I am sorry for the gap. All is well here, more or less. I am sorry to have worried you.

My husband is still in hospital, ready to come home, from his own point of view as well as theirs. We are waiting, much as we were late last year, for Social Services to restore our Care Package.  Greek Helen is now here, today and tomorrow, and Ketki should be back at her desk this morning, after the half-term break. Both are forceful characters, far more than I am, and with any luck may be able to get something done.

We need to find out who, exactly, at the hospital is responsible for dealing with Social Services on my husband’s behalf.

Archie and I lived peacefully here last week, he working towards A-levels, I spending much of the day with my husband, knitting. In many ways this life, even in Archie's absence, is easier for me than life when my husband is at home and we live all day with carers and diabetic nurses coming in and a metronome always ticking: but even so, I find it hard. Hospitals are draining even when nothing happens.

So, knitting: I have resumed the Tokyo Shawl. If any of you ever knit it, and have occasion to leave it aside for what might prove to be a considerable while, I can recommend my practice: namely, knit the first row of the next band before you stop. In that way, you can pick it up and knit on before you have to make the next decision.

The colours, at least in the dark version which I am doing, are subtle and not all that easy to distinguish. It’s easier to do when you have been knitting for a bit and have regained courage. I am doing Band 26 of 29, and mean to press on to the end before I do anything else. It would be wonderful to have a Tokyo shawl to wrap around myself in this horrible February weather. No doubt, when I do finish, it will be all daffodils and lambs.

And when I visit my husband, I knit those socks. The first Arne & Carlos sock is finished, the second well started – only a round or two to go of the initial 50-round ribbing. With that done, the rest will knit itself.

I think the only other knitting news I have is Lucy Kellaway’s full page article about Fair Isle knitting in last weekend's Financial Times. It disappoints in various respects, most especially in her treatment of Jamieson & Smith – but, hey! all publicity is good publicity. I wonder if, while on Unst, she took the opportunity to go have a look at Muckle Flugga. She missed a good thing, if not.