No pic, I’m afraid, but we had a lovely time.

Kate was enormously helpful about Shetland – names and addresses of people to get in touch with in advance, leaflets galore including one about walks, info on where to buy seaweed-fed lamb and how to get to Unst (which sounds like a perfectly possible, strenuous but delightful, day trip).

She thinks we’re just as well off not being there in Shetland Wool Week, when everything gets awfully crowded. Lerwick isn’t much bigger than Inverary, she says (visible in the picture above). What a wonderful thought!

It sounds, too, as if textiles are wonderfully well displayed in the Shetland Museum, with shawls and sweaters in pull-out cabinets so that, except for the glass, you can get up close and personal, far better than trying to peer into a display case.

And guess what she brought me for a present, on top of all this? – a ball of Rowan’s soon-to-be-released Fine Art yarn, so that I can knit my heel-swatch. She gets sent a lot of yarn. She has already knit herself a pair of socks with this one, and was wearing them. It’s slightly fizzy, not quite as firmly twisted as the sock yarn we are used to. Will it wear? That’s something a swatch won’t tell me.

I was surprised what a pleasure it was for me to talk about knitting. I write about it every day, and you guys respond wonderfully. But there’s no one in my little circle who knows anything about it, so I never get to talk, and it was an unexpected joy.

A very inadequate report of a very happy morning.

We’re all set to abandon potato-planting for the time being and go to Loch Fyne for the weekend. Alexander is even going to come to get us. I could perfectly well drive, as I did at Easter, but this way we get three hours extra both on Friday and again on Monday, riding effortlessly along in his company.

I will easily finish the Pakokku socks in time. My husband has a hospital appt this afternoon – that may even do it. I hope by Friday I will have made the final calculations and taken the necessary deep breath and cast on Relax2.