Life isn't all ha ha, hee, hee.

You might think it would be a simple matter to cast off stitches on one row and cast them on again on the next. Don't be fooled. It was a nightmare. I'm doing the armholes of the silk corset. Annie Modesitt says to use the i-cord cast off and do it loosely. Then the i-cord cast on, ditto. How loose is loose. Not this loose surely:



Far too loose. I just didn't like the look of it at all. I ripped it out. I managed to get all the stitches back on the needle and I decided to abandon Annie and her i-cord and resort to the old standby - Montse Stanley. What you are really doing is making a big buttonhole. So I used the one row buttonhole ("very strong and neat") and this has improved things no end:



Much better. It has slowed me down, though. I had hoped to be much further on than this by now. However, it's not a running race and there is plenty of time.

Just to prove that I do live in the wilds of Warwickshire, here I am knitting in the garden:



That is the corset, before the disaster of the armholes.

Very late last night, there was a huge commotion outside the back door. It sounded like some sort of huge animal. It was making enough noise to be a bear, or some such. As we don't, to my knowledge, have bears in Warwickshire, (though there is a bear on the Warwickshire crest), I thought it must be a fox or something. Wrong, all wrong. It was this little fellow:




lurking round the basil plant. I think he was having a drink.

Not even one stitch put on RFD, and it's almost time to go back to work. I just hate it when life intervenes.