Strathardle today. Should be back here on Tuesday. My husband and I are pretty well agreed that a four-night’er is about all we’re capable of these days, desirable as it is to spend May in Perthshire. I mean to get the rest of the potatoes in, and the serious vegetables that don’t grumble about a touch of frost.

That will include unrolling my Seedbed Roll. It’s not just a roll with pre-sown seeds. I’ve used tapes and mats of that sort before, and had good results. This one has got a biodegradable plastic cover, too, which the little plants will lift up as they grow providing them with their own polytunnel. It’s got vents which will get bigger and bigger as the plants push them open. Sounds great. Watch this space.

Yesterday I had an appointment at the eye hospital which I found surprisingly stressful. All is more or less well – my cholesterol turns out to be raised; I need to go talk to my own doctor about statins. I hope it would be appropriate to say “slightly raised” but, although I know what my level is and what it should be, I don’t know the scale. The defective eye is performing slightly better than it was in November. It will have laser treatment in early June, not urgent he said. That will no doubt be stressful too.

So with all this – which wasn’t really very much – I didn’t get much knitting done. My eyes were out of focus for quite a while after I got home, and I felt drained. I managed perhaps one more repeat of the edging pattern, and a bit of bedsock while I waited at the hospital. For a breathless moment when I got there, I thought I saw a fellow knitter in the waiting room, but closer inspection revealed that it was (only) crochet.

I hope to polish off the bedsock while we’re away this weekend.

Princess-reports will be more boring than ever in the weeks to come, as I lose track of how many edging repeats I have done and anyway I don’t know how many will be required. There will be an exciting moment soon, however, when I reach a moth hole. It is on the edge of the border and will have to be repaired before I can attach edging. I promise before-and-after pictures in all their horror.

I have decided already that – unlike the meticulous – I will not fuss about balancing the number of edging repeats on one side and the other. I will have to shuffle my feet a bit as I traverse the final border edge to make things come out even, so that I end with a complete motif ready for lace-grafting. But that’s as far as I intend to go.

Kokoretsi (see yesterday) must be cousin german to the haggis.