Yes, Mary Lou, my brother-in-law Roger is the man who had a stroke just before last year's wedding. Well remembered. He has made a good recovery, as you see. There is still some slowness of speech and, alas, his fingering on the saxophone isn't as good as it was.

Your question made me reflect – Roger is roughly the age (mid-seventies) my husband was when we went to the USofA in 2000. I left him with friends in Boston and went to Stitches East for two nights and resolved – I can't entirely remember why – never to leave him again. And here is Roger, post-stroke, cycling in France and soon to make an independent trip back to Mozambique, where he and my sister used to work.

I got a bit done in the bedroom yesterday, and will shift my attention to the sitting-room today. I love solitude, but it's not good for me. I function much more usefully with folk about. The cat is not much help when it comes to rearranging furniture.

There is a certain amount of shopping to be done this week. We'll need a couple of hospital-type bedside tables. Some new square pillowcases. A big box of fancy chocolates to say thank you to the staff of Ward 71. I need not only to make lists but to assign chores to days. Of which but few remain.

I watched some of the rugby last night. No Downton Abbey after all. The experience has but added to my gloom. I left at half-time to go to bed (where I couldn't sleep, as it turned out). England were seven points ahead after two good tries and a drop goal (they're rare) and some first-rate penalty kicking. That's that, I thought. No need to sit it out.

But in the event Wales won a thriller. While I lay there fretting and could have been watching.

Knitting

I am well advanced with the second Dunfallandy square, and should polish it off today.

Bertie in the Netherlands sent me pictures of her magnificent Dunfallandy. She says she picked up only 110 stitches for the borders, and wondered if that was too many. So that settles that question – the pattern, as I mentioned yesterday, prescribes a number absurdly higher.

She also says that the sewing was difficult, although there is no hint of that in her finished blankie. Every row of squares and triangles begins and ends K1. Could one use the good old “slip 1 purlwise” instead, for a chained edge?

Melfina, one of the two Ravellers who actually finished the Dunfallandy, did it your way, not casting off the triangles but holding the stitches until wanted. I think I'll follow suit.

Non-knit

I discovered yesterday from a q&a section of Blogger that other people are having trouble uploading pics after a switch to Windows 10, and that Blogger has no solution. I'm sure they'll straighten it out eventually. Blogger prefers one to use Google Chrome, or other, as a browser, not the new Microsoft Edge. So I'm doing that. But presumably the problem with pictures goes deeper.