It's raining. It has been a long time since we w9ke up to a day like this. When we got back from Strathardle last week, my poor doorstep plants were at death's door. They have recovered, on the whole, with no actual losses except a few nasturtiums, but what they really needed was a day like this one.

Another good day's knitting, yesterday. The last rank of Rams and Yowes now have faces, and the last colour change has been joined in. I fretted a bit more about the border, and tried Googling “Rams and Yowes border”. One forgets how very clever Google is – top of the list was this extremely useful blog post. As if some ghost in the machine had read all the hits – including a couple of my own – and had arranged them in order of usefulness.

The blogger, Artemiswolf, steam-blocked the centre when she finished it, and took the gauge. Then she knit a garter stitch swatch and took that one. Then she figured out how to put them together. The result was a different pick-up rate for the cast-on and cast-off edges and for the sides. She even goes on to tell you how to do it – to pick up 13 in every 16 stitches, it's pu 4, skip 1, pu 5, skip 1, pu 4.

She sounds to me like a woman whose knitting comes out nicely.

The result was considerably fewer stitches in the border than the pattern specified. She then knit it with wraps and turns, to avoid purling. If there's a Messy Corner somewhere, I can't see it.

So I think that's the way to go, perhaps without the wrapping and turning.

And the Unst Bridal Shawl border continues to advance. I'm knitting the 60^th bump, out of about 200. I broke a little cubic needle last night, which was sad but involved no loss of stitches.

Non-knit

We watched a bit of the Great Debate last night. I gather ITV decided it wasn't worth broadcasting to the entire United Kingdom – unbelievable. This morning's radio seems to think that Alistair Darling, speaking for the No campaign, did better than our beloved First Minister, arguing for independence. Thank God.

It's really going to happen, this referendum. It's terrifying. Someone in the audience last night asked what if we vote for independence and it goes wrong? Good question, I thought.

An article in the Scotsman recently suggested setting up an account in an English bank now, so that if you decide you want to move your savings away from Scotland, you can do it quickly. That seems like good advice.

Rachel sent some nice family pics yesterday. Her younger son Joe did a triathlon on Sunday – swim, bike ride, run. Afterwards they all went to Hellie and Matt's new flat to celebrate that and all the family birthdays that fall around now, four of them.