We lost. It's not that we wuz robbed – it's just that we lost the match.

I'm much better. Rachel called the NHS 24 number on my behalf. A pleasant young dr eventually came. He thought I had nothing worse than a cold but left a course of antibiotics anyway. They seem to have wrought a prompt improvement.

I didn't visit the hospital yesterday. Alexander went, before the match, and says that his father was weak and breathless but in good spirits. He has been moved to the wonderful Royal Victoria building which has private rooms with en suite facilities. Good, in one sense. No sumo wrestlers or singers of Burns in the next bed. Worrying, in another – that's where he spent all those weeks last year. Alexander doesn't think there's much hope of getting him home before social services' 72-hours rule comes into effect and home help is withdrawn.

I'll go today. Perhaps I'll take that sock along with the thought of just sitting around quietly for a while.

I finished casting off the Dunfallandy blankie yesterday. Maybe I can proceed to actually finishing it today. There's not much to do.

London: now comes Wednesday. On Wednesday I went to Loop, where I met one of you by arrangement. It's a wonderful place!

I think I've found the madtosh shade I want for a basic v-neck long sleeved DK sweater for my husband. It's called Tannehill. It's dark green. I'm surprised I hadn't noticed it before. Neither Webs nor Jimmy Bean seems to carry it (I have subsequently found) – that may be partly why. It's on Loop's own website of course – the skeins I held in my hands that day were darker than they appear on screen.

Anyway, Loop didn't have enough and I've left an order. I've since found a US supplier who does have enough and am tempted to rush ahead.

Nothing else really grabbed me. They had a box of some very attractive sets of graduated colours – I wish I had made a note of what exactly they were. The title had the word "sock" in it, but the little packages didn't look as if they had enough yarn for a whole serious pair of socks, and anyway they were pure merino and I want some polyamide or whatever it's called in a sock yarn.

Sets of graduated colours seem suddenly to be everywhere. Even Koigu is doing it.

I bought Perdita some point protectors while I was there. She is obsessed with point protectors. I have a little olivewood bowl on the table in front of me when I knit, for stitch markers and safely pins and the like. I bought it in Athens last spring. She will go through it with careful paw, looking for point protectors. When she finds one, she will throw it vigorously around the room.

But eventually she will mislay it, and then we need more.