It’s been a while. I’d like to say I’ve been ridiculously busy, but really I have mainly been eating cakes. Cakes at home, cakes out, all the cakes, all the time.

Despite my permanently sticky fingers, there has been progress on other fronts. I enjoyed using my V&A perpetual planner the first week, but I reserved judgement until I was back at work because that is when I tend to find the practicality starts to bite. I’m happy to say it has survived a week of daily toting without me once wondering if something else would be better. I am beyond pleased. I think Filofax may have spyware installed in my brain, however, because they seem to have noticed that I have turned my back on ring systems so they have rushed to bring out their Original Organiser (my favourite design) in what they term “Midnight Blue”. It’s hard to tell the exact shade from their photos, but whatever it is, it is the very colour which I have been begging them to release. The single colour that I have always promised myself I would buy if only they would oblige and which they have steadfastly refused to countenance. Contrary folk, the Filofax manufacturers!

Knitting stood still for a while. I thought, facing a whole week off work, that I would spend a significant amount of it happily ensconced on the settee with wool and needles, but that simply didn’t happen. Then, on the final night, I suddenly picked up the left front of my cardigan and whizzed on with it. I have, of course, spent the entire week at work wishing I could be at home knitting! (And I have the gall to label the Filofax manufacturers contrary…) I’ve had my evenings, though, and can proudly announce that I have completed the left front. I have completed the right front, too. I have also started on one of the sleeves. My needles have been on fire!

I am keen to get this cardigan finished because I am increasingly concerned that I need a new cardigan for work and this is not going to be it. I’m gestating an idea of what it should be, but I haven’t quite committed myself to it. That’s because my mind keeps wandering off onto the subject of how I could tailor my winter coat so that it actually fits my shoulders. There is a very small portion of my head in which my commonsense lives. It knows that I don’t have the skills to tackle such an enormous project. Yet the much larger part of my head, which is just a disco ball pinging crazy ideas at the mirrored floor we call reality, is sure that it would be quite simple. I don’t want you to think that I’m failing to be gradiose enough in my aims. I’m not just thinking about tailoring the entire bodice of the coat, I’m then going to completely reline it with some magical fabric that will be sturdy, decorative, and warm. I am so enamoured with this idea that I have completely set aside the idea I had about knitting myself a coat, because that would be ludicrous!

Reading this, I have to wonder if there is perhaps such a thing as too much cake.

This morning I finished the final page of the notebook I currently journal in, so tomorrow will see an entirely new book starting. I thought I knew what it would be, and then I didn’t know at all, and now it’s going to be something I didn’t expect, but which I am going to adore using every day.

And now, it’s time to get back to that sleeve because, if I know anything about knitting it’s that it doesn’t do itself.