I’m enjoying my new knitting project so far. The Riverknits Nene yarn is 100% Blue-faced Leicester wool, beautifully soft and lustrous, a joy to work with. This counts as a luxury yarn in my knitting world.

The colourway translates to blackberry branch, or bramble as I’d call it, and it is remiscent of knitting that you’ve dropped into a large bowl of stewed bramble and apple. Which basically just makes me want to go and make crumble.

I’ve made a decent amount of progress, although I’m already worrying that I don’t have enough of the main colour. This is just foolish second-guessing and I need to get a grip on myself. If the back takes a little more wool than I anticipate, the fronts will take a little less and it will all work out okay. In fact, since I haven’t decided yet how long the cardigan will be, trying to estimate at this point how much yarn it will take is exceptionally ridiculous.

As you can see, I have treated myself to a copy of Simon Armitage’s epic prose-poem The Death of King Arthur – a translation/interpretation of the Morte d’Aurthur. I’m tempted to make a start on it, but I will hold off until I’ve finished the book I’m currently reading. This edition is printed by Faber and Faber. I subscribe to their newsletter and this came up recently with a little price reduction for subscribers. I was expecting it to be a slender volume, but it’s actually quite substantial – about the thickness paperbacks used to be in my youth. I’m looking forward to culling some quotes for my diary.

Knitting my pink top reminds me that I’ve been toying recently with the idea of getting my hair dyed again. Time was when I would regularly have a colour put into it and it had turned quite pink just before I reverted to my natural colour. Not exactly Zandra Rhodes, but heading in that direction. So today I took the first step on the path and went off to the hairdresser for a cut. As I sat in the chair watching the soft snowfall of lopped ends floating towards the floor, I was so taken with the colour my hair naturally is that any thought of dyeing it went out of the window. It’s not that I ever had a particularly stunning natural colour – mouse would cover it – but I do like the shade of silver that’s gradually taking over (less mouse, more Russian Dwarf hamster). That’s not to say that I’ll never head to the dyepot again, but the itch has subsided for the moment.

So, that’s today: knitting, dying kings, and grey hair. What sort of Wednesday have you had?