Shandy: sorry. I usually try to check everything I’m not utterly sure of – such as, how to spell “Verginia” yesterday – but in this case, I misremembered. It is Tamar who pays bills by cheque (comment, Saturday) and, anyway, claims not to be entirely luddite. And I think things are a bit different in the US anyway – banks are more cautious.

 

Well, it was not too bad a day. I went out for a brief walk with Daniela when she first arrived, our new policy. No luck with cheetahs: sometimes the webcam for Den Two seems to be down, but even when I got access to both dens, nobody was home.

 

My big discovery for today is Stanley Tucci. I was idly watching YouTube at lunchtime, thinking of making myself some spaghetti olio e aglio, when I stumbled across him, making that very dish. His name was vaguely familiar, no more. I’ve discovered since that he is an actor: indeed I might have suspected that there was art behind his captivating artlessness. He has a book out for Christmas, and I am tempted, although in most cases a celebrity cook’s first book – this is Tucci’s third – is the one to go for.

 

I did some knitting, too.

 

 

However it was that Mr Biden managed a colonoscopy the day after entertaining the Amigos, he must be tough.

 

I have little to report – and no knitting. C. came this morning and we actually got across to the garden – having posted my cheque on the way. All I could do was to sit gasping on the nearest bench for a while – but even that is more than I have done for a while, and I felt the better for it. Shandy, I admire your Luddite ways but I don’t want to return down that path myself.

 

I haven’t seen any cheetahs today. The webcam for Den 2 seemed to be down for several hours. Now I’ve got it back, but the den is empty. I sort of disapprove of zoos, but Rosalie (the mother cheetah) is safe, and her children are safe, and she is free to move them from den to den and into the long grass.

 

Helen is in Thessaloniki with David. I think they have decided against seeing old friends, as Covid cases are rising on the continent and there are lots of vaccine-shirkers in Greece. But yesterday they went to Verginia where Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father, is buried. The site is a tumulus, very reminiscent of Telly Tubbies. It’s been excavated and museum-ified and one of the exciting things is seeing the gold casket which once held Philip’s ashes – an object which Alexander must once have held in his hands.

 

But Helen’s and my favourite object is this fragment:

 

A little boy (surely) and his dogs. But what we like best is those ancient Greek shoelaces.

 

Mr Biden seems to be all right.

 

I’m puzzled about one thing, though. The BBC says that the meeting with the “amigos” was on Thursday. My instructions said to eat nothing that day, to take two doses of a laxative they supplied, and to stay near a bathroom. Everyone I’ve spoken to who has had a colonoscopy agrees that the day before is the worst part of the ordeal. No one could possibly entertain neighbouring heads of state on such a day, could they? Maybe the BBC got the day wrong. Maybe the amigos came on Wednesday.

 

I continue remarkably feeble, although my arm is no longer sore. Maybe tomorrow.

 

I’ve got a bill to pay by cheque – very second millennium. I gathered up all the required elements – cheque book, the bill itself, a pen, an envelope, stamps. Then I fell back exhausted. I’ll dispatch it tomorrow. How complicated life used to be.

 

Animals

 

Thank you for the link to the pictures of zebras yesterday, Mary Lou. Fascinating. They’re clearly much more trainable than I thought, although I’m glad we’ve stopped doing it.

 

I’ve looked in on the cheetahs several times today, finding nobody at home. I hit it lucky at my lunchtime, their late breakfast. The kittens are very big and very active now, although hind legs continue unreliable. I even got to see one of them attack his mother’s tail. She didn’t seem to mind. When a domestic kitten does that, the mother is likely to whip the tail to the other side, but usually can’t resist tapping the very tip of it in irritation – which the kitten, of course, regards as a delicious extension of the game and the mother’s irritation increases. Maybe cheetahs don’t express irritation by tapping the tips of their tails.

 

Knitting

 

Not much, but a bit. I seem to want 13” for the body, and I’ve done 9”.

 

So now poor Mr Biden is having a “routine colonoscopy”. That leaves me feeling pretty feeble. Still, I am pretty feeble, and ten years older than he is. I trust he was relieved of presidential duties yesterday during the fasting and purging.

