Thank you for all your good wishes, here and elsewhere. It was a lovely birthday.

It began with the finding of a book, while I was looking for something to take my husband to read. It’s called “Ordeal by Hunger” and our copy used to belong to my husband’s father, who died young. My husband gave it to my sister to read when she was visiting us in Birmingham fully thirty years ago. For the last ten or fifteen years — since we moved to Edinburgh — he has accused her of not giving it back, of carrying it off to CT.

She was sure she wouldn’t have done that, that her worst offence might have been to leave it in her room rather than handing it back. My husband constantly harped on his loss, and became fairly unpleasant about it. Yesterday, looking for J.B. Priestly — my husband had said it was blue — I drew out a blue book whose faded spine I couldn’t read, and there it was in my hand: Ordeal by Hunger.

My husband wasn’t apologetic (“Never apologise, never explain”). My sister, when I phoned her, was pleased but not surprised.

Helen and the boys came back from Strathardle and we all went out to lunch with a friend, to a (wonderful, as it proved) Dim Sum place on Dalmeny Street called Stack. The friend had recommended it. I can add my voice to the many on-line who sing its praises.

And in the evening we had cake and cards — Helen had found one which said “K is for Kittens…and Knitting” — and presents.

And God, who had already found that book, chipped in with the new VK.

I’m not wildly enthusiastic, but I very much like the cover cowl. I could imagine its appearance as Christmas knitting. I would have to practice the stitch first — it sounds as if it might be tedious, and it happens constantly, with no peaceful rows in between. I also like Rosemary Drysdale’s open-front ribbed cardigan. One would have to achieve a very good fit on that one.

As for knitting, I ripped out the poor dog’s backwards head and am halfway with the new one. It is very hard to tell, even this far along, which way it is going to face. Assuming I’ve got it right this time, my mistake must derive from the instruction: “With RS facing knit 11 from spare needle of right side of body then knit 11 from spare needle of left side of body”.

At that point, I had just finished knitting the left side, and I suspect I just carried on from there without paying attention to the full implications of the instruction. We shall see.

The only other knitting news is that my husband seems to have lost a green madelinetosh DK sleeveless sweater which he has been wearing almost daily in hospital. The hospital is tremendously good at not walking off with things. I can only surmise that it got contaminated with diarrhoea and somehow didn’t get bundled with the other clothes sent home with me to wash. I can reproduce it. I should have my size-notes somewhere, and an excuse to knit with madelinetosh is always welcome. I may even have a note of the colour-name.

Yes, of course — the Fair Isle vest and, as you rightly say, Kristie, the Northmavine Hap. Both of yarns I bought that day, that happy, happy day, in Jamieson and Smith. That gives me plenty to think about. I had an uneasy feeling all along that there was something.

And speaking of Kate Davies, I trust we’ve all seen the wonderful pictures of her utterly wonderful wedding.

As for the current WIP…

I knit the dog’s head last night, patiently, row by row, and when I had finished and bound off, I folded the dog together so that I could admire my handiwork — and discovered that the head is on backwards:

It is sort of dispiriting. I haven’t sat down with the pattern yet to try to figure out where I went wrong. I wondered this morning if I could pretend that someone has just whistled for him from behind. I think not. It’ll have to be done again.

The other knitting news, not very exciting, concerns that order of madeleinetosh sock yarn from Webs. I was beginning to feel that I had ordered it rather a long time ago. And this week I got one of those dread cards from the Post Office about a substantial customs charge to pay. That must be the sock yarn. I think I got both Archie’s sweater and the Sous Sous (both madeleinetosh DK) in free, from Webs, so I shouldn’t complain. I've paid the fee, and the package, whatever it is, is promised for Saturday.

Non-knit

Thank you for all your messages about transporting Perdita. I will take them to heart. Even if someone comes to fetch us, as is likely, she would be better restrained in the car. I will let her experience Outdoors when we are there, though. It is pretty easy to confine her to this house — there is only one way out (we’d be in trouble, in case of a fire) and that is approached through a sort of lock, an outer hall the size of a small bedroom in estate-agent talk. The inner door is normally kept shut. All one has to do, before going out, is to ensure that the cat is on the right (=inner) side of it.

Poor Rachel’s move has started. The men are in, packing. She has gone to work, but will have tomorrow off, when the move actually happens, and Monday, when BT comes to install things.

And today is Results Day, for AS-Levels. That means Archie and also James’ and Cathy’s daughter Rachel.

Excitement all round.

