Ginny, yes! That’s the link I was hoping someone would provide to the post of Franklin’s about knitting lace. I thought he had been talking about silk rather than cotton, but the effect was precisely the same as my attempt to knit the Princess edging in pure silk.

I finished row 200 of the border last night – a good place to pause.








The weather is grey and cool. I have packed up my potatoes in a box rather than try to carry them up in their sprouting tray, filling the car. Potato sprouts are pretty tough, as we all know from the state of the vegetable rack this time of year.






Bloglines is down this morning, so I spent my usual search-of-inspiration quarter hour wandering around unfamiliar territory. Lorna, I loved Celtic Memory Yarns, and recommend it to lovers of green Ireland. I was interested in her remark about "the traces of earlier habitation, when Ireland's population was larger", with evocative photograph to accompany. (Scroll down a bit.) We have very similar ruins in Kirkmichael. One of Our Walks is to the "ruined village" which sounds a lot better than it is. I always thought everybody left and went to work in Glasgow, when the land no longer needed a lot of labour. We have seen the same thing happening in the 40 years we've been there -- farmers used to employ shepherds and tractor men. Now they do it all themselves.



Ginny, I enjoyed the Black Bunny Hop cooperative, and will try to keep mental hold of the idea of the Scroll Stitch Scarf idea for a forthcoming issue of The Yarn Yard sock club – or even for the beautiful April yarn, so far untouched.

So – off to the West Port and let us gae free. We should be back by next Thursday, the 26th, at the latest. That being the day of Sotheby’s Scottish Sale.