 

I’ve had a sore arm today, and weakness even beyond my usual. Daniella and I tried to go out for a walk this morning, but had to turn back for lack of strength. These are both normal Pfizer side effects. I hope they’ll go away soon. I hope Helen, now on her way to Thessaloniki, isn’t suffering too badly.

 

I had a nice time this morning – while Daniella cleaned the house and did the ironing, after we gave up on walking – with my favourite podcast,  the BBC’s “Americast”; and my favourite vlog, Franklin in Paris; and quite a bit of knitting. I hope I’ll get down to the measuring tomorrow – the underarm is no longer an unimaginable goal. (This is Carol Sunday's Machu Picchu pattern, reimagined as a bottom-up EPS>) 

 

Animals

 

The cheetahs have been mostly out today.

 

JennyS, comment yesterday, many thanks for the link to the picture of Rothschild driving a team of zebras. (That’s probably the picture you remembered seeing, Tamar.) If you look closely, you can see that one of the team, the leader on the left, is not a zebra but a similar-sized pony. So perhaps they’re not as trainable as all that, but still a good deal more trainable than I had thought. Nobody suggests that anything can be done with tigers.

 

Today is what would have been my husband’s 96^th birthday. He was ust slightly older than the Queen. November, as well as being rather disagreeable on its own account, is full of melancholy anniversaries.

 

I had my booster, and all seems well. Helen was able to insinuate herself into the system and get hers too – thus making the hours she had nobly consumed on my behalf more profitable for herself. We had to go all the way out to the airport. She has decided to go ahead with Greece – she’ll take a train down tomorrow, and fly direct from Stansted to Thessaloniki.

 

My consultant rang up today asking why I had cancelled the colonoscopy. She seemed satisfied with the answer. She suggested my going into hospital for the preparatory days before the procedure. I agreed without enthusiasm that that might work. But she also seemed to agree that if “anything sinister” (the usual NHS phrase for cancer) turned up, they probably wouldn’t do much about it, given my age. We have a telephone consultation booked for next week. She will talk to gastroenterology in the interval. I’ve never actually met her – I liked her voice.

 

Knitting

 

I did a fair amount, as we sat around after our injections waiting for an anaphylactic shock reaction. Machu Picchu was perfect – round and round without lengthening the knitting or diminishing the ball of yarn. And I did a certain amount after we got home, while reading about Roman history.

 

Matthew (comment yesterday), thank you for the link to the ladder-back jacquard hat, which I watched with interest. I think I’ve got at least the rough general idea. The technique is completely new to me.

 

Cheetahs

 

You have to keep watching. They come and they go.

 

I found myself wondering whether they could be tamed. I’m sure their keepers try hard not to make pets of them. I get the impression that lions are as affectionate as domestic pussy cats, although they remain dangerous because of their size. I’ve never heard anything very cosy about a tiger. And I know you can’t generalise about an animal family from one or two members of it – zebras (or so they tell me) are completely untameable.

 

 

 

I will get my Covid booster tomorrow, fairly early. Helen will drive me. I’ve had no reaction at all to the first two (Astra Zeneca) or to my flu jab. Helen had an odd reaction to her first Covid, and for a while abstained from the second. We shall see. She is meant to go to Greece on Friday, but European numbers are not very encouraging and she is anxious, as my sister was when she was here, about the possibility of getting stuck.

 

A most encouraging photograph has been posted today of the Queen receiving a retiring general, stiff with gold braid. She is standing without a stick and seems comfortable in that posture (it’s not so much a photograph as a brief video). Helen is anxious for her (we all are), and afraid they weren’t telling us the truth.

 

The cheetahs come and go. It’s worth persevering. (Link yesterday)

 

I’ve had a good day, with some knitting. I’ve started reading “Rubicon”, a history of the late Roman republic, on Rachel’s recommendation. It’s very good, and perhaps a step up, intellectually, from the re-reading of Marjorie Allingham.

