We’re tottering on. Rachel has gone, much missed. It’s just me and Archie and Perdita now.

My husband is a lot better than he was, detached now from all tubes except for oxygen up his nose. Dozy, bad-tempered. He is very weak. He is agitating to come home, which I am sure is a healthy symptom as long as they don’t let him do it. It takes two or three nurses to move him to the chair beside his bed.

I heard some of Obama’s convention speech. If that can’t win the presidency for Hillary, there’s no hope for her. I gather Michelle’s was even better. The next few weeks are going to be very interesting, and the presidential debates, fascinating. My husband and I saw the very first ones, Kennedy-Nixon, in 1960 in Northampton, MA, by going across the street to watch a neighbour’s television. [Presumably abandoning Rachel and Alexander to their fates. I don’t remember.] We saw the famous five-o’clock-shadow which is said to have lost the election for Nixon. In this case, the candidates will scarcely be speaking the same language.

Archie and I have watched “Zelig”. It’s pretty entertaining, although far from Allen’s best. (“Manhattan”, “Annie Hall”, “Sleeper”, “Play It Again, Sam”) It was odd, indeed, seeing my father as my contemporary, when he always used to be so much older.

I think I’m rather avoiding the subject of knitting. I’m completely stuck on that final edge of the Hansel shawl. Why? Why? Hospital visiting is good for socks – I’ve finished the graduated ones (although haven’t yet finished them), and have cast on and made good progress with Vampires in Venice. It doesn’t swoop as I had hoped, on 56 stitches, but at least it makes tidy stripes. Picture soon. I must pull myself together. I’m not all that far away from the first heel.

Knitlass, I travel to the RIE on the No 8 from Broughton Street, so alas! don’t pass you. It’s a long, tedious journey, but about as convenient as a bus could be. On the outward trajectory I ride upstairs where knitting isn’t easy, but I manage a bit. Downstairs, on the way home – because it is dangerous to try to get down the stairs as the bus is hurtling down Broughton Street – knitting is easier. And I knit in the hospital when my husband is dozing.

Driving would be a bit quicker, but much more stressful, and also more expensive. Busses are free as I’m so old.

I have been much moved by all your messages. Thank you.

This is very sad news, about Susan Crawford’s cancer. I feel that frisson of guilt one has, when something terrible happens to someone one has been bad-mouthing. I wish her nothing but well. Bugger the book.

It has been a tough week here, but things are looking better. My husband had hip-replacement surgery late on Tuesday (having fallen on Monday morning). He is, at last, pulling round. He hasn’t been able to swallow all week, but yesterday he did, and they were going to try to get him up in the evening.

Helen came from Greece, James from London. They’ve gone away again, but Rachel is coming today.

Soon we will be thinking about rehabilitation, and the “care package”. He fell when under the care of the council carer who had come to get him up and dressed, as every morning. I was in the kitchen. They can hardly refuse to reinstate the “package”, I hope, when the fall was largely if not entirely their fault. My husband bent over to pick up his handkerchief. I wouldn’t have let him do that, if I had been there. I suspect the carer wasn’t at his elbow as he should have been.

Meanwhile Archie is here, and it is a comfort to have him. We were talking about movies over supper last night – he is an expert in some fields, naïve in others. He said he had never seen a Woody Allen film, and I suddenly thought that he must see “Zelig” – so I ordered a DVD, and it will be here soon. We’ve got a videotape of it, but that’s not much use any more. My father has a bit part in it: a great-grandfather Archie never met.

I haven’t see it for a long time, and it will be very odd to see it again. My father, as I remember, has two short scenes, full-screen, utterly himself. Allen wanted what my father was, a retired newspaperman who could (pretend to) reminisce about the ‘30’s. I don’t know how they got together. My father (counting on fingers here) was a bit younger then than I am now. He had a lot of fun shooting those scenes, and happily dined out on the story for some time thereafter.

There is disappointingly little to say about knitting.  My husband is in the Royal Infirmary this time, a long journey. I could drive, but the thought of finding space to park and then struggling with the payment machine is too much for me. The bus is slow and bumpy, but pretty well door-to-door. Still, a certain amount of sock-knitting is not impossible.

I’ll return to the subject soon. Maybe not tomorrow, what with Rachel being here.

My husband fell on Monday morning and fractured his hip. He had surgery yesterday, and is poorly this morning. No more from here for a while. I'll miss you, and I'll be back a.s.a.p.

