You’ve hit the nail on the head, Shandy – if Lucy decides to wear the Princess, it will severely restrict her choice of wedding dress. And (another thot) she may not want to be enveloped in her husband’s family quite yet. Like the Middletons moving those trees into Westminster Abbey, she may prefer to stamp her own mark on that day before becoming a member of that family, and Thomas of hers.

Still, I’ll ask.

I found the famous Piecework without difficulty. The Rorem shawl is a bit bigger than the Princess, assuming I’ve knit the Princess to gauge. The Princess should reach the floor, but not trail on it.

Getting out Sharon Miller’s patterns, to find the Princess envelope, filled me with the desire to cast all aside and knit one of her other biggies. The Unst Bridal Shawl! The Shetland Lace Wedding Ring Shawl! Like a jigsaw puzzle junkie contemplating the next 5000 piece number. There's nothing like it.

Back on planet earth, I’ve finished Phase One of the BSJ, still determined to keep a grasp on what I am doing this time. I am much encouraged by your comment, JeanfromCornwall.  You say that the purpose of the flap (which my version doesn’t have) is to make the whole thing longer “without increasing the widths of the front out of proportion”. My version, being double-breasted, allows the fronts to increase. That makes sense.

In all my previous BSJs, I have simply knitted on, carefully following the instructions (you’ve got to) but otherwise totally at sea as to what was happening. This time, I hope to do better. The cast-on edge is the top of the back, both body and sleeves. I understand that, and I’ve just about finished Phase One, in which one knits the back downwards (obviously), inserting mitres which separate sleeves from body.

Next (=today), I’ll insert some extra stitches across the back, and then start increasing along the lines of the mitres. I think I’ll put in stitch markers to designate the 62 stitches for the back, which will presumably continue on downwards as I increase for the fronts. The cast-off edge is at the bottom of the jacket. It becomes clear from that fact that the front pieces which will be seamed at the end to the cast-on edge, must be selvedges, coming in at a 90 degree angle. I think I’m making progress.

Meanwhile, Relax2 lies there untidied and unblocked. But I’m going to Shetland at the end of next week – it’ll have to be ready by then. Be still, my beating heart.

Computer problems

On the whole, we’re doing better these days. My husband cries for help less often. Occasionally there are formatting problems, and I prefer to fetch his work down from the cloud and resolve those in Word on my desktop computer.

I am always very careful to make sure, in that situation, that I am loading his most recent effort. And, at the moment, we’re stuck. His laptop insists that it is connected to the Internet. The files he has worked on and saved to Dropbox, are correctly dated, when viewed on his machine. But when I try to download them, “my” Dropbox has only out-of-date versions for the two or three most recent files. How to kick Dropbox into action?