Sorry I’m late.

I had to go up to St James’s, and thought I had better do it first thing, while my strength allowed and before the crowds got there. I accomplished what I set out to do, plus a delicious anti-Tony-Blair poster for whichever grandchild wants it; a nice change from Che Guevara.

I got some stuffing for the dog. Kapok is out — the woman’s tone implied that it violated Health & Safety, but perhaps I was being over-sensitive. I’ve got a bag of poly-something-or-other, which I am sure will do fine.

I finished the left side of the dog, and the neck, which (obviously) involved joining the two sides. Tonight, the head. Very fiddly, lots of short rows, but I’m moving forward, scoring out the pattern row by row.

I looked at the list I make at the start of every year, to see if there were any ideas there for the Next Big Thing. No, is the answer; the things I hoped to do, are done, or being done — unless I want to get seriously to work on the Queen Ring Shawl, which is perhaps not a bad idea. The longer I leave it, the nearer the grave.

I’ll re-browse Brooklyn Tweed and the Twist Collective, and wait for inspiration to strike.

Non-knit

I didn’t mention the Games to my husband when I saw him yesterday, for fear of plunging him deeper into gloom at the thought of still being in hospital at the end of next week. But if that proves to be the case, Perdita and I will definitely go. I think we could safely drive there by ourselves — I think she would cringe on the floor of the car, the way our Dear Old Cat used to do. In madcap-mode, she could be dangerous.

The Dear Old Cat didn’t like motor travel at all, but she knew, as my husband put it once, that it was a thing that happened to cats from time to time. She put up with it. And she always knew, winter or summer, when the long journey was nearly over, Bridge of Cally or Spaghetti Junction as the case might be. She would emerge from the floor at that point and walk with increasing excitement from one shoulder to the next.

Indeed, if this ordeal stretches on to the crack of doom, I might even go to Hellie and Matt’s wedding on the 19th of September. But surely my husband will be home by then. 

He is better, but diarrhoea continues. The physiotherapists haven’t yet begun to assess how much weaker he is.

Drink

I don’t think there’s any hope of a temporary reprieve — my blood has been carefully thinned, and is being closely monitored. Drink combines ill with that state of affairs.

The booklet I have been given says to have no more than 2 units a day — half a bottle of Weston’s Vintage; not worth bothering with. It also says, in bold type, that binge drinking is dangerous, combined with Warfarin. There is nothing about the dangers or otherwise of the considerable range in between. What about Christmas? Perhaps a glass of champagne and a single glass of red wine with the goose, wouldn’t take one too far past two units.

Onward.

I polished off the 19th bank of the Tokyo shawl, and discovered that I had been using the wrong colour for it. It doesn’t matter.

So, on to the dog. I began by winding one of the two skeins of homespun wool I bought in Athens. I only need a few yards if it, as the Target Dog is virtually unmarked, but I thought I  would put some colour in the tail and an ear anyway.

The yarn is very home-y, and I was severely tempted to stop winding when I had enough for my purpose. But I went on compulsively. What a lot! And I have another skein the same — far more yarn than I realised at the time that I was buying.

I have ordered some pipe cleaners from someone on eBay. It was easy, and they’re very cheap — not much harm done, even if I turn out not to need them. It remains to dig in the stash cupboard and discover whether I have any more stuffing. This afternoon, inshAllah, I’ll start knitting the left side of the dog.

Gaughan’s “Knitting Nature” turned up. It’s interesting, and has some ingenious patterns — but nothing, at the moment, even for the HALFPINT list, and the chapter on Spirals doesn’t have anything comparable to Debbie New’s prize-winning socks, or the much simpler child’s hoodie in Loop-d-Loop. Maybe I should bite the bullet and just try once again to knit those socks.

Indeed, it’s time to start giving preliminary thought to the Next Big Thing. The dog will almost certainly be the next thing to be finished — I could put Arne & Carlos’ socks at that point in the cycle. But one day in the imaginable future, the Sous Sous and the Tokyo shawl will also be finished. What do I aspire to next?

Non-knit

James rang up last night, wondering about the Games. Rachel and her family (stalwart Games-goers) won’t want to come this year, with the wedding on Loch Fyne so soon to follow. Alexander and Ketki are much concerned with shifting their base to Glasgow and starting the Little Boys off on life at secondary school. That still leaves a lot of potential people, in the form of James and Helen and their families.

