I've mastered the lace edging pattern, I think, for the Unst Bridal Shawl and am enjoying, more and more, as I thought I would, the process of knitting it on. I only did three bumps yesterday – but on the other hand, I'm a good six inches along the course. I don't remember how many bumps there are altogether – I must have a note of it somewhere, but I don't mean to search for it. It's more fun like this.

Enough of the shawl will soon have been released from bondage that I should be able to take a more meaningful picture than we've had for a while.

I didn't succeed yesterday in locating the Nancy Thomas/Knitter's Scarves and Shawls book. My knitting books now well exceed their allotted shelf space. I would have hoped that that one would be in the Scarves and Hats pile in the bedroom, but it's not. It's probably in the Big Book pile here in the passage. In a situation like this a sensible person, like Franklin, with limited space, does some weeding-out. I've got dozens and dozens of knitting books that I may never open again. But the idea of weeding is unthinkable.

An archive somewhere? A banana box or two in the cellar?

And I ordered the new Elizabeth Lavold yesterday. I've never knit a stitch of hers, but I admire her extravagantly.

It's sometimes interesting to attempt a mental list of the dozen knitting books one will take along into one's care home – Knitting Without Tears, Heirloom Knitting: then what? The great thing is, one will have one's iPad and one will, of course, insist on wi-fi first of all, when choosing an institution. In this country, all those ads showing old folks happily taking tea with one another don't mention wi-fi, and I don't trust them. In the US, in equivalent ads, they're riding around on bicycles and I think wi-fi can be taken for granted.

How computers have changed the world! (Original thought: I think not.) Foggy Knitter said in her comment yesterday that my husband might be better off with a typewriter. I know, of course, what she means – but think of it: he is revising text, deleting a sentence here, adding a word there, editing a footnote. He could do it by hand, except that the pain and stiffness in his right hand makes writing difficult. A typewriter would be useless. Grumble as he does about the computer, it is making work possible for him.

When I arrived at the University of Glasgow in 1954, typewriter in hand, I was astonished that nobody else had one and that the local stationery store, supplying students, couldn't sell me a ribbon. Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. (Times change, and we change with them.)

Word promises well, and ...for Dummies turned up yesterday from the now-dreaded Amazon. I could scarcely have got myself organised and up to Waterstone's in the time. It looks like a good book, dense with information. I am impressed with what I have seen of the program, and furious that I can't get it on my own computer. Dammit, I've paid for it.

The author of ...for Dummies says that he prefers to work in “draft mode”. I'll have a look at that today – it may be less irritating for my husband. I fear, from what I saw yesterday, that he may have to learn to mouse. He has gone straight from a DOS-based keyboard to touch-screen, but there is so much in Word that keyboard and touch-screen combined may not be enough. Oddly – he is much more adroit than I am – he finds touch-screen difficult. He tends to jab at it, especially as he gets cross. And the computer sulks and doesn't respond.

I have always mouse'd with my left (non-dominant) hand. I know others who do. My husband could learn to do it that way.

Non-knit, non-computer

The new tax disc turned up in the post yesterday, the crown of a week's anxiety. It doesn't even have to be affixed to the car until midnight tomorrow.

Foggy Knitter, the Beijing cat is named Mimi. He was taken in when someone else abandoned him, and the name means something like “foundling”, I am assured, in Mandarin. His first problem in the Sydenham cattery is going to be explaining to everybody else why he has such a sissy name.