I have had two more days of not bad, but not much. I have turned the final corner of the Hansel hap, and now face the final straight – attaching the edging, I mean.

I had an idea, the other night. I have been buying yarn recently with specific projects in mind, feeling that that is somehow more virtuous than random stash-enhancement. But that doesn’t mean I have to use the yarn for the project it was bought for, does it? Perhaps there was something from the EYF market which would do for the Uncia shawl?

And there is – two skeins of the Skein Queen’s merino and cashmere 4-ply, in a beautiful and very suitable shade called Blush. The Uncia is done in two skeins of Fyberspates 4-ply, 365 metres in a 100 gram skein. The Skein Queen yarn claims 400 metres to 100 grams – a wee margin of error for comfort. (I learned from my recent experience with the Neap Tide shawl that the fact that “4 ply” matches, so to speak, guarantees little or nothing. It is the metres-to-grams figure which is likely to be far more significant.)

I will be sorry not to experience Fyberspates, with which I have never knit, but I can’t have everything. Fyberspates will have to wait for another time. I’ve got to make a dent on those EYF purchases if I am to enjoy myself to the full next year.

The Skein Queen yarn was intended for your Bidwell Shawl, Mary Lou – something else I will have to come back to. Perhaps I can bring things full circle one day by knitting it in a Fyberspates yarn.

I have been enjoying the one-WIP-at-a-time experience, until I hit the current roadblock with the Hansel edging. But the Uncia and the half-brioche sweater could nevertheless be combined, once the sweater has been successfully re-established.

Another issue of The Knitter has turned up, rather soon after the first one, I feel, but none the less welcome for that. So Rowan has been sold! Why did nobody tell me? The new owner’s plans to simplify and strengthen the yarn list, sound sensible. Wait and see. And I read about the forthcoming Loch Ness Yarnerama. I wonder how that will fare? and hope it will be possible to find out. I may have to start Twittering.

Non-knit

Archie’s money-raising job is nearly over. He has had some success, but not much. Several men told him that they had had such a miserable time at school that they wouldn’t dream of donating.

He has agreed to take me for a Pokemon-Go walk on Tuesday.

Turkey: an extraordinary event, to end an extraordinary week. And now Baton Rouge, to launch what will surely be another one.

I have listened to and read and watched as much as I could about what has been happening in Turkey. Nobody has attempted to explain to me why more than 2000 judges have been arrested, although the fact is regularly repeated. 

Oh, France! I have nothing to say, but silence mustn't be interpreted as indifference.

It’s raining tonight, real, serious rain. All my doorstep pots appreciate that far more than all the heavy watering cans I can carry out to them.

Here is a picture of the nasturtium pot. I think you can see how the flowers to the right, the first to open, are proper nasturtium flowers, and the ones to the left – and even more, the buds being held aloft from the leaves – are different, with the stems attached to the base of the flower. I no longer have the seed packet, alas. There was nothing at all in the earlier progress of the seedlings, or in the foliage, to make me suspect that they weren’t all common or garden nasturtiums.

One of the things I didn’t know about until I was thoroughly grown up was the way plants can be picked up and moved from one species to another – or even switched between genera? – as botanists currently think fit.  I think I thought it had all been fixed forever by Linnaeus. Not that I suspect anything of the sort is happening here. It’s just that I have been trying again, and failing again, to identify the cactuses in my little collection and you have never seen such a family of plants for reclassification. The experience leaves me edgy and suspicious.

As for knitting, again, there is little to report. I have reached the penultimate repeat of the edging on the third side (the penultimate side, indeed) of the Hansel shawl. I’m getting there. And I welcome your question, KayT, about what comes next.

The main idea is to return to the half-brioche sweater I am knitting for myself. But starting something new would be very pleasant, and could be invigorating. I am in need of invigoration. But what? My husband’s sweater, with the beautiful madtosh Tannehill? Or one of the alarmingly long list of other projects for which I have yarn and pattern carefully stashed together? Or – caution thrown to the winds – Lucy Hague’s “Uncia” pattern from the Haps book? It’s fun to think about such things.

The whole world must know by now about the sheriff in Dundee who, confronted by a road rage case in which the offender claimed to have been on her way to an LYS, told her to knit some things to be donated to a charity shop and bring them back to court in December. Otherwise, prison.

There is a good deal we are not being told here. Even an LYS doesn’t justify road rage. Maybe the sheriff didn’t entirely like the victim’s story? It would be nice if the Dundee Courier, which first broke the story, would assign a reporter to keep in touch with the accused and let us know how her knitting is getting on. I think I’d go for hats, in that situation.