And this is one of the relatively rare years when the Fourth Saturday comes early — at the end of next week, in fact. If my husband is still in hospital, Perdita and I could go up for two nights. I could introduce her to the concept of Outdoors. It would be grand to be there, even briefly.

Would the Games be tolerable without drink?  

Again, but little.

Helen and I found my husband in bed yesterday, and disagreeable. The situation rather underlines the importance of waiting for the home care we have been promised. I doubt if I could have managed this recent episode. It would certainly have been difficult and unpleasant -- and frightening.

I think the main question now is, how much lost ground has it all cost him. Now that the week is starting up again — TGIM, has long been my personal slogan — physiotherapists will be on hand to assess and help.

Knitting

I took the bull by the horns and did some afternoon knitting yesterday. I am now three long rows short of finishing the 19th band (of 29) of the Tokyo shawl. I should certainly be able to polish them off and proceed to dog-knitting today. 

It feels very wicked, to sit in the sitting room in the afternoon and knit and read my book. (Alternately, alas — knitting with two fine yarns held together requires, at least from me, close inspection lest one of the yarns be left behind.) Whereas sitting in the kitchen playing Freecell, although obviously reprehensible, seems less wicked because I am surrounded by the clearing-up I am going to do any moment now.

Feliculture

I am sure you are right, that we would be better off in many respects with two cats. Southern Gal, I loved your account of how your two establish and protect their own territories. I think it would be too much for us, though.

And I agree that cats can live happily indoors, safe from ticks and dogs and motor cars (and coyotes, my sister says, in CT). And Perdita has our company, almost constantly  But I have always felt that a great deal of the charm of a cat is that it lives with one in perfect freedom, goes where it pleases, does what it likes, comes home for cat food and because (although it would rather not admit it) it is rather fond of one. I am sorry to deprive Perdita of that sort of life.

With her aunt and cousins gone to the country, I am top of her list again. That’s nice.

My husband continued to seem better when Helen and I visited yesterday, although some diarrhoea continues and he is still in hospital clothes. There has been no report back from the lab. The first samples must have been sent off on Thursday — perhaps this means, at least, that they weren’t marked urgent.

Helen and her boys are going back to Strathardle today, after another early hospital visit. We have been joined by Mungo — I haven’t seen him yet; his plane landed after my early bedtime. He has been at a Joint Association of Classical Teachers summer school in ancient Greek. He says, according to Helen this morning, that it was the first time in his life that no one did a double-take when he told them his name.

Not much to report here. In fact, no knitting at all yesterday. I have a strange belief that it is wrong to knit before 5p.m. I think I need to overcome that, because after 5p.m. I am likely to be sagging. I feel well, these days, but weak — eager to sit down, if a chair is available; unwilling to attempt to walk very far. I think this is normal after/with a pulmonary embolism episode, and the list of possible side-effects of Warfarin is pretty well endless.

The fact that Serena Williams has been here and done this, is enormously cheering.

Anyway: I pursued Wooly Thoughts with great interest, first on Ravelry and then on their own website. It was only when I went to the list of their books that I remembered that I’ve got “Wooly Thoughts”. I haven’t seen it for a long time; it’s not where it ought to be, on the knitting shelves. But that cover is familiar, and I have some memory of the contents.

As for “Knitting Nature”, my feeling is that I have never owned it, but that someone loaned it to me once. I think I thought it was too difficult. I’ve ordered it, this morning.

The remark in Loop-d-Loop which launched me in pursuit of this chimaera is as follows: “[The spiral growth pattern] is based on Fibonacci's law, a numerical series in which each new number is the sum of the prior two. When expressed geometrically, ever-larger spirals spread outward from the centre…”

I observe that “Wooly Thoughts” doesn’t figure in my Library Thing catalogue. I catalogued everything faithfully once, although I haven’t been very good at keeping the list up lately. So it must have been missing for a long time.

Non-knit

I thought of sending Perdita to Strathardle for a few days with her aunt and cousins. I’m sure she’d love it. I feel more and more guilty about keeping her away from outdoors. But my husband thinks it would be confusing for her, and Helen’s youngest son Fergus said, rather sweetly I thought, that he didn’t think she was old enough to go to Kirkmichael “by herself”.

Medical

Could be worse.

Helen and I, yesterday morning — goodness, it’s good to have her here — found my husband in bed, weak and uncomfortable, still suffering from diarrhoea but no longer vomiting, perfectly crisp mentally. They have sent off samples somewhere, and may know more today. Or may not, with only a weekend staff available. He was oddly flushed, but apparently not feverish.

