As hoped, I have embarked on the Kirigami sleeves and am re-experiencing the delight of whipping around the circumference of a wrist after weeks of knitting my way around a body.

I’ve finished the ribbing. The sleeve shaping is done with a very fancy invisible increase which I can only hope I will eventually learn. I wish I had gone for the good old pick-up of the bar between the stitches. It’s not invisible, but makes, to my mind, an attractive little feature. Stephen West – it must be part of his Craftsy class – taught me a neat little mnemonic to determine which way the increases will lean:

I’ll be right back.

I left the front door open.

For a right-leaning increase, insert the left-hand needle under the bar from back to front, and so forth.

But EZ might have had me in mind when she wrote about Blind Followers. If Gudrun wants a fancy invisible increase, that’s what she shalll have.

Non-knit, exactly

I’ll be interested to hear, Kristen and Pattie, what you think of “Handywoman” when you have time to read it. And anyone else, of course. It’s certainly impressive. KD is an impressive woman. She remains anti-stroke, to the end of the book. But when it happened, she was in mental pain, losing weight, and had suffered two psychotic episodes. It is easy to see why her first consultant thought her stroke symptoms were “displacement”, or whatever the word is – he was thoroughgoing in self-reproach when he was proved wrong.

But surely her life now is better is any number of ways than it was pre-stroke, and Tom’s likewise. She’s not “better”, but she can walk two or three miles a day, and regularly does, as well as the other achievements with which we are familiar. The body is a mysterious thing.