I think (from Flipboard) that this item first ran in the Courier, and then got taken up in America, and has now been noticed by the serious London press here. 

There is virtually nothing to report, and no excuse for it. With tennis finished, and politics moving beyond my ken, there’s nothing left to say. Well, that's not quite true – I’m glad our new Prime Minister is coming to Scotland tomorrow. Mr Cameron always seemed to be avoiding us.

As for knitting, my progress is very slow. I don’t entirely see why it should be so. I’m weak, but I could insert knitting more effectively into the times during the day when I sit down to draw breath. I could play fewer hands of Freecell in the evening when my husband is in bed and I am winding down for sleep.

Nine of fourteen points have been done on the third side of the Hansel hap. That’s where we are.

Horticulture is going well on the front step – that’s a cheerful topic, and news to report. We’ve had a second sorrel soup, with every reason to hope for at least one more. The nasturtiums are in bloom – and there’s a puzzle. Nasturtium flowers are normally, in my experience, joined to the stem in the middle of the flower, like a ballerina being held aloft by her partner. So it is with the first two to have flowered, but the next ones are like ordinary flowers, with the stem attached to their base. There’s nothing in the pot to suggest that anything but nasturtiums are there, nor did I plant anything but nasturtium seeds, all from the same packet.

I’ll post a picture soon, but that won’t help.

The broccoli is being attacked by caterpillars of what could only be the cabbage white butterfly, and I’ve lost half the lettuces I planted out, to what could only be slugs. Nature is red in tooth and claw, as has been noticed before me. One day soon I will open the front door to find rabbits grazing, or even deer.

Oh -- and another follower! Welcome! Welcome!

Politics

When I first went to my present hairdresser, I asked him to aim for Hillary Clinton. But latterly, in the years between the Secretary of State-ship and the candidacy, I feel she rather lost interest in hair, and I have asked him to aim for Theresa May instead. And now look where we are!

I feared yesterday that the poor Queen might already have reached Balmoral  – she left Edinburgh on Saturday after some strenuous days of royal duties. I feared that before she had had had time to kick her shoes off, she had had to put them back on again and go haring back to London to receive Mr Cameron’s resignation and to ask Mrs May to form a government. I don’t think those are tasks which can be delegated.

But it turns out she went south from Edinburgh at the weekend anyway, to Sandringham, so she’s well placed for London.

Knitting

I’ve rounded the second corner, the half-way point, in attaching the edging to the Hansel hap. It turns out that the stitch count on the second side was right after all.

I think the trouble is that this edging is extremely boring, but not in the peaceful way that the rest of the shawl is boring, where one can just sit back and knit and read (or talk, or listen). The edging pattern is simple, but each of its 16 rows is different so one has to pay attention to where one is and what’s going on. I have never got going with audio books, and anyway when I am sitting with my husband, with or without the television on, an audio book wouldn’t really work.

I think I got on a bit more briskly today, for having grasped this. I’ve now done four and a half pattern repeats along the third side. There are 14 per side, and each takes – I am rather ashamed of myself for having timed one – about 15 minutes. The pattern is of the very simplest: a column of faggoting (I love faggoting, as you may remember) parallel to the straight edge of the shawl, and a zig-zag of YO eyelets at the outer extremity, as the knitting itself zigzags.

I looked up my Very First Hap, in Madeline Weston’s “Traditional Sweater Book”, and found that the edging was even simpler: the YO zig-zag is there, but no faggoting. How could I have endured it? I think that perhaps when I knit Gudrun’s pattern again, I might choose a slightly more complex “lace” (=edging pattern), just to keep myself awake. KD’s edging for the “Moder Dy” pattern in the Haps book would do very nicely indeed – and would fit just fine, since it’s also 16 rows long.

I have ordered some cheap point protectors for Perdita via Amazon. Will she like cheap ones? Will there be enough green ones in the package? She much prefers green. She has already gone through (=eaten, lost) the ones I bought from Kathy the other day, and has found and removed the ones I was trying to employ on the Hansel hap.

But now I learn that the cheap package is coming from Hong Kong and may not be here until early August. “Where do they find such slow airplanes?” as my late father once asked.

New follower! Hi!

Well, that was grand. Raonic played awfully well, Kristie – Canada can be proud. He’ll be back. But Murray played better. It was a tight match, but the result wasn’t just luck. Raonic bore himself well in defeat, as in play. Murray burst into tears – not just wiping a drop from the manly eye, but apparently sobbing.

