F. got the results of her tissue tests yesterday, and they weren't as good as we had all psyched ourselves up to expect. She will have surgery on the 23^rd to take more tissue – still not a radical mastectomy – and more lymph nodes. A bummer. My experience of life is that the last-minute-improvised Christmasses are the best ones, but that may not apply here. The 23^rd is her younger son's 10^th birthday.

Our newspapers are full these days with stories about how the NHS is crumbling beneath the weight of our demands on it. Our personal experience has been – as here – that it's terrific.

I got Archie safely to the airport. Like his father, and like me, but strikingly unlike my husband, he prefers to get there in plenty of time. It was a disease with my mother and her father, getting there early. But it makes for a relaxed drive, certainly, and I've mastered the complexities of airport parking by now, so there was nothing to do but enjoy Archie's company. He asked on the way why Edinburgh is called the Athens of the North. He had difficulty, himself, in thinking of two places more different.

I answered in terms of Hume and the Enlightenment, as corresponding to Socrates and his pals. With a nod to architecture. When I told my husband about the conversation, he thought I had it about right.

Not much knitting, and still no mattress stitch. The front of the Milano is approaching neck-and-shoulder-shaping time. The comfort of those wonderful yarns on my fingers, and the sight of those satisfying stripes, are very welcome in these dark days. An argument, perhaps, for going to to the Ravello.

Christmas

I have still about 20 cards to write, and I'm not going to get them done. I must examine the list and pare it down to people from whom I am anxious for news.

I realised earlier this week that, despite the daily inflow of parcels, a book I had ordered from Amazon 10 days previously (as their website confirmed) hadn't turned up. Most unlike Amazon. I decided that it was no use fussing – by the time we got the matter straightened out, Christmas would be over and done with. So I ordered another.

You'll have anticipated the punch line – both copies arrived yesterday. The costs were significantly different. It's not a book it's going to be easy to offload on anyone else on the list. Bill Gates recommends it, and the reader-reviews on Amazon are enthusiastic. That doesn't help.

Reading--

I am engrossed in Kate Atkinson's “Life After Life”. I used to like her a lot, but recent ones have seemed increasingly preposterous. You've probably read reviews of this one – it sends its heroine (and therefore the people she moves among) down different possible life-paths, dipping and weaving back and forth. From the reviews, it sounds confusing and irritating. I don't know why I ordered it for my Kindle app – I needed something to read, I guess.

It's not confusing and irritating. It's brilliant.

And it sets one thinking about the cruces (plural of crux) in one's own life – the moments when everything, or at any rate most things, or at least some things would have been completely different if matters had turned out otherwise. If my husband hadn't come to that party I and my flatmates gave in February, '57 – he was only the friend of a friend of a friend. We needed a few more chaps. It was unlike him, then as now, to accept such an invitation.

Not much this morning. Not much was done yesterday -- certainly no mattress stitch. Archie is safely here, and seems in good spirits. And the car is back.

The problem there, Jean, was partly my own indolence but also the fact that our garage had perished, unknown to me. I thought an estimate had been submitted to the insurers, when it hadn't. Once a cross letter from the insurance company had alerted me to the situation, all moved briskly. The good news is a) Lothian busses admitted liability so we didn't even have to pay the excess; and b) the bodywork firm who ended up with the work seem very pleasant, young and efficient -- they can go on taking care of the car, including picking it up and returning it after servicing.

So now I'll go make Archie some bacon and eggs to fortify him for the trip to Athens.

The Sensible Christmas Project is knit. Loose ends, seaming and blocking – or, at any rate, a pass with the steam iron – remain to be done. A devoted pupil of Franklin's, I know I must do the seam while sitting calmly at a table. I'll have another little look at his mattress stitch lesson this morning before I start.

Your comments about the Ravello pattern – Ravelry link yesterday – have reinforced my enthusiasm for it. I went back to Carol Sunday yarns to think about things. The link is not to her website but to a Knitter's Review article. I was interested to learn that she sells only to us, directly from the website. The gauge of her yarns is slightly – but only slightly – finer than that specified in the Ravello pattern. Something could be done with this.

(Sue, it was pinklemontwist's blog entry which Zite picked up yesterday and got me started on this whole business. I've just explored her blog, and sure enough! there's the Milano, looking very nice. Soul sisters, as you suggest. Kismet, maybe.)

