I got some things done yesterday – not many, but some, including winding (but not casting on) a skein of Old Maiden Aunt's wonderful yarn. Now I'm alone – Greek Helen and her son Archie are on their way back to Athens. It is fun to feed him. We had bean salad and fresh tuna for lunch yesterday, and Jamie Oliver's Pasta Peperonata for supper. No left-overs.

I won't get much done today. I have given up the practice of religion since all this started, but I think I will turn out this morning. It's Pentecost, and I love that list of all the places people came from, who heard the Apostles preaching in their own languages. Medes and Elamites...and the parts of Libya around Cyrene.

There was once an old woman who enthused to her priest about “that blessed word Mesopotamia”. That's how I feel about the Medes and the Elamites.

This will be the first time, in his second incarceration, that I have gone alone to visit my husband. I think he is half-resigned to the fact that I am not going to act against NHS opinion and try to get him out before they're ready to release him. But I am sure he will have something to say on the subject today. He is very weak. We are all hoping that energetic physiotherapy can make a difference soon.

Largely knitting

Mary Lou, I once had supper with Lily Chin, at or after Camp Stitches on the shores of Lake George in 2001 or some such year. I'm not trying to trump you – I'd much rather dine with Nancy Bush. Zite produced the video the other day of Lily crocheting that sweater for Letterman. She has weathered the intervening 15 years rather better than I have.

I remember her appearance on Franklin's brilliant list of stasher movies. For what it's worth, Safari on my iPad couldn't find that reference. I tried several approaches. Google had not the slightest difficulty.

Somewhere in the last few days I have read the words of someone – Tom of Holland? – who enjoys winding wool for the chance it gives him (I'm pretty sure it was a man writing) to get acquainted with the yarn. That's rather how I feel. I thought about colour as I was winding yesterday. This beautiful yarn is 70% alpaca, 20% silk, 10% cashmere. I believe that cashmere is not very good for colour – I believe that because I was so disappointed when I first saw cashmere Koigu. All the sparkle and glow was missing. And one certainly couldn't blame the dyers' skill.

Silk takes colour most wonderfully of all. So what about alpaca? Does it count as wool (which is of course splendid for colour)? But alpaca is sort of a goat, like cashmere, isn't it? Have I made too hasty a judgement about cashmere? The world is full of interesting questions.

I continue to keep myself company with Craftsy. When I've finished Eunny on lace I mean to go on to cables. Eunny was telling me yesterday about stretchy cast-on's for lace, and I thought of the wisdom of the system I prefer for Shetland shawls, where the only cast-on or bind-off is 20 stitches or so for the edging. (Pick up stitches for the borders from the long, straight edge of the edging; knit the borders inwards; knit the centre back and forth, taking in stitches from the adjacent borders; graft the final centre stitches to the live stitches of the fourth border. I don't mind grafting.)

But what I also wanted to mention was Bush's lesson about attaching the edging to an Estonian shawl. It's sewn on, with a complicated system of gathering in the edging to fit – 3 to 1, 2 to 1, or 1 to 1. The materials for the Craftsy sample shawl specified the sequence precisely, and needless to say, when Bush did it, it came out precisely right. It wouldn't for me, I'm sure. And it also seems unlikely that Estonian knitters have the scheme written out for them. I must look at her book.

But the thing that really puzzled me was that the sewing-on was done with a single length of yarn. You leave it attached to the ball and pull it through. It worked fine for the small sample shawl. But could you do that on a full-sized one? Again, I must look at the book.