The brown sock is my first ever. What is wrong with the picture? Yes, the sock is inside out. I could not figure out how to kitchener the toe, so I just cobbled it together. The lightbulb moment came when I was knitting my second pair of socks. No wonder the kitchener stitch didn't work! [Edit: the photo is in the comments. Second edit: and below. Facepalm.]

The pink socks are my WIP - I have progressed to knitting two at a time, magic loop, and am very pleased with myself.

My lesson for today: Never, ever try a new technique without watching the YouTube video first. I'm knitting a pair of port and starboard socks for a friend. Started one on small circs, then thought, this would be a great project to try two at a time. Knitted up sock two to match, and figured I'd just knit them on to one long circ. Yeah right. Off to watch the video now ...

I've just revived a second elderly laptop by installing Zorin - slightly more complicated this time due to a stubborn Windows partition (I just took a deep breath and deleted it). I swear it's running faster now than ever. It's not quite ten years old, a Lenovo Ideapad, so I'm very pleased to have saved it from landfill. The other Zorin laptop is even older, it's a little Toshiba Satellite. I bought a new battery for it a few years back and it's still chuntering along. It's been through a few Linux distros and seems happy with Zorin.

I've freaked myself out somewhat by reading about human anatomy (Bill Bryson, The Body). What a machine! All these processes going on all the time, glands spurting out this or that hormone, heart thumping away, kidneys filtering out the salt I sprinkled on my dinner. It's amazing and alarming. I could help things out by sleeping, but here I am, wide awake. 4.44am now ...

The Honey Pavillion at the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh. I worked here all day, moving from meet n greet to candle-making, education, honey tasting and finally, observation hive. A proper little worker bee! It was brilliant, if exhausting. Tomorrow I start on candle making duties, my favourite.

Needless to say, this is not me in the photo! 😁