That's a picture of the new sock I started on the bus on my way to my eye appointment on Saturday. It's a Socka Color. I prefer the exhuberant self-patterning of Socka socks to the stripes and Fair Isle of Regia-type yarns, clever as they are. This one promises to spiral interestingly. I haven't decided yet who'll get it. All being well, I will have two hours today on a train to Pitlochry, which should advance the new sock nicely.

So we'll be away for the next few days -- no blog. If I hear from the doctor that the second cataract can be done this coming Saturday, we'll be back on Thursday. Otherwise perhaps not until the weekend. Helen and her sons are now established at Burnside. She said on the phone last night that there seems to be plenty of lettuce in my garden. We shall see. The Gospel at Mass yesterday was the one about darnels amidst the wheat. I'm expecting solid darnel.

I'm up to repeat 40 of the Princess Shawl edging -- the half-way point (42 1/2) is now very near -- and I will need more yarn in the imaginable future.  A certain amount of trouble continued, last night. I've done half a repeat this morning, and all seemed well. I stopped thinking about numbers and charts and Trying Hard to Concentrate, and instead tried looking at the knitting as I worked -- advice, I think, of EZ's. Not only did all go well, but I knit the first half, rows 1-10, without reference to the chart.

Non-Knit

I wrote a couple of days ago about switching banks. We have been with the Bank of Scotland, Blairgowrie, since the dawn of time, and all of our children bank there as well. We are all disgusted with the current state of things, although only my husband and I have taken the bold and complicated step of leaving. I had a wonderful message from Helen (not my daughter) yesterday:

"I thought you might like to know, if you don't already, that the staff at the Halifax/Bank of Scotland refer to the management as The Haleban."