(I was interested in your weather, Mary G. Texas has clearly been much colder than Edinburgh, these last few days. The newspapers told us there had been snow in Dallas. I don't remember that ever happening when I was a child – many long visits to Dallas-based grandparents – although I do remember frost. Is the grapefruit crop all right?)

(In fact, I am beginning to allow myself to feel slightly hopeful about our local weather. I can remember two very nasty winters specifically – '62-3, when Helen was born; and '10-'11, when my sister-in-law was dying, Both of those were in full swing in December. Of course, winter often doesn't get going until January. But by then the light is coming back and the snowdrops are trying to bloom and much can be endured.)

Today's excitement is that Archie is coming. His term is over, and he's going home to Athens for a few days before they all come back to Edinburgh for Christmas. I had hoped to go to Merchiston to pick him up this afternoon, but our car is with the body work people having (at last!) the damage repaired which was caused when that bus leaned on us in the spring. It's due back today, but I don't know when-today. I hope at least I will be able to drive Archie to the airport tomorrow.

On Boxing Day we're going to Loch Fyne, while the Greek family heads off to Strathardle. I think all I will want to do at that point is sleep (very comfortable beds, at Loch Fyne).

Today is the last, I think, of the little pleasures afforded by the millennium – the date is 11-12-13.

I went up to St James Centre yesterday with a prescription for Boots, and the American Christmas postings. I submitted the prescription and went across the passage to the post office. You take a number there and wait your turn. There were 60 – six-oh, sixty -- numbers ahead of mine. A few of them didn't show, having presumably died and gone to Heaven before their turn came, but it was still a long wait.

I had expected something of the sort, and had the Pakokku sock with me. But for the first considerable while, I couldn't sit down. I was mildly encouraged to see that other old ladies were being offered seats, but not me. Perhaps I didn't look as old and downtrodden as I felt. Eventually I sat, and got a bit more done.

With a little bit of luck, that will be my last post office experience for this Christmas.

The Sensible Christmas Project isn't quite finished after all. I finished the chart and started the decreases – and then remembered that there was something in the pattern about knitting on until a certain measurement had been achieved, after the chart and before the shaping.

There wasn't much in it, but there was a bit, so I ripped back and inserted four rows. It's lovely yarn, with a memory of its own, so retrieving the stitches are re-seating them wasn't too bad. The shaping is now well under way, and should be finished this evening.

We've had an interesting question from Abi about how to knit a Giant Anteater. That must be a first. It's in a comment on an older post, so you might have missed it. I assume the pattern is in Knit Your Own Zoo – I meant to get it down and have a look, but I didn't, and it's in the bedroom where my husband is still asleep, so Giant Anteaters will have to wait until tomorrow. Abi has probably solved the problem herself long since.

Sue sent me this link to a blog post about the Yarn Harlot's speed knitting class. Goodness, how I wish she would teach that class for Craftsy. Maybe I should suggest it to them. I've saved the link in Evernote, but haven't yet followed all of the blogger's own links. I mean to get back to my Shetland knitting belt when the current projects are dispatched. The Rams & Yowes yarn is too harsh and unforgiving for a speed-knitting-learner, and the Milano too heavenly an experience to be sullied by struggling.

But I bought yarn for a Fair Isle vest when I was in Jamieson & Smith that happy, happy day in September. One day it will come top of the HALFPINT list, and that's when the knitting belt will come out of hiding.

I am struck in Zite this morning with the Ravello pattern. At first, I hoped it might be another Carol Sunday, but it's not. But I like it, and maybe Sunday could provide the yarn anyway. I could make a project of knitting sweaters named after Italian cities. And I have been to both Milan and Ravello.

I am a bit further forward. I have done all but one final two-colour row of the Sensible Christmas Project, and therefore should get very close to finishing the whole thing today. I have ordered a large Eastern-themed take-away-type frozen meal from Cook for usall  to eat on the 24^th. I wrote and printed a round-robin (I guess you would call it) to enclose in Christmas cards to three old Oberlin friends. Old friends, in every sense. Maybe I will get up to the post office today and send them on their way.