 

Vogue Live (or whatever it’s called) is about to happen. I am tempted by Amy Detjen’s “Ladder-back jacquard” (title not guaranteed, but I think that would give you enough to find it). I love Amy. She was at the first Camp Stitches I attended in 1999. I’ve got her Craftsy course on a yoke sweater. The point of this class is to teach a technique for colour-work with substantial blocks of colour in which, by some magic, you don’t have to catch the second colour in behind. If such magic is possible, it must be available on YouTube here in the third millennium, but it would be more fun to be taught by Amy. Alas, the timing – 6pm to 8pm British Standard Time – is too late for me. I’ve wilted by then.

 

I am sorry to have left you in the lurch. I have been feeling dim. The colonoscopy would have been today and I rejoiced in my decision. No knitting. Covid booster on Thursday.

 

I wonder if I should reinstate Italian lessons, for the sake of the discipline?

 

The cheetah kittens are back within camera range. They are four weeks old today, I think. The hind legs still don’t function entirely well but they are much more active, and much less dependent on snuggling into their mother. Here’s their address again: https://nationalzoo.si.edu/webcams/cheetah-cub-cam

 

Franklin continues to post almost daily on Facebook about his Parisian adventure, which continues to go well.

 

 

I was desperately grateful for your messages confirming my decision to cancel the colonoscopy. You put it in a nutshell, Rebecca: what are they looking for, and what do they plan to do about it if they find it? I don’t have any of the obvious symptoms of colon cancer. I have a telephone consultation scheduled soon with the man who ordered it “as urgent” and thanks to you, will go in with guns blazing.

 

Not much else. I have advanced the Machu Picchu somewhat. I have read a bit of this and that. Julie, I’m glad you looked up the knitted soldier. He is indeed remarkable. I don’t watch television much these days, but will certainly watch the ceremony at the Cenotaph tomorrow (if only to see how the Queen is looking).

 

Scotland played South Africa at rugby here in Edinburgh this afternoon. South Africa won. Wee Hamish’s parents Christina and Manaba were there; at least Manaba will have had a good time.

 

I cancelled the colonoscopy. It feels like the right decision. So far I have spoken only to a sympathetic nurse on the telephone. She said to discuss it with my GP. We’ll see. Meanwhile I am devoting myself to feeling cheerful.

 

The mother cheetah moved her kittens out a whole week ago. I do miss them, especially at this most enchanting moment of their young lives – we’ve missed their fourth week. I am sure the zoo is keeping a close eye on them, but they aren’t doing a very good job of reporting back to us.

 

I am desperately keen to see the new VK with Michelle on the cover. I am delighted, so far, with Norah Gaughan as editor. A favourite designer.

 

No knitting so far today. I may manage some this evening – I’ve got another podcast lined up. Nor am I much further forward with planning the knitting for the new great-grandchild. I think I’m inclining towards your suggestion, Ron: that square EZ shawl from the Almanac. A Log Cabin would involve thinking, even if we managed to eliminate sewing, and I don’t feel like thinking. And if done with sock yarn, as you suggest, that shawl would be easy to wash and colourful. And one could easily throw in some lacy motifs if so inclined.

 

Last night I wrote a whole little blog post for you, and then forgot to post it, no doubt because I was so agitated with my new idea of cancelling the colonoscopy. That’s why we’ve got two posts today.

 

My sister is safely back in her nest. The worst part of the journey was the traffic between Dulles International and home.

 I’m now facing up to my next ordeal, the colonoscopy next Tuesday. I am seriously weighing the option of ringing them up tomorrow morning and cancelling. Not for fear of the procedure itself, although I don’t relish it, but for the day of fasting and purging (Monday) and the danger of falling it will involve. I am weak, and I try to be careful about falls. I will be weaker still, after a day with no food and energetic laxatives. How many old people’s active life is ended forever by a fall, as opposed to how many suffer dire consequences from not having a colonoscopy? I’ll keep you posted. 

