I was amazed to find out that a friend’s grandmother was 83 years old. She didn’t look a day over 60. She spent a lot of time working in her garden in the sunshine, but she always wore a wide-brim hat and long sleeves to protect her skin.

I love the editor of the magazine where I find most of the patterns that I publish. When someone writes in to ask a question about a pattern, she often begins her replies with “I scarcely see how the instructions could be more clear…” or “This answer has been given so often that it hardly seems necessary…”.

You finish up a big doily and discover an area of slight grime that just won’t disappear. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? The real problem is that by the time you notice anything wrong, the stain has had weeks or months to set itself into the cotton.