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Well, you know Spring is here when the clocks go forward. And last night, my subconscious decided to mark the occasion with a series of strange dreams. In the most disturbing one, peculiar birds pecked holes in my knitting. Pecking beaks! Ruined knitting! Horrors! Then one particularly evil birdie flew off with this:

I’ve been working on two new o w l s — one that will fit kids aged 4-10, one for bairns aged 9 to 36 months (the latter in a lighter-weight yarn). In my conscious mind, issues of sizing were merely an interesting conundrum. Little arms. Square bodies. Big swedes. I’ve spent the past week staring strangely at the heads of infants in the supermarket. I have carefully measured the dimensions of the kids of friends and colleagues. I have knitted yokes and necks several times over to determine the best fit and shaping. Owls have appeared, disappeared, and reappeared on my needles. Personally, I thought I was just getting on with it — and, in fact, had finally cracked the sizing puzzle when I went to bed last night. But I suppose it must have been the source of some unacknowledged anxiety, or my subconscious wouldn’t have invented my avian knitting nemesis — a kind of evil cuckoo to my goodly owl. I awoke with a start at 6am (5am in ‘old time’) and had to go and check that my prototypes were OK. Both mini owls were happily blocking in the living room, free from the unwelcome attentions of either bird or beak. I had a few cups of tea. Then I went to meet my wee pal Eva.

Eva is a sensible, no-nonsense individual. She just stuck one of the sweaters on and assured me it was all going to be OK.