New Knitters

Joyce was amazed. "I had someone in today asking about our knee blankets," she said. "How do people know about them?"
We giggled. "Come on - Hay runs on gossip," we said.
The lady was enquiring on behalf of her 92 year old mother, who had been knitting sweaters for Oxfam. She'd got the impression that they didn't want any more, and then she'd heard about the Stitch n Bitch project for the East Radnorshire Day Centre. Her daughter took away some written instructions and a couple of balls of wool.
Later that afternoon, a chap came in to browse, and admitted that he'd love to learn to knit, but he was a bit embarrassed to come along to Stitch n Bitch evenings. Joyce offered to teach him privately, if he knitted a few squares for the blankets in return.
So we have two more knitters involved.

Instructions for squares: cast on 1 stitch; increase by 1 stitch each row until you reach 40 stitches, all in plain knitting (garter stitch). Knit 1 row of 40, and then start decreasing by 1 stitch each row.

Meanwhile, Castle Street is now closed for the next couple of days while the workmen re-surface. The first thing they've done is to dig a trench down the middle of the road. Apparently bad weather has caused the pipes under the road to be dislodged, which has caused the slumping of the surface and the potholes so they're going to re-lay the pipes and then resurface.