The fifth repeat of the 19 needed for the centre of the Unst Bridal Shawl is finished, and Archie was safely and easily delivered to the airport. Edinburgh was calm when I left him at about 1pm (Edinburgh has got off very lightly in this extraordinary winter) but he had a long wait for the plane – he was fortified with a well-stocked Kindle, he said. Edinburgh got stormy in the afternoon. He was flying to Heathrow where he had another long wait for the plane to Athens – and London got very stormy in the night.

So I'll be glad to have news of his journey.

And I gather the east coast of the US is covered in snow from Georgia northwards. The last time I spoke to my sister, she was dreading loss of electricity. A couple of winters ago, they were seriously thinking of getting a generator, but summer came and proper air conditioning became a priority.

I have been thinking about shawls – Edinburgh is getting off lightly, but even so, sometimes one wants to huddle. I'm sure I've said before that Alexander went wandering when he and Ketki lived in India, and came back with a Pakistani shepherd's shawl (woven) for me. My husband has appropriated it, so that's out. Something heavy-ish, simple but not too simple to knit. A motif blankie like no 25 in the new VK?

That particular one takes 54 balls of Debbie Bliss Rialto Chunky, which would presumably cost more than the mortgage, and involves purled garter stitch, which doesn't sound very nice. But I've got the book – Mary Walker Phillip's “Knitting Counterpanes” and might have a look.

Not that I don't have plenty of knitting on hand.

Lynn, thank you for your help with my recondite computer problem. I've wandered about a bit myself, guided by you Tools>Footnotes/Endnotes will replace Roman numeral numbering with Arabic, and Insert>Section may help to get rid of “sections” which is the last thing we want. My husband hit another such file last night, and got pretty cross. He also found half of it missing, and was rescued by CTRL-Z. I have, inexcusably, forgotten who of you it was who taught me that one. It has been absolutely invaluable. I got to him just as he was about to re-load the file, which would have cost him all the work he had just been doing.

Cookery

Last night I made the World's Easiest Recipe – Delia Smith's Greek lamb, from How to Cheat at Cooking. You take a neck fillet of lamb and cut it into chunks. You insert a fragment of garlic into each chunk, You season with salt, pepper and generous lemon juice. You encase in foil and bake at a very low temperature for about 2 ½ hours.

I use a double casing of foil – nothing must escape. Timing is also important, and slightly difficult. The meat must be meltingly tender, but it mustn't dry out.

I wondered if a similar technique would work for tough chunks of beef, perhaps – at this time of year – with the juice of a marmalade orange instead of lemon. Trouble is, if it proved a flop, you're left without any supper.