Now there’s nothing to look forward to except darkness. I must re-engage with knitting.

Yesterday went much better.

I didn’t watch any tennis, saving myself for today – but I rejoice that Serena won. Our niece C., with whom I often went walking in more vigorous days, is coming over to watch the final with us. It may have to be done from behind the sofa, like children watching Dr Who confront the daleks in the old days.

It is funny how rapidly we have morphed – we, the British, as a tennis-watching nation, at least for this fortnight – from cheering extravagantly when Jeremy Bates reached the third round, to having one of the world’s best in our midst. I exaggerate slightly; I never cared much for Jeremy Bates. In the early days I didn’t think Andy Murray could make it to the top because he was too spindly, lacking the physical strength needed for seven rounds of potentially five-set matches. But he worked on that, as on everything else, and here he is.

A bit more knitting got done yesterday. As on the first side, I am one stitch short of the number I need to attach the edging perfectly. Not difficult to fudge. Will it go on happening?

Flipboard has come up with a gem: a collection of men’s knitting patterns from the ‘60’s or so, from the archive at Southampton University (donated by Montse Stanley and Bishop Rutt, I think). They’re a riot. I don’t think I have any of them in my own archives, although the models look familiar. The sweaters are pretty good – turning aside from a couple of astonishing disasters, there are lots one might well consider knitting today. And it was good to be reminded of Sirdar’s Aran patterns of that era – that’s where I first engaged with Aran. But the models and the poses are very funny indeed.

Shandy, no, I hadn’t seen Paradise Apples. Thank you for that one. And it wouldn’t even take forever, as the yarn is sport weight. Fortunately, given my late-night stash-enhancement propensity, there didn’t seem to be an easy way to order the original Russian yarn. It sounds from my limited grasp of that language as if it’s Australian merino anyway. 

Yesterday was another tough one domestically.

I saw a fair amount of tennis, however. I’m sad about Federer. I’m glad that Murray won in straight sets. 

He’ll never have a better chance to win Wimbledon. He must be at least as aware of that fact as I am this morning.  This will be his 11^th Grand Slam final – that’s quite a few; and the first in which it won’t be either Djokovic or Federer on the other side of the net. Wawrinka, the 4^th seed, was another faller in an early round. If all had gone according to seeding, Djokovic would have played Federer yesterday, I think; and Murray, Wawrinka.

Poor Mr Djokovic is probably a delightful young man – but we’ve all had a lot more fun in his absence.

I sat and knit fairly late last night, winding down from a stressful day. The second corner of Gudrun’s Hansel shawl is at last in sight: four more edging points will see me there.

Things have come to a pretty pass when I go into my LYS to buy a pack of point protectors, and Kathy knows I am buying them for the cat. Perdita is obsessed with point protectors, especially green ones. Kathy, happy woman, is going to Shetland Wool Week. I saw her Croft Hoose Hat and liked it a lot. One day I really ought to master corrugated ribbing.

I have little to report beyond a stitch or two of Hansel edging. Nursing was again difficult. I watched a bit of ladies’ tennis but tended to doze off. Tennis is really very soporific. I like the Williams sisters, who have always seemed to me somehow to suggest, when interviewed, that there is a life beyond tennis and that this whole thing is just slightly ridiculous. I’m sorry Venus is gone.

But today (men’s semi-finals) is undoubtedly a big day.

There’s a new post by Franklin for Lion Brand.

And we’ve heard from Susan Crawford about the progress of the ever-receding Vintage Shetland Project. Publication is still scheduled for mid-August. It hasn’t gone to the printer yet, and there remain “fiddly bits” to be tidied up. The tone is Slightly Harassed.

Nothing but tennis here – goodness! what a day that was!

It was a tough day on the home nursing front, and I thought several times of all those fortunate old ladies, many younger than I, clutching their tea mugs in the day rooms of their care homes, and watching the tennis without interruption. Not really: I’m better tottering about on my own feet in my own house, but the temptation had some appeal yesterday.

The matches were mirror images of each other. In the first, Southern Gal’s friend Mr Federer lost the first two sets and was love-40 down on his serve half-way through the third, and looked to be fading gracefully out of Wimbledon. Then he won that set and the next two. When Murray and Tsonga walked on for the next match, they met the unusual spectacle of half the centre court seats empty. Everyone had gone to lie down in a darkened room.