No knitting, but much pleasant thought about what to knit for the prospective great-grandchild. I like your idea of the EZ square blanket in the Almanac, Ron. It would be nice and easy. And I like yours, of a log cabin in Shetland wool, Mary Lou. That would be pretty easy, and fun, except for the seaming. I thought I remembered that there is one in Drop Dead Easy Knits – and sure enough, there is, although not under that name. That one has three-needle bind-offs instead of seaming. I don’t wholly understand the instructions but they would probably explain themselves as we went along. There seem to be some schematics missing. I need to get Machu Picchu up to the armpits soon and then assess my options. 

I heard about a “knitted soldier” on the radio yesterday, and have just looked it up. Type those words into Google, if you haven’t seen it already. It’s truly brilliant. It’s in Syston, Leicestershire. American Googlers might need to know that.

 

My sister should be pretty close to DC by now. She left here at 6:30 this morning. It’s now nearly 5:30 this evening. KLM via Amsterdam.

 

We had a good time, much overshadowed by Covid. First she had to self-administer a test and photograph the result next to her passport and send that to the Scottish administration in some form. And then – almost at once – had to get a more severe and more expensive test so that the Americans would let her go home. She was terrified of being isolated here for a fortnight. That test had to be done within three days of departure and there was no guarantee that she would have the result in time. In the event, she was tested Monday morning and had the result Monday evening. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves yesterday, without anything to worry about.

 

I have advanced Machu Picchu a bit – It’s now about 7” in all. I’m knitting an EPS along the lines of a successful one finished recently. Soon – but there’s no hurry – I’ll measure the successful one to see how far I’ve got to go until the underarm. And I’ve found the pattern, in a sense – I’ve got the .pdf on my computer. I’ve lost a printed copy. It’s a comfort to know I can print it again. And I’ve found the main-colour yarn for the Coofle. If it had been a snake it would’uv…

 

However, the knitting news is elsewhere. Rachel’s daughter Hellie rang up to say that that she and Matt are expecting their third child in April. Will this be a 7^th little girl to add to the clutch of great-grandchildren I’ve already got? She’s had the first scan (on which sex can’t be clearly established) and the suspicion is yes, a girl.

 

However, male or female, something must be knit. I rushed out and bought Seasonal Slow Knitting, thinking that it would be full of peaceful, reflective essays which would show me not only what to knit but how to scrabble around in my extensive stash to find something to knit with. No such luck. The author lives in Tennessee, to begin with, where the too-hot-to-knit months take up half the year. There’s a pattern for a baby blanket but it doesn’t tempt and it isn’t assembled from stash.

 

So I’ve pulled out every shawl book I own. EZ’s pi-shawl is a real possibility.

 

I think everything is ready for my sister tomorrow. The spare room looks almost elegant in Daniela’s arrangement, and Perdita has been turned out. It’s her room, really. I’ve had a huge order delivered from the supermarket, and a substantial one from Cook who make good frozen meals. I seem to have solved the hot water problem – as you hint, Helen (anon), it’s all a matter of pressing buttons. I’ve had my bath.

 

I got quite a bit of Machu Picchu knit today, and am almost finished with the first skein of yarn. That really feels like progress. This evening the wee remaining ball rolled under the chair I was sitting on. I tugged, and the yarn broke, and I looked under the chair and found whiskers (attached to a cat). Daughter Helen came soon afterwards and found the yarn. Still no pattern, however. It’s very odd. We’ve done a remarkable lot of work in the last few days sorting through piles of paper, to no avail.

 

A lot of the big shots have gone home from the Global Warming conference, including Biden. There has been a good deal of press coverage of the extraordinary number of private jets employed to bring them all here and take them away again. Alexander reports that Glasgow is surprisingly easy to move about in. He plans to come here on Friday to see Sister Helen.

(Biden slept in a hotel just outside of Edinburgh, presumably travelling back and forth by motorcade.)

I haven’t got any forrad’er with my microwave today. Sarah, I am grateful for your squash recipe which sounds delicious. I actually have everything here in the house, except that the squash isn’t acorn so I’ll have to do some juggling. It's one of those yellowy-orange ones shaped like an expanded figure 8.

