That’s a week of Lent done – only five and a half to go. Apart from the glow of virtue and the jewel added to my heavenly crown, the plus for me is the fact that I am guaranteed to lose a bit of weight if I can refrain from substituting chocolate for the missing calories in Weston’s Vintage Cider.

Here are the first pics of the Relax in its current form. I pinned it out over a white towel so that you could see the eyelets – they have turned out far more conspicuous to the camera than they are to the naked eye. You get the idea, anyway. This first picture shows the edging firmly pinned. The gap is where the round is joined -- that's all right: 

And in this one, the edging has been allowed to flip the way it wants to do:

I measured it while it was in this convenient state, and was pleased to find that (if arithmetic serves) I have progressed a whole 20% of the distance to the underarm. That’s better than I'm doing with Lent.

I will have to have a go at that edging with a steam iron. If it resolutely refuses to lie flat, I’ll have to do another inch before the underarm.

Not much else. What about Brandon Mably’s new “Scottish Knits” from Interweave? It looks very jolly, but I think I don’t need it.

Non-knit

I am very grateful indeed for the technical help. I wish I had a son here, or an elder grandson, to talk it over with. I think I have decided to upgrade the modem to the new BT version, and to keep your note about the devolo, Provisionalkitchener, in Evernote in case that isn’t enough. James bought a booster of some sort once and spent long hours struggling to configure the computer to support it, without success.

That was probably before I switched to BT.

I’ve just been reading the customer reviews for the devolo on Amazon. (What a useful feature that is!) It certainly sounds good, and it certainly sounds easy. So that can be Step 2 if the new router isn’t enough. And my sister pointed out yesterday that wi-fi in the bedroom can be useful as one succumbs to the infirmities of old age. Cheerful thought. One could simply plug the larger devolo in there.

That leaves Windows 8 towards which I am, so far, thoroughly hostile. I haven’t decided yet whether the version on the Surface is the real thing, or somewhat truncated. I’ve got “Windows 8 for Dummies” and am making some progress, but not enough. Googling reveals that uploading files to the Dropbox app (as opposed to the plain-vanilla Dropbox) is impossible for everybody. That’s some comfort.

This is the house we are going to look at next week on Helen’s behalf, in a drawing made by a friend which we have transformed into a place mat. It's called Strathview, and the view must indeed be wonderful. The house will be too small as it stands. Part of our brief is to assess its capacity for being extended. She insists, among other things, on a kitchen where people can congregate.