In his match, my friend Mr Murray won the first two sets – the first in a titanic struggle, the second rather easily; and then lost two. The crowd had come back by then, as well they might, and mercifully, he won the fifth easily, 6-1 I think. My nerves couldn’t have taken much more. His opponent, Mr Tsonga, was really rather good.

My first awareness of Andy Murray, as a teen-aged sensation, was the year of my cataract operations. You’ve probably heard this already. I had the first operation on the first Saturday of that Wimbledon, under a local anaesthetic. I was knitting the Princess shawl at the time, and had progressed far enough that I knew the edging pattern by heart. It took about 50 repeats before that was true.

I recited the pattern to myself during the operation, using “take” and “cast” in my head for k2tog and YO, as Amedro had taught me. I was anxious only to get it over with so that I could go back upstairs for the tennis.

I couldn’t see at all, when that happened, but I could lie there and listen. Murray won the first two sets that day, and lost the next three. When he is in a parallel situation, as he was yesterday, he must surely have memories of that match, as I do. I have felt ever since that a bond of suffering connects us, although neither losing at Wimbledon nor having a cataract operation counts as suffering on the world stage.

More  non-knit 

Yes, thanks, Cat – Mungo’s achievement means he got top marks in every single subject, even the ones he’s not particularly interested in and the ones with boring teachers. The IB doesn’t let you drop subjects the way A-Level does.

We’ve got a particularly heavy summer of Exam Results this year – Archie, hoping to read English at Glasgow; his brother Mungo, aiming for Ancient Greek and Arabic at Oxford; and their cousin Rachel, James’ and Cathy’s daughter, Chinese and Russian at Leeds. I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone.

Mungo, in Athens, sat the International Baccalaureate, whose results come in first. He needed an overall score of 39 (don’t ask me) to secure his Oxford place. His mother Helen rang up yesterday afternoon, her voice all shaky, and I thought the worst had happened. But no: he got 45, the top score, achieved by fewer than half of 1% of candidates. His place is secure. Oxford is used to clever young people, and can cut him down to size if that is required and, more usefully, introduce him to other clever young people who will be his life-long friends.

Meanwhile, Archie had a good first day as a cold-caller, with nothing to show for it. The men he was assigned clearly talked to him, but took positions similar to yours, Isabella (comment yesterday).

[Tamar, here’s a link to the site which makes me think our mother was right, and that the Wells Organisation pioneered this sort of thing in the ‘50’s.]

Tennis

Two very exciting matches today. Tsonga won’t be easy for Murray, nor Cilic for Federer. Southern Gal, I’d love to join you in a chat room on Sunday (comment yesterday) – assuming a least one of our heroes lasts that long. It’ll have to be something easy for old ladies to manage – but I do have Archie here to help.

And I got a couple more points of the Hansel hap edging done yesterday: OKC (Obligatory Knitting Content).

My sister has been and gone – leaving behind the beautiful madtosh “Tannehill” DK for my husband’s new sweater (or at least to swell the stash). Why did they discontinue that one?

It was a good visit, constrained by the limitations of life here. We had a fine lunch with a friend in an excellent local restaurant (L’Escargot Bleu on Broughton St.: recommended) and a nice walk in the ever-remarkable Royal Botanical Gardens. Other things I had hoped to achieve fell victim to my general lack of peppiness. (I’m surprised the spell-check passes that one.) In particular, I had hoped to get to Dr Neil’s Garden in Duddingston which I never seen.

My sister has recently moved from CT to a retirement community near DC. A wise move, which her husband (more than herself) is enjoying a lot. But it meant giving up her garden, and that’s been tough.

Not much knitting got done while she was here, but a bit. I’m steaming down the second side of Gudrun’s hap, edging-wise. It’s easy enough that it can even be combined with Wimbledon-watching, at least sometimes.

My poor husband doesn’t like watching tennis; my sister tries to join in but hasn’t much grasp. It was difficult for me being isolated with two such idiots the day Djokovic went out – and indeed, the day before, when he was two sets down and rain suspended play. It means Murray has a real chance (he’s playing very well) but I love Federer too, and have a special place in my heart for fading great ones.

If Murray should win for a second time, he will forever rank with the greats of British tennis, going right back to the days when they played in long trousers.

I am interested in the Williams sisters too, but will give my husband today off (both Williams’es are playing) to build up his strength for the rest of the week.

