Trouble, yesterday. I succeeded in dropping the first (= wrong-side last) edging stitch of the Unst Bridal Shawl, the one that is knit together with a stitch from the border, with the result that the whole thing simply unzipped, detaching the edging. Well, not the whole thing, but I had to go back a fair way before I could grab everything securely. A rueful look this mornng reveals not as much mess as I feared, although there's an ugly hole at the join.

One good thing: knitting it back together, I discovered (as I had begun to suspect) that I don't need the marker to distinguish the next-border-stitch-to-be-incorporated.  Moving it every time was a bit of a fiddle which can now be eliminated.

The June ball of yarn has several days to go, at the very least. I thought that maybe those long, long garter stitch rounds at the end of the borders might have speeded things forward a bit, yarn-consumption-wise, but no.

I did a bit more book-sorting, not much. I think I'm going to take Debbie New's “Unexpected Knitting” into the care home with me. I still haven't determined on an Aran book. It'll probably have to be Starmore. Foggy Knitter, you're right that we're going to have to ask for more shelf space when we get there. Meanwhile, the pile of books to be relegated – sorry, archived – is not very big. And that's meant to be the point of the operation.

Since knitting is rather unsatisfactory today, and there is no news from distant family, I'll settle for horticulture.

I learned yesterday, from the London Library magazine, that Dickens once remarked on how “the poor man in crowded cities gardens in jugs and basins and bottles”. Just like me!

Things are going well on the doorstep. The lollo rosso lettuce is in production – it doesn't taste of much, but it saves me ever having to buy lettuce. The other pot in this picture is beetroot. I am hoping for some delicious tinies by the end of the summer.

And similarly, for some tiny carrots from this trough. The courgettes should be blooming soon.

The peas in the tripod are splendid, with lots of nascent pods. Why didn't I grow mange-tout? Perhaps because the plants are usually six feet high. I'll search the catalogues this winter for a compact one. It is interesting the way they seem to be shrinking back from the precipice and leaning towards the railing. We should be in Strathardle fairly soon and I think I may weaken and bring back some pea sticks for them.

There's a courgette in the middle, as I think you can see. Will it be able to raise its flowers to the sun?

Here is the poor courgette which had its first true leaves pecked out when we were in Strathardle over Pentecost. It would have had to come out anyway, no room for it, but I kept it to see what it would do. As you can see, it is alive but confused.

Non-knit, non-horticulture

Thank you for the info about setting a default file location in Word, Ghislaine. I'll go try in a moment, when I finish here. The method sounds very plausible,