I phoned at the end of the afternoon and spoke to Manuel himself (of Fawlty Towers fame). He had never heard of my husband. The report I eventually extracted was that the situation was unchanged. Visiting is from 10. Helen and I will go in early today. I usually go around 11:30 and sit with him while he has lunch, but there is not much point in that under present circumstances. He is eating a bit, they say.

I have mastered the spelling of “diarrhoea”, I think. The secret is to start out d-i-a-r-r; the rest will take care of itself.

These symptoms are complicated in a diabetic (this for Melfina, with thanks for her kind wishes) by the need to worry about blood sugars. I am very glad to be spared that.

And I am grateful for all your good wishes.

Knitting

I’ve reached the 19th band (of 29) on the Tokyo shawl and hope to finish it (=the 19th band) today so that I can move on to the dog. The target there, this time, is to do the left side, wind the Greek wool to provide markings for head and tail, find some pipe cleaners (Amazon will probably have them), and face up to the kapok situation. I may still have some, left over from Sam the Ram and that Marmite jar I knit for James. If so, I must find it.

Dawn, this time I did fine with the link to New Scientist. The idea sounds and looks fun. Presumably you use the random number generator again and again across each cable row. Thanks for that.

I would still like to know (if not too much mental effort is involved) about swirls in nature, snails and things, and whether there is a mathematic formula for them which a knitter could use.

(All this scientific talk has led me to buy Watson’s book about the discovery of the double helix. It is pretty low-brow and gossipy, and I am enjoying it. It was the basis for a movie? television drama? which I would like to see again, with Jeff Goldblum as (presumably) Watson — it must have been Watson whom Goldblum played, as he was the only American on the Cambridge team.)

I got the new Rowan book when I was up the hill the other day getting rat poison. I like the scarf on the cover and some of the cables — “Glacier” “Nippy” “Frosty” -- in the Frost section.  I’ll have to have a look at the “brushed fleece” in which “Glacier” is knit. I don’t know it. No wonder Rowan yarns keep going out of production, as more and more are constantly added.

Trouble is, even Britain is warm enough indoors these days, all winter long, that such a thing could only be worn by energetic outdoors types

My husband is ill. He was a bit less-than-well when I saw him, as usual, at lunchtime, complaining of abdominal pain, a bit less nimble than of late. A nurse, summoned to address the problem, said he looked a bit peely-wally and tested his blood sugar (which was fine). I left making sure they knew he needed attention, but otherwise unworried.

Helen, who had been away visiting her brother Alexander on the west coast, got back and went to see him in the early evening and found him suffering from vomiting and that-word-I-can’t-spell.  We’re waiting now for it to be nine o’clock which would seem a good time for phoning the ward.

Other medical

Thank you for your help with my blood problems. Lou, your message was very reassuring. What the drs have prescribed for me matches, nicely, what you recommend. My sister (a dr, remember) looked into blood-thinning medicines when this episode started, and was initially keen on one of the non-Warfarin ones. It turns out that Warfarin can be reversed, if necessary, with injections of Vitamin K, so it is the one prescribed for the elderly who, as a class, are prone to falling down.

Knitting

Dawn, I would like to pursue the idea you mentioned — but the link you gave, interestingly, seems to lead to random articles from New Scientist.  I started with something by Tam Dalyell and went on to an article about the spread of AIDS. 

If I’m not here tomorrow, it probably means bad news from the hospital.

Freecell in Windows 10 has added a “Try Again” button, at least in certain circumstances, so I tried composing a couple of paragraphs over there and pasting them into Blogger. No luck. In they went as HTML, as before, with no provision for escape.

So I mailed them to myself, and here they are, over on the Mac:

My INR was up yesterday: 3.2. “1” means your blood clots normally. Higher readings indicate degrees of thinness, non-clotting-ness. They are aiming at something between 2 and 3 for me, perhaps for everyone, with 2.5 the ideal. So far, I have been bumping along at the bottom, 2, 2.1, 2.2, no more. I was even thinking of adding the allowed 2 units of alcohol a day to my diet, in the form of half a bottle of Westons Vintage Cider with my supper. It might improve appetite – I've lost half a stone.

But alcohol, in moderation, augments the effects of rat poison, so I don't think I'll try that just now. What I will do, in moderation, is to eat a bit more of the delicious foods with Vitamin K in them. Avocados, hummus, ripe cheese. They encourage blood to clot, i.e. they counteract rat poison. Drs have reduced my daily dose, but only very slightly, and I won't have another blood test for a fortnight. I'm not entirely happy, but at least I don't have any of the alarming symptoms listed in the leaflet that comes in the Warfarin box — yet.