Back to knitting – I had almost forgotten that I have subscribed to The Knitter: one of those late-night purchases; better, at least, than another stash-enhancement. A first issue has arrived and I like it.

Non-knit

Archie is here, and will be for a while. He finished school forever on Saturday, and went straight back on Monday to take part – for pay – in a drive to raise funds for a new sports centre. Archie and several others from his year will be ringing up Old Boys for the next fortnight, soliciting funds.

I think this method of fundraising – where an outside organisation moves in and teaches the local organisation (church, school, whatever) how to raise money from its own constituency – was pioneered by a distant cousin of mine, Lewis Wells (“Cousin Lewis”) who with Cousin Bert founded the Wells Organisation in the ‘50’s. Archie spent yesterday and today being taught how to make the phone calls. My sister says with scorn that any claim the Wells Organisation might have to priority in this field lay in the fertile imagination of our mother, herself a Wells by birth.

Google doesn’t have much to say on the subject, but that little suggests that our mother was right.

Pioneers or not, Cousin Lewis and Cousin Bert got to be very rich. Mother visited headquarters once and was amused to see a representation of the Crucifixion with pictures of Cousin Lewis on one side and Cousin Bert on the other.

Hi.

My sister is here until Monday – I won’t try to blog until Tuesday, therefore. But here I am with a quiet moment and a couple of things to say.

Wimbledon continues well. I didn't see much yesterday, but today got to watch a great deal both of Venus' match and of Andy Murray's. I like Serena because of the bond of pulmonary embolism, but I like Venus even better because she's an elder sister and getting a bit elderly herself. She had a tough match, and she was flagging, but she won it.

Thanks for the news about glysophate. I heard it from you first, and there is also an article in the Scotsman’s farming section today. Maybe I’d better stockpile some myself. I remain deeply puzzled about the vote in the European Parliament which, as I understand it, was strongly in favour of licensing glysophate some weeks ago. Did that count for nothing? And, if so, why not?

I’m doing fine with the edging of Gudrun’s hap – I’m a few stitches short of the first corner, and will at least be able to give my sister an impression of what is to come. I popped into Kathy’s Knits today to buy some point protectors, Perdita having eaten all of mine. I need one for the other end of the circular on which the entire shawl is suspended, and one for the other end of the short dp on which I am knitting the edging.

Kathy said that one of you – and I hope you will recognise yourself – flew over from the US recently for her daughter’s graduation from the University of Edinburgh, and flew back within 24 hours as a way of avoiding jet lag, but had just time to nip into Kathy’s Knits which she had read about here. I am sorry we didn’t meet!

I thought for a moment there that Kathy was going to make a present to me of the point protectors, but that didn’t happen.

I see that Kate Davies is taking off for a brief and extremely well-earned holiday. I had one of those absurd moments of panic – I must order the kit for the Uncia pattern NOW before she shop closes. That’s rubbish, of course, and mercifully I didn’t do it. It remains high on my HALFPINT list.

Non-knit

I have been a bit choked-up about the centenary remembering of the battle of the Somme. The anniversary is tonight/tomorrow and it is being observed with great solemnity. It was an extraordinarily terrible thing.

I stayed wide awake through Wimbledon yesterday, rejoiced in both the victories I saw – Murray is Murray, and Serena, like me, is a pulmonary embolism survivor, although she seems to have recovered full vigour, like the Socklady and unlike me.

I finished the border of the Hansel hap, decrease round and all, and have started on the edging. I surprise myself by not having 5mm dp’s of any sort. I’ve sent to Meadow Yarn for some, and they emailed promptly back that some have been dispatched. Meanwhile I have some 4.5mm Knit Pro Cubics and one of those is doing nicely in the interim. EZ: “Knitting is forgiving stuff”.

The promised fortnightly bulletin about the progress of the Vintage Shetland Project is again late – the last one appeared on June 7. Poor Susan! Her book and the Haps book would have nicely complemented each other had Vintage Shetland appeared at the first or second announced date. Now it will limp sadly in arrears, and she cannot fail to be aware of the recent smooth launch and rapturous reception of the other book.

Brexit

Everything continues to be extraordinary, and now the Labour Party is imploding. There was a profile of Jeremy Corbyn in a recent New Yorker. I didn’t get through it – perhaps I had better go back and try again. I wonder if this is at all what things felt like in 1939 and 1940, before Churchill? The “phoney war”, what’s going on here? Who’s in charge?

