green, and guessed OLLER, figuring, as I often do, that if it’s not a word, Wordle won’t accept. But it was accepted. I looked it up afterwards. It means “waste land” in some dialect or other. It left me with O, L, ???, E, R but even so I had toiled through most of the unused letters — mercifully, without Wordle accepting the result — before I found D.

Today: three for Ketki, Alexander and Mark; four for Theo, Thomas, and Rachel. An undistinguished five for me.