Many thanks for all your help with feliculture yesterday.  A friend sent a link to this interesting article. Perdita understands spoken English perfectly — she is just pretending, like any toddler, when she affects not to recognise “no”. I have tried reinforcing it with a sharp hand-clap, as the article suggests, and am having some success. I think she wants to please me, and is trying to understand how.

She has got many of the toys you suggest, including a laser which she adores. If there is no one to play with her, she is quite happy to use the instrument itself as a toy. 

When we lived in Birmingham, a cat lived nearby named George Smith, a big ginger tom. He would often sit on his gatepost, at a convenient height for conversation, and engage passers-by. As the conversation developed, one might try to scratch George behind the ear in a friendly fashion. Then he would bite. He thought it was funny. I don’t want Perdita to grow up to be like George.

Knitting

Very little to report, yet again. I haven’t quite finished the current broad stripe of the Tokyo shawl — i.e., am not much advanced on where I was yesterday.

I looked up the article in IK that I mentioned yesterday. It’s about what might be called scientific knitting, but doesn’t say anything about Fibonacci as Loop-d-Loop implied it would. I googled “Fibonacci knitting” but found only articles about stripes, nothing about swirls. I think I’ll give up. It’s too difficult for me, anyway.

The article started off with an account of a PhD student who worked out a rather ingenious pattern for knitting the double helix onto a scarf. The pattern is in IK, elsewhere in the issue.  It had a certain vogue in the scientific community for a while, and someone wrote to the designer to say that she had knit it for her boyfriend’s father —  James Watson. It doesn’t get better than that.

Thank you for your help on the subject of Zite. I knew nothing of the take-over by Flipboard, although even I would have begun to suspect soon that something was seriously wrong with Zite, not just summer doldrums.

I used to have Flipboard, on the first iPad, the one that disappeared. James installed it for me. He’s a keen user. I’ll set about getting it again. 

Knitting

I moved patiently forward with the Tokyo yesterday. I should finish the current big stripe today and at least start the little, punctuating one. I think I should do another big one before I stop — that adds up to a complete pattern repeat. The Tokyo is the least fun of current wips — that’s a reflection on the knitting only, the fine yarn (two strands held together) and the mohair fuzziness. The result is going to be both beautiful and cozy and I greatly look forward to wrapping myself in it, in the winter to come. And I remain desperately grateful to you for the gift of it.

So it’s particularly important not to let it languish in the excitement of pressing on with the other wips.

There’s an interesting pattern in Loop-d-Loop for a “Child’s Geek Spiral Pullover”. The text says that the Fibonacci series underlies the arrangement, and refers to an article in the Fall ’03 issue of IK. I must see if I can dig it out. It set me thinking of Debbie New, and those wonderful socks on the cover of Knitter’s book “Socks Socks Socks”, and Debbie’s own utterly wonderful book, “Unexpected Knitting” in which the socks reappear.

I got it down from its high shelf. There is a vast amount in there that I couldn’t even think of attempting — I felt my age, turning the pages. I’m sure I couldn’t do those socks. I might just be able to manage an ouroborus jacket or labyrinth sweater, and it would be fun to try. I always enjoy the book.

But the little Loop-d-Loop sweater, in worsted-weight yarn, might be manageable. All I need is a great-grandchild.

Cat

I am beginning to worry about how much she bites, when in mad-cat mode. It’s meant in fun, I’m sure, but she’s three months old and it’s time she began to settle down. She will leap at one sometimes, several inches off the floor, all four limbs extended outwards like a cat in a horror movie. 

I am told that you can train a cat not to do things, in extremis, by spraying water in its face. My sister taught her cat not to walk on kitchen work surfaces that way. I am afraid to try it on Perdita because there are two elements here — I want her not to bite me, but I want to deter her only from biting, not from me. 

I’ll start by hiding all the toys people have given her which might possibly contain catnip. If I can live without Weston’s Vintage Cider (because of its incompatibility with rat poison), she can make that sacrifice. 

A nurse in my husband’s ward offered me cream for my arm the other day, mistaking the bite marks for an ugly rash. I suspect the effect of Warfarin makes it look a bit worse than it otherwise would.

Forward movement, yesterday. I finished the ninth repeat of the pattern on the back of the Sous Sous. It remains (if I decide not to lengthen it) but to do an incomplete repeat, and shape the neck and shoulders. I have, alas, forgotten who of you it was who insisted that I frog and repeat, when I found that I had crossed a cable wrongly. I am grateful. You were absolutely right.