There are letters in the Times from sage greybeards who say that the referendum means nothing, legally – only an Act of Parliament can disconnect GB from the EU. Others say that maybe the referendum will have shaken Brussels into giving us what we’ve been asking for, namely control over migrant workers from other EU states, and then we could have another referendum. (Nigel Farage: “It’s not best two out of three.”) And Nicola Sturgeon is trying hard to keep Scotland in the EU even without the rest of the UK. How would that work? Would they want us, now that oil is worth so little? What would we use for money?

It’s nothing if not interesting.

I google’d “glyphosate” just now and found nothing up-to-date. A decision has to be made NOW, I learned, as the current license runs out at the end of the month.

Non-knit, non-Brexit

The indefatigable Queen is on a visit to Northern Ireland. She met Martin McGuinness yesterday (they have met before). “How are you?” he asked. “I’m still alive,” she said. (He had once proclaimed her a legitimate target.)

I dozed through Wimbledon yesterday afternoon, knitting in hand, and thus missed the Upset of the Century. I’ll pay attention when the winner -- he's actually British -- reappears, playing Federer.

Football is not among my interests, but no knitter could be entirely unmoved by Iceland’s unexpected triumph yesterday.

Brexit

I had started to feel so guilty about feeling hopeful when everyone else was feeling sad, as almost to forget that Archie&I had actually voted Remain. But things seemed a bit better yesterday. An Action Group of some sort has been set up –filled with civil servants (think “Yes, Minister”). I don’t suppose most politicians know any more about the knitty gritty of the tendrils binding us to the EU than do you or I, but civil servants ought to.  And then I read Libby Purves’ column in yesterday’s Times – I have long loved her – and felt even better.

“Respect voters, channel Chesterton: ‘Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget/ For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.’ OK, they may have spoken wrong and plunged us into difficulties. But it is not fair to blame them more than the arrogant, incompetent Brussels institutions and the decades when governments neglected inequality.”

The excellent “Farming Today” programme on the radio yesterday morning said that the decision on glysophate was expected that day. I haven’t heard it yet.

Knitting

Hap-knitting is certainly getting slower, but I have finished with the colours and reverted to the grey. I am knitting the penultimate round, and may finish the border today if I can stay awake for Wimbledon. Then a decrease round, and a final round of purl – I’m unlikely to achieve all that today.

Jen Arnall-Culliford, co-editor with Kate Davies of the new Haps book, says that someone or other is working on every single pattern in the  HapsarehappeningKAL in Ravelry  – two weeks and two days after publication. That’s pretty good going, and a tribute to the all-around excellence of the patterns.

I got all excited about Kate’s blog post about the Cordova Gansey Project in Alaska – but, alas, it doesn’t represent a whole new vein of previously-unknown gansey patterns, as I had hoped for an instant.

Very little to report.

I am knitting round 45 of the 50-round Hansel border – the last pattern round, as it happens. All is well. Watching Gudrun’s lesson about knitting the edging reminds me that I must look at my dp collection: do I have a sufficiently elegant needle in the right size for the edging? Most of my dp’s are much narrower-gauge, for socks. Do that today.

We watched Question Time yesterday evening – it’s really very good, and Dimbleby is brilliant. It was about the Subject of the Day, of course, and we heard a lot about the racism which several commenters have mentioned.

I think there is a real potential confusion here, although I may be underestimating the British Public. On the one hand, membership of the EU means free movement of all its citizens from one place to another as takes their fancy, much as citizens of any state can move anywhere else in the US. But not quite like that, since language is likely to be different and since EU migrants aren’t citizens of wherever they pitch up, and can’t vote.

Britain is worried, with perhaps some reason, about excessive migration from new-member Eastern European states, attracted by the contrast between our Welfare State and their poverty.

On the other hand, there are the wave upon wave of refugees moving from Syria westwards, and from North Africa northwards. These unfortunate people have no “rights” at all in the EU. 

 I think voters may have muddled these two groups together a bit – and thrown in the many legal Indian, Chinese, and Pakistani residents of this country (usually citizens, unlike me) who of course have nothing to do with the EU. This is from memory: I think citizens of India and Pakistan (and probably Hong Kong) used to have free entry into the UK, and I think I can remember the passing of the Act of Parliament, long, long ago, that locked the door against them. It would have been in the ‘50’s.

Racism is certainly an ugly current in Brexit. But it’s not the whole story, and I remain hopeful. I am sorry to see that KD is as sad as I know many of you are. Farmers are terrified – something like 40% of their income is paid directly from Brussels in the form of the Common Agricultural Policy, and they don’t trust Westminster or Holyrood to make it up to them.

