For Ralph

All the 'D's of yesterday apply today too- perhaps ' dispiriting' could also be added.

The completion of this jersey for grandson Ralph hot off the pins last night, saved me a damp walk-about for a blip.

I realise that endless blips of my knitted goods could be construed as a kitten or swan blips so abhorred by son D77, but since he is what I can call a blipper of late, there is no reason for him ever to know that his mother's standards are slipping.

This jersey is knitted in North Ronaldsay wool bought on my June sojourn in Orkney. It is very thick, very warm and VERY scratchy.
This doesn't seem to bother the sheep who run feral over the seaweedy shores of that bleak most northerly island in Orkney, but it may well bother Ralph, a product of a more kindly West Yorkshire climate.

However should he consent be forced in to wearing it, I know he will never feel the cold again and he may well be able to run, skip and hop just like the sheep.

When His Lordship saw the jumper finished he was foolish enough to say that I would never think to knit him one like it; foolish because there lies in his drawer a thick cabled sweater lovingly knitted for him by me about 10 years ago and which is so unused it has never yet needed to be washed. Apparently, red is not his colour. Tant pis, say I.