Followers flooding in. Welcome, all!

Southern Gal, Interweave has got a new subscription scheme where for a monthly fee you can access all their on-line videos and TV programs, including new ones as they get added. I must have heard about it because I subscribe to Knitting Daily (which is free). The monthly fee was much too high for my taste – but now that I want to direct you to a webpage with more substantial information, I can’t find it.

I like your alpacas.

I must get back to Craftsy. I still haven't done my mattress stitch homework for Franklin.

Donice, thank you for the pointers to EZ’s pelerine (love that word) and Barbara Walker’s top-down cape. Both are open down the front, like an old-fashioned nurse’s cape; not that one would have to stick to that. The pelerine is in Knitting Around.

I’ve swatched the pattern from The Knitter once through. It looks rather nice. I haven’t “got it” yet, although it is very simple: six stitches, eight rows of which the returns are plain purl – and would be even plainer knit, if done in the round. Then the pattern is offset, so there are 16 rows before you get back where you started. I must try Bay Laurel.

And I’ve added the fourth round of eyelets to Relax2.

Gardening news

We had a downpour yesterday such as I have not seen for a long time. I got wet.

Everything grows in May, even for me. The Big Nameless Waitrose chilli fills up most of the kitchen window and has quite a bit of fruit on it, one even turning red. Waitrose suddenly had chilli plants again this week, a third of the present size of mine, heavily laden with chillis both red and green. It was tempting to start again, but I could no more throw away the plant I have nurtured since January than I could throw away the cat.

One of the little Apache chilli plants I bought more recently at Tesco has started to branch!

And those seeds on the front step have come up – huauzontle, sorrel, and finally the tiny green croquet hoops which will be Welsh onions. Everything is still very small in this cold, cold spring. There are no Jersey Royal potatoes in Waitrose yet, and the asparagus still comes from Peru: in mid-May.

Strathardle tomorrow, we hope. Am I strong enough?