A learned professor says in today’s Telegraph – “Parliament will be required to sustain a policy to which most MPs are opposed, an event without precedent in its long history.” You read it here first.

There is a tremendous sense of confusion and emptiness at the centre.

But today is the first day of Wimbledon!

Knitlass, your Irish friend will be perfectly all right. The right of citizens of the Irish Republic to live and work – and vote – in Britain is enshrined, as they say, in an Act of Parliament from the 1940’s. It has nothing to do with the EU.

It could be that the reason why older people have voted Brexit in greater numbers than the young, is that we can remember Britain before all this started happening.

I’m not as worried as a lot of you are (although Archie&I voted Remain). To me, this will mean that Scotland’s battered fishing industry can reclaim our inshore waters (until Mrs Sturgeon takes us back into the EU, of course) and that we can decide for ourselves whether or not to go on using glysophate in our gardens and on our farms. The democratically-elected EU parliament decided in open session some weeks ago, by a considerable majority, that glysophate was OK. The unelected Commission in Brussels will decide this week, behind closed doors, whether we can use it. That’s the sort of thing I don’t understand or like.

And I do not think the Brexit leaders are madmen. Students from Europe, as from further afield, will still be able to study here, I feel sure. The position of foreign passport-holders who live here, and British passport-holders who live elsewhere, may prove slightly more difficult, or may not.  There are such things as visas. Three of our four children have wandered the world. One or another of them has lived and worked in Mumbai, New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, Cairo, Bahrain – to mention only the non-EU places. The world is pretty small these days. I don’t think that will change.

 I’m a bit worried about Ketki’s job – she works for J.P.Morgan in Glasgow. She and Alexnder and the Little Boys are on holiday in the US at the moment. I am sure she is facing the future with Hindu calm.

I had better go back to talking about knitting.

I have only nine rounds of the Hansel border left to do. I have joined in Contrast Colour One, last as it was first. Five more rounds of that, then four final rounds in the main colour, and I’m ready for the edging. Can I get that far before my sister gets here on Wednesday? The rounds are awfully long by now. I’ve re-watched Gudrun’s Craftsy lesson about knitting the edging, and am raring to go.

Well, here’s a how-de-do. Anxious emails washed ashore more or less simultaneously yesterday from Greek Helen’s husband, who works for the Black Sea Trade and Development bank in Thessaloniki; and my sister in DC, worried about her investments. And I am distressed by your distress, Knitlass.

But, although Archie&I voted Remain, I am not entirely sorry about the outcome. A favourite writer, AA Gill, defending Remain, asked in the Sunday Times recently whether we had actually noticed any diminution of sovereignty. My answer is yes, although my examples – you’ve heard about the bees – are all from the countryside. And I am afraid I am rather enjoying the sight of Mr Cameron getting his come-uppance – he knows he will be remembered in history as the Prime Minister who needlessly took GB out of the EU and thereby broke up the United Kingdom. The Lord North de nos jours.

I am sanguine about the loss of the EU. I don’t like its undemocratic secrecy, or its itch for a United States of Europe. But I will deeply regret the loss of the United Kingdom, which now seems inevitable. I don’t think Mrs Sturgeon will make Mr Salmond’s mistake of sailing into a referendum on independence without having thought out the question of currency. Will she offer us the Euro? Maybe there’s hope after all.

It is a very odd situation, unparalleled in my experience – having a parliament forced to act against its wishes. Normally, its will is sovereign – it has been called, with some justice,  an elected dictatorship. But now it will be forced to do something the majority of its members find repugnant.

Well, we shall see.

Knitting

I continue to move happily forward with the Hansel shawl. I have finished with Contrast Colour 3 and, sure enough, needed a very small contribution from a second ball of yarn. I have now moved on to CC2, for which I will presumably need a little bit more.

KayT, I know absolutely what you mean about rushing to deliver-in-person-rather-than-having-to-post-it. My sister will be here next week (she'll find it cheaper than she would have the week before) and I could almost have the shawl ready to give to her: her grandson being the baby involved. But I am a couple of weeks short of that being possible. The best I can hope for is that I will be knitting the edging by the time she gets here, and she can see the shawl gradually being released.

Aine, yes, and thank you – that’s the sweater I was admiring on Andy Murray last weekend. How well the sweater fits the man, as well as the cables fitting the sweater.