I then went on to the Tokyo shawl, and spent most of my time untangling. I think I must have started out pulling the mohair ball from the centre, and then, after a break in the yarn — whose fault would that have been, I wonder? — resumed work from the outside, with the result that the whole thing was tangled. I got it straightened out, without another break, and wound it into a neat ball still attached to the work.

(I was astonished to discover in my Craftsy class last night that Sally Melville joins in a new ball of yarn, if it's the same colour, by knitting a few stitches with the two yarns together. That's the way I do it, ever since somebody taught me to when I was at Hampton Elementary School. I thought all the grown-ups did spit-splicing, which I have never mastered and which Sally didn't even mention.)

Then, this morning, I went back in to the sitting room to tidy up a bit so that my beloved Polish cleaner could hoover with some effect. I thought it would be all right to let the cat in with me. It wasn’t. She went straight for that newly-wound ball, picked it up and ran with it. She may have a future playing rugby for Scotland. I got her out of the room, not without difficulty, and spent some laborious time unwinding the yarn from around the legs of furniture. It’s still, miraculously, unbroken.

I tried the other day to get that cat-game for the iPad where fish seem to swim. I’m sure Perdita would love it. But I am trapped in a vicious circle of Apple’s making. The game is available only from the American Apple shop. I can’t use the American shop because my credit card is British. I do, in fact, have a dollar card which I constantly use on-line, but Apple wouldn’t let me register it with them because I live here. Perdita loses. She is fascinated by movement on the computer screen, and I am sure would enjoy the game. If Apple would condescend to use PayPal, we'd be fine. And the game is free anyway, I think.

I can’t imagine what’s wrong with Zite. It must all be computer-generated, of course, and obviously I must expect a lot of dud items, and some that don’t relate to knitting at all. But at the moment the rate at which items are added seems to have slowed down radically. There must be something going on out there in the knitting world, but Zite won't tell me.

I’ve been enjoying, at least, the blog-tour of Susan Crawford’s Vintage Shetland project. Tom of Holland (tomofholland.com) — amongst others — includes a complete list of the tour stops at the end of his own interesting contribution. Can’t wait for the book!

I’ve got to go up to Boots this morning for some more rat poison. I’ll have a look in John Lewis to see if the new Rowan book has turned up.

Absolutely nothing to report. I didn’t even knit, yesterday. This will probably be brief.

Lou, how I envy you that cruise! My idea of heaven would be a cruise to Lerwick, the Faroes, and Iceland — with Franklin teaching anything he was interested in.

Zite produced what seemed, at first, an interesting item about some ladies who have knit models of buildings in central Braintree. I don’t know where that is. On inspection, less interesting. Models were made of the buildings — out of what, I cannot get the computer to remind me this morning — and the ladies just knit little bits to stick on. The source is the Braintree and Withan Times, if you can get it to load.

Medical and Other

My husband is very much better, frustrated at continued incarceration. All the advice I am getting is to stick it out, wait until the promised “care package” is in place. All except one, a neighbour whose elderly mother died a few years ago. She wishes she had got her mother out with private care, instead of waiting.

And I’m reasonably well. I’ve lost about half a stone, a reasonable Lenten quota, after only four weeks of the teetotal life. I am thinking of allowing myself the two units a day which the leaflets say I can safely imbibe. Half a bottle of Weston’s Vintage Cider with my supper might improve appetite. I'll ask the nurse what she thinks.

We're having a crisis this morning involving Greek Helen's flat on Windsor Street and the need to remove a van-load of old furniture to the tip this morning before a van-load of new furniture arrives at mid-day. The previous arrangement fell through last night.

How totally refreshing to be even on the periphery of a non-medical crisis!

Brilliant, Mary Lou! Control-Z! Not only does it back-track the game, but the machine doesn’t regard it as a loss, so it doesn’t affect my overall percentage. I play at about 80%. I wonder if there’s a way to delete this game before I have thrown the rest of my life away. I’ve done it before, on another machine.

And, while you’re here, no, I haven’t read Tana French. I’ll remember the name.

It turns out the mouse wasn’t working because it was switched off. That must have been Perdita’s doing.

“Loop-d-Loop” turned up yesterday — the detested Amazon is nothing if not accurate, and fast. It’s extremely interesting — I expected no less of Meg. I haven’t finished reading-perusing yet. Helen (not a knitter) sat at the kitchen table yesterday looking at it, before I had seen it at all, exclaiming in delight at page after page. It’s a book of ideas as much as of patterns.

