I hope you're all having a nice Thanksgiving – and Hannukah. I learned on the radio this morning that they coincide this year, for the first time in millennia.As for me, I'm afraid I'm sunk in gloom. It's always like this: I trot on through early November thinking, this isn't so bad, what's the fuss about? and suddenly find the Black Dog waiting at the kitchen door.

Yesterday's unsettling news is that our youngest niece has breast cancer. My husband's only sib, his younger sister C., died of colon cancer two and a half years ago, as many here will remember. She had three daughters – the eldest, another C., lives here in Edinburgh and it is with her that I go for walks from time to time. That relationship, as it has developed since her mother's death, means a lot to me. The middle daughter, A., is a chronic invalid, also Edinburgh-based. The youngest, F., the peacemaker since her earliest years, lives in Glasgow. She is the subject of the bad news.

She will have a lumpectomy next week. (Sixty years ago, I met the man – Geoffrey Keynes – who pioneered that operation as an alternative to radical mastectomy.) I had a very upbeat email from her this morning – she went to the hospital for some pre-op prepping yesterday, and disgraced herself by walking up ten flights of stairs thereby distorting heart-rate and breathing. She has been told to take lifts in future.

She has done a lot of charity walking and, I think, marathon-running, for cancer research since her mother died, and feels that her own diagnosis is rather unfair.

Lots of people get away with it, these days. Lots more have years of excellent health before the damned thing comes back. But we've now got to live with the shadow of extra anxiety, at best. And F. has pain and fear on her immediate agenda.

Other

I'm using Open Office here on my new computer. It works fine, saving things as Word documents and communicating with the outside world. I thought I could bring Excel databases over with the same ease. Not so, I discover. My Christmas list! My income tax files!

Alexander and Ketki, like Archie, were not sanguine about my chances of porting programs across from the old computer. I decided to get a Man In, instead of sending for Laplink. I must do that today.

Knitting

Back to the routine, yesterday. Three more rounds of Rams & Yowes – half of a little filler pattern between the boys and the girls. Yarn then re-attached to the left back shoulder of Milano and that task polished off. I now have several peaceful evenings ahead knitting the front before more shaping will be required.

It's time the yarn for the Sensible Christmas Project turned up – especially as it is likely to be delayed another day or two by the need to pay VAT.