Somewhere I have a lightweight black wool fabric that the moths or woolly bears (larvae of carpet beetles) got at - I think I will take apart the sadly thinned out tartan kilt and reassemble it lined with the damaged black - so making a wearable garment out of two disasters.

It is really strange - every time the kilt is washed there is black water thick with particles, and the threads get thinner and thinner, but the colours are still good - just you can now see light through the weave. What was a fairly sturdy garment is now soft and floaty.

I have had a couple of goes at a knitted beret style 'Outlander' cap one lot by hand and the other knitted sideways on the machine. The first one off the machine I had not thought out very well and it was square - wrong technique for the shaping, I had used one for skirts, which of course require a nice straight edge, now I am doing the opposite which would give a dip in the hem, but of course that is what I want - in effect, a dip that goes all the way round in a curve to make a disc. The hand knit one will have a nice 8 panel pinwheel effect - not sure that is what I want for the ones to be sold, though. I am having to push back the nice and neat methods of working for this.