I’ve just found a delicious-sounding recipe in a cookery magazine: it’s meant as a Christmas side dish – sprouts, kale, cranberries. I think it’s just the thing for my new machine to be unleashed on. (In the real world, you would roast it, and the cranberries would have been made into sauce in advance.)

 

 

 

La fete des morts

Again, there is little or nothing to report. Again, no knitting. No bath, either – the water wasn’t hot. It’s always hot, but we’ve been fiddling with the controls lately, trying to turn the central heating on. I think I’ve put it right – I must check before I go to bed. The boiler controls are every bit as bad as the ones for my new microwave.

 

The trouble with that is, it isn’t just a microwave. It’s also a convection oven (whatever that means) and an air fryer. I don’t think – from various comments here and there – that it’s desperately good at either of those two latter functions, but its party trick is that it can combine all three, as needed. I have been pursuing videos on YouTube, and have learned a little. The trouble is, the presenters either understand every button and function but haven’t really time to explain; or they are taking it out of the box for the first time and plugging it in and smiling, and don’t know any more than I do.

 

Chloe, I’ve heard from several sources that a microwave can be brilliant for vegetables. I think maybe I need some microwave-type containers with lids.

 

The cheetah kittens are three weeks old today. Their little legs are doing better at holding them up but they still can’t frolic about. This fourth week should make a big difference in that respect. Their spots are becoming more conspicuous under their mouse-fur.

 

William and Catherine, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who will one day be King and Queen, travelled to Glasgow by train for the jamboree, and have been going about doing public appearances in an electric car. That shows a proper respect for the topic, anyway. Biden arrived in three jumbo jets (one of them being Air Force One). But I don’t know whether the other two were for transporting limousines, or whether that was extra. Beverly (comment Sunday), I don’t think anybody needs that much protection.

 

Little to report. No knitting at all. But Helen is safely back from Down Souff, devoutly welcome.

 

I underestimated Biden. His motorcade in Rome involved 85 limousines. He seems to have taken only 20 with him to Glasgow. Air Force One landed here in Edinburgh this morning – presumably he proceeded to Glasgow by helicopter. This is ridiculous.

 

Today’s big event here in Drummond Place was the arrival of a microwave/dry fryer. I bought it from Lakeland, and have had an email from them this evening apologising for its non-arrival. Things are tough, they say, However, here it is. None of us can remember why I thought I needed one. Thirty years ago or so, I used to enjoy an evening in the bath reading an instruction leaflet. Those days are gone – I am afraid of falling, and avoid the bathtub. And instruction leaflets terrify me. I did manage to microwave a frozen meal for my lunch. (Wow!) It’s a start.

 

As for baths, Daniela now does that once a week, very briskly and efficiently. I am very lucky to have her, and to be able to afford her. I think theoretically the benevolent Scottish Government promises me Personal Care – my husband had it, and it was excellent, but he spent weeks blocking a bed in hospital before it could be arranged. Things have become more difficult since then.

 

 

The 25-hour day, usually a fave, has rather dragged this year.

 

We spent a year once (1960-61) in Northampton, Mass. My husband was teaching at Smith. There was a couple there, both faculty. She had a pile of marking to do that Sunday, and was hard pressed. At the end of the afternoon her husband came in and put a clock down in front of her: showing the new time. She had forgotten. A whole extra hour! It remains, after all these years, the most generous and loving husbandly gesture I have ever heard of.

 

I got up early (probably why the day has dragged), watched quite an interesting Andrew Marr show, knit steadfastly forward on Machu Picchu. At least I have learned to spell it.

 

He interviewed Greta Thunberg – she speaks very simply and lucidly in her second (or third, or fourth) language.

 

We also had a glimpse of Biden’s preposterous motorcade on his way to see the Pope. Eight, or perhaps sixteen, huge black limousines all of which had been flown in. So much for climate change. I wonder if he’s had them flown on to Glasgow. They'll certainly have to be flown home. I get the impression that Biden very much enjoys being King of the Castle, when abroad – they all must, to a considerable extent, but some of them have an endearing soupcon of modesty to go with it (Obama, Carter, perhaps even the Bushes).