I think I’m going to let Norwegian Patterns go, despite your excellent and undoubtedly correct advice. The other time this happened, the Schoolhouse sent a book with a very similar title — “Knitting in Art” instead of “Art Knitting”, something like that. It was a book I didn’t have, and although I didn’t want it much, certainly not as much as the one I had actually ordered, I rolled with the punch and bought both.

Knitting

I’ve started the ninth passage of cabling on the back of the Sous Sous. It’s slow going, this thing, with all those stitches and all that double moss stitch. My current bedtime Craftsy class is Sally Melville on “Essential Techniques Every Knitter Should Know”. I’m in the middle of the lesson about selvedges and am happy to report that the Sous Sous has a two-stitch st st selvedge of which Sally would thoroughly approve. I actually look forward to seaming it.

She’s against circular knitting for sweaters, and not afraid of swimming against the tide. Seams give structure. I’ve heard that before.

Mundi, so far I don’t understand how the front of the Sous Sous works. You cast on just as many stitches as for the back, and set the pattern in the same way. Then when you begin actually knitting it, you start doing deceases in the double moss stitch part. There are many fewer repeats of the cable pattern -- but the side seams, obviously, have to be just as long.

I’ve looked up Wendy Knits’ account of hers, as you suggested, and am mightily impressed. I’m already sure that I have quantities more yarn than I need, and therefore enough to make it “a few inches longer” as she suggests, and to do away with the bias knit for the front. She mentions short rows for the shoulders. I don’t know whether they’re in the pattern or not.

I’m just at the point where all this could be achieved without frogging. I’ll finish the current cable pattern and then do some hard thinking while I cycle through my other two WIPs.

She calls the whole thing “the double moss stitch marathon”. Absolutely.

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That is a comment from Perdita, who has been put out of the room. 

Back to Pages on the Mac this morning. The mouse doesn’t work. Why not?

I think, on a day’s acquaintance, that I would recommend Windows 10, Melfina, if only as a distraction from “the crisis wheel that is this summer”. Love the phrase. You, too? I can’t remember Windows 7. Maybe I never had it. I’m not sorry to bid farewell to 8.1. 10 has obviously got glitches — the FreeCell game doesn’t seem to have a Restart button, for example. It is believed, certainly by me, that every layout is winnable. My practice used to be to play every game I encountered over and over until I’d cracked it. Although there were one or two famous games that I could never do. (They're all numbered.)

But now, there seems to be nothing for it but to go on to the next game. You don’t get better that way.

And there was that funny glitch yesterday when the blog got stripped of formatting. Blogger has two aspects, HTML and “Compose”. I think what happened is that my text got tipped into HTML with no option for getting out. I thought maybe I could run Chrome under Windows 10 and get around it that way. But although Chrome will load, sluggishly, it doesn’t seem to want to go anywhere.

But this sort of thing is fun, compared to the horrors of real life. Unless you’ve got work to do and a deadline to make.

Knitting

I got the package from the Schoolhouse the other day — and it’s wrong. I’m afraid this has happened before, with them. I’ve got the DVD about the Fair Isle vest, and Kiewe’s book of Charted Peasant Designs from Saxon Transylvania — it isn’t going to be much use, but I remember the wonderfully eccentric Mr Kiewe from the days of his wonderful wool shop on Ship Street in Oxford.

The third item in my order was a book called Loop de Loop. That’s what it says on the packing slip, too. But what they have sent is “Norwegian Patterns for Knitting” which isn’t very good and anyway I’ve already got it.

I haven’t the oomph to complain and pack the book up and trudge to the post office (no longer conveniently located). I’ve ordered Loop de Loop from Amazon and don’t know what I’ll do with Norwegian Patterns.

Zite has revved itself up slightly, with a story about what they call “saris” (plural of “sari”) to be worn by all the performers at this year’s festival. Designed and made on Shetland — and available for sale there for a substantial sum — they appear to be large stoles, possibly in feather-and-fan, in four colours, and rather attractive. We’ll see if a link survives today’s posting. It’s from a source called Deadline News.

As for actual knitting, I am about ready to do the ninth bit of cabling on the back of the Sous Sous, still without thinking out a satisfactory distribution of percentage points for the side bar. Helen admired it extravagantly, before I reminded her that she didn’t like the pattern — she’s afraid it will draw too much attention to a less-than-ironing-board-flat tummy.