 

 

I’m concerned about the Queen, as many of us must be. Ninety-five is awfully old. When she was in hospital overnight a few days ago, they told us it was for “preliminary tests”. Preliminary to what? The Palace usually uses language very carefully. Perhaps that was a rare example of someone groping for a meaningless four-syllable word. There has been no comment about it since.

 

I read somewhere that since then she has not been seen about Windsor walking her dogs. But of course she could have started walking them again – no one would have felt it necessary to tell me.

 

I’ve knitted peacefully forward on the Machu Picchu. I haven’t found any of the missing yarn or patterns.

 

Other

 

This morning in the Times I read one of those articles reminding us about distinguished novels of the past – “Mrs Bridge”, in this case. I bought myself a Kindle edition of it at once, as I often do in such cases. It’s a Penguin Modern Classic, no less. I don’t remember having heard of it before. And I am disappointed. I thought maybe it would be us but it isn’t. Mr and Mrs Bridge are ten years older than my parents, and there is a great gulf besides. Mrs Bridge votes as her husband tells her to. My mother was a socialist in the ‘30’s. She even had a cat named Norman Thomas but he left in a huff when I was born and my parents were more interested in me than in him.

 

That’s not a very serious critique, but I still was disappointed in the book. I guess I can see what the author was trying to do. I'll finish it. It's mercifully short.

 

 

This morning I saw that my keys weren’t in their proper place. I set Daniela to find them, and she did so at once. Those patterns must be somewhere really fancy, to elude her. Three of them (legwarmers, Coofle, Machu Picchu) – and the legwarmers are in a plastic sleeve so it would have been difficult to throw them out in a mistaken tidying of a pile of paper. My mother, by the way -- born in 1906, I think; raised in the mid west -- used to say that it was a snake that would have bit you.

 

I knit some more of Machu Picchu (although I ought to be knitting wee Hamish’s Calcutta Cup vest). It’s very peaceful and, as I’ve said, the yarn is blissful on the hands. I’m at that stage – and I’m sure we’ve all spent a lot of time there – where I can knit on and on (upwards from the initial ribbing) and never seem to make any progress at all. I think what I need just now is to get back into the way of knitting.

 

The pattern, wherever it is, is completely different. It’s top-down, with a shaped waist. I have no waist, so I don’t want that; and I agree with Meg that it’s much more fun to have the knitting of the beautiful yoke to look forward to. So I don’t really need the pattern for quite a while.

 

Other

 

For reading, I’ve gone back to Montalbano in Italian. The effort involved makes it seem vaguely more highbrow than Allingham. And I’m trying to think of meals for my sister, arriving next Thursday morning. Something I’m strong enough to rustle up and mildly, at least, interesting to eat. Chicken tray-bake.

 

Helen (anon), you’re right to beware of the Fake Parcel Scam. Rachel’s husband Ed got caught by it recently, and he’s fairly savvy. No great financial harm – perhaps none at all – but he had to change his cards, which is always a bore, and he felt foolish. I constantly have things delivered, mostly from Amazon but by no means entirely, and they’ve never tried that one on me. I constantly remember, and shudder at the memory, the time they nearly got me with you-need-to-move-all-your-money-into-a-safe-account.

 

I’m sorry about yesterday. I interact with the outside world so little these days that the simplest thing sends me into a tizzy – yesterday, a straightforward hospital appt to discuss my CT scan. And into a corresponding state of exhaustion afterwards.

 

The appt was at the nearby Western Infirmary, which was an improvement to start with. C. came with me. There were seats at the entrance. C. found a wheelchair. All went smoothly. The consultant said that the nodules – or whatever the word was – on my lungs in the scan are very common in the elderly, and 98% of them are harmless. I’ll have another scan in January to see how they are progressing. It’s always nice, as we plunge into the darkness, to have something in prospect for after the solstice.

 

Before we left, I set Daniela to find the Machu Picchu knitting – and she did. I did a certain amount of it yesterday afternoon and today. I think my fingers are recovering some skill – they never had much.