I'm back with Microsoft this morning. There was much talk of Windows 10 during the day, what with all these boys around. I decided to go ahead. When I tried, all that happened was a Microsoft website telling me to click on an icon – which wasn't there – to get in the queue. Archie knew a way around that. I've now got it installed, and am impressed. The new browser is first-rate. And FreeCell is back! Knitting went as planned – the right side of the dog now complete, Sous Sous resumed. I'll finish the current repeat, the ninth, the last complete one, before moving on to the Tokyo shawl. That's not as much as I hoped for yesterday. I forgot how much there was to do after the last repeat. And I still haven't worked out a system that satisfies for the sidebar percentage. Literature Thank you for the link to Paul Theroux' article about Shirley Jackson, Mary Lou. Interesting. But he doesn't mention the novel I am currently reading, Hangsaman, and indeed rather implies that The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle were her only two novels. I've just finished reading them. They are superb, and very scary. Hangsaman, although itself published as a Penguin Modern Classic, is not as good, at least to begin with, and I was interested to have my hunch confirmed by this website that it came before the two great ones. She published six novels in all. Later Well, here's the first serious hitch in Windows 10. When pasted into Blogger, my prose looks as if typewritten (it was composed in Times New Roman as usual, in Open Office Writer) and is too small -- and the tT symbol has vanished, so I can't set it to large. I'll go back to the Mac tomorrow. ...And when published, the font and its size are OK, but there is no break between paragraphs. And my links are gone. I suspect it is Blogger which will have to change to accommodate Windows 10, but who knows?

This morning I’ll try Pages, again without moving the margins. Within Blogger, I have set the text to "Large" -- but why should I  have to do that? -- and am pleased to see that Blogger has rearranged the margins appropriately.

Archie spent a lot of yesterday morning installing Windows 10 on his superior, game-playing laptop, and offered to do the same for me. After my recent struggles with the Mac, I don’t feel up to learning a new interface just yet. It looks completely different. “Windows 10 for Dummies” will probably hit the stands next week.

“…for Dummies” is far and away the best of the three Mac books I’ve bought, although the “Seniors” one is helpful at answering simple-minded questions. The file structure, for instance, is the way it has been since DOS, subdirectories within directories. Maybe there’s no other way to do it. But it took “Seniors” to tell me so in plain English.

Medical

The branch of Lloyds Pharmacy contained within my local, on-the-way-to-the-hospital branch of Waitrose, didn’t have a pill-cutting tool yesterday. I’ll try the local, Broughton Street pharmacy in a moment. But yesterday I babbled on to the pharmacist about how I was taking Warfarin and my current dose included .5mg and that’s why I needed to cut a pill — the sort of idiot conversation my husband particularly hates. “She doesn’t need to know that.”

And she said that Warfarin comes in a .5mg pill, as well as the 5mg, 3mg, and 1mg sizes I’ve already got. So now all I need is a new prescription.

Knitting

I’ve finished the right side of the Jack Russell’s body, all but the last row and assuming I have attached the right legs — “right” in both senses. I’ll have to unpick the last row, because when it said “p2tog, p4 (hold 5 stitches on spare needle for tail)”, I disregarded any possible significance of the brackets and put the next five stitches on hold — which meant breaking the yarn — instead of the five I had just knit. As I think you can see, below.

There’s a similar problem at the end of the row. I now see that “(hold 11 stitches on spare needle for neck)” means the 11 stitches just knit, not 11 more. That’s perhaps easier, because there aren’t 11 more at that point.

There remains a problem. There were 33 stitches at the end of the previous row. I have been over and over the text for the difficult row, and can only see instructions for 31 of them. No, cancel that — I counted again, and there are 33.

I have knit the body without brown spots, since the target dog doesn’t have any. That speeded things up no end. But I’ll include some brown on tail and head.

So my plan for today is to unpick, re-do, and then turn to the Sous Sous for a day or two — finish the back, cast on the front, work out a percentage scheme for the sidebar.

Literature

I am having a Shirley Jackson phase, perhaps not the best choice for one spending a lot of nights alone. I remember reading "The Lottery" in the New Yorker when I was 15. I remember where I was (in the car, waiting presumably for my mother) and what the New Jersey weather was like (hot). And my incredulity as I read -- could it really be saying what it seemed to say?

I don't think I've read it again, since that day. Perhaps I had better, to round off the phase. I wish her well-reviewed biography was available in Kindle.