 

I have also found the Coofle colours, but not the main colour of which there must be four or five balls somewhere. And none of the missing patterns (Machu Picchu, legwarmers, Coofle), all of which have been here recently. I spent some time this morning sorting carefully, sheet by sheet, through Piles of Paper. No luck, as far as patterns are concerned, but by no means a waste of time.

 

Other

 

I hope some of you are watching the cheetah kittens. (https://nationalzoo.si.edu/webcams/cheetah-cub-cam). They’re now in their third week and putting on bulk. They’re keen to explore the world, as they have been since birth, but their hind legs keep letting them down (as with domestic kittens) despite the fact that they will soon be the best hind legs in the world. The notes say somewhere that cheetahs are the fastest land animal.

 

My sister has had a successful Covid test, clearing her for take-off. She’ll be here next week.

 

Worse and worse.

 

Here is (some of) the yarn, if I can retrieve the picture from the ether:

 

1)    You will see Carol Sunday’s Machu Picchu yarn there, in plastic to the left of centre. But I can’t find the pattern or the knitting. I had both yesterday. I thought I could sooth my stressed nerves by knitting a round or two of that lovely yarn. But it’s gone.

2)    The Coofle yarn isn’t where I thought my last-ditch effort would find it. I thought maybe I hadn’t unpacked it since the cruise. But no. Case is empty.That’s the actual knitting, centre front, corrugated rib conspicuous.

3)    As well as the Calcutta Cup vest (not shewn here) I plan to knit some Calcutta Cup legwarmers. I bought a kit from Jamieson & Smith. That’s the yarn, also in plastic, back left. I had the pattern recently. I showed it to Rachel when she was here. Now I can’t find it. I set Daniela to look for it this morning – she’s a brilliant finder, but even she failed. I think in the searching, she may have buried the Machu Picchu pattern (see 1)) – but that wouldn’t explain the absence of the M.P. knitting.

So, that’s today’s distressing news. And you’re absoliutely right, Cat and Gretchen, that the problem is that one doesn’t have the yarn one wants to knit right now. So why buy in advance? One never learns. Kirsten, one of the project bags on the right contains the beginning of an EPS sweater in odds and ends of stripes, all more or less Shetland weight. Would that be a possibility for your scrips and scraps?

 

And there is little else to report. Alexander came over and we did the same walk C. and I did on Sunday. If the weather holds, I must begin to think seriously of getting back across to the garden.

 

Well remembered on St Crispin, Mary Lou. It was on St Crispin’s day, 1952, That my friend Sylvia suggested that I join her and our mutual friend Ann the following summer in England.

 

 

Life edges forward (I hope). C. and I actually got out for a little walk yesterday. I’ve been much weaker today and didn’t repeat the experiment.

 

But I did organize a survey of my stash, which has dampened any desire to order more yarn.

 

1)    I’ve got lots of Madeline Tosh, although less than a sweater’s-worth of any colour. But plenty to let me embark on Brooklyn Tweed’s “Idiom”, if that’s what I want to do, and possibly even finish with adroit use of stripes.

2)    A surprising amount of  KD’s Schiehallion in various colours. I could knit her “Lilias Day” pattern ordering only a main colour.

3)    For a long time I couldn’t find the yarn for Carol Sunday’s “Machu Picchu”. Then I did. Was that just a year ago? I remember that I stopped knitting because it was this time of year and the black main colour was too gloomy for winter solstice knitting. But I had forgotten how wonderful the yarn is. It’s Sunday’s “Nirvana” – 90% merino and 10% cashmere. It slides most deliciously over the old hands.

4)    Oddly (because it’s so recent) I can’t find the Coofle yarn. I knit the corrugated rib for the body on my most recent cruise (employing all the colours) and am now moving forward with the solid-coloured body. That’s with KD’s Milarrochy Tweed which doesn’t slide deliciously anywhere. I’ve had an idea as to where the rest of the yarn might be. I’ll tell you tomorrow.

5)    An unbelievable amount more.

Reading is just endless Allingham. I’m pretty well finished with her.

 

Today, I believe, is called the feast of Crispian….