And I found The Joy of Cooking and read about stuffing. I think what I am thinking of is what Mrs Rombauer's cook calls “dry dressing” – breadcrumbs, celery, onion, salt, paprika, melted butter.

When was the last time a television cookery writer admitted to employing a cook of her own?

I was surprised at how long-ago-and-far-away the book feels to me. I will let Delia and Jamie influence my choice of stuffing ingredients, while keeping it simple and probably meat-free.

There was an article in Saturday's Scotsman about a French chef who runs an excellent restaurant around the corner from us, L'Escargot Bleu. He used to have a delicatessen in the basement; I relied on him for garlic. It said at the end that he has lived in Britain for most of his adult life, but “I am more French than I feel”. Substitute “American” for “French” and that is my position precisely.

Knitting

I like these cardigans suddenly popping up everywhere with, often, a scooped neck and two or three buttons at the top and the rest hanging free. That might be just the thing for keeping one's chest somewhat warm while getting the knitting somewhat out of the way of the Main Danger Area for kitchen dirt. And I want to do some cables next year. There are some wonderful ones about.

Pearl Harbor

Thank you for that interesting link, Theresa. I started out by wondering what Hitler thought of Pearl Harbor, but what I found more interesting in the end was the fact that Roosevelt apparently declared war on December 8, 1941, on Japan alone. Hitler and Mussolini declared war on the US on the 11^th, and the US responded in kind. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

Churchill slightly glosses over that sequence in his account. He seemed to have assumed on the evening of December 7 that America was involved in the whole thing. “This certainly simplifies things. God be with you,” he said to the President during their telephone call. But the American people, enraged at Japan, might not, even then, have been so keen on a European war if Hitler hadn't forced it on them.

I found the red tablecloth – it's in the drawer where it ought to be, nicely laundered and ironed, to judge from a cursory glance.. And I know where the underlay is. The proper red napkins are in Strathardle where Christmas always used to be, but Waitrose will have some nice heavy paper ones. Today I will find The Joy of Cooking – I have too many cookery books – and plan my stuffing.

Helen thinks maybe a take-away (a carry-oot, as we say around here) would be the thing for the 24^th, but I am afraid that all the restaurants would be so busy that we'd sit around hungry all evening, getting crosser. I'll have a look at what Cook has to offer. The link is to their Asian dishes.

Helen says she is in touch with Father Christmas so I don't have to worry about him.

We progress.

And as for Christmas knitting, I've done 25 of 31 rows of the two-colour chart for the Sensible Christmas Project. There's a bit more to do after that in the background colour, and then loose ends and a seam and perhaps some cautious blocking to deal with, because the bottom is curling despite three rows of ribbing. But essentially, we're getting on fine.

Bizzy B, there will certainly be a picture of it (and of the Silly Christmas Project) in good time.

I don't think I'm giving too much away if I tell you that the Sensible one has lettering on it. I've done a lot of lettering through the years, in colour and in lace. And I always feel the same sort of surprise – the knitting is (obviously) not orderly and geometric like Fair Isle and almost all lace patterns and even Rams & Yowes. You have to peer at the pattern and think about every row. But what emerges makes sense in an entirely different way.

Pearl Harbor

Thanks for the comments. I found myself wondering yesterday whether Hitler knew in advance. Maybe he thought that since the Americans had held aloof from the European war for a whole two years, a war of their own in the Pacific was just what was needed to keep them permanently occupied elsewhere. Or maybe the Japanese didn't tell him. The answer (or at least, speculation about the answer) must be there to be found in some of the thousands of books.

Churchill, who knew America and Roosevelt rather better than Hitler did, went to bed a happy man that evening. There was much pain to come, but there was now no doubt at all about how it would eventually end. Whether he had known in advance or not, how did Hitler feel?

Churchill's account has echoes of Downton Abbey. He was dining at Chequers with the American ambassador, Averell Harriman. They listened to the nine o'clock news which was mostly about the Russian front, and the British front in Libya. There was something at the end about a Japanese attack on American shipping in Hawaii, and then the Brains Trust programme started. Harriman and Churchill looked at each other with some unease, and then the butler (who must have been listening to Radio Five Live in the kitchen) said “It's quite true. The Japanese have attacked the Americans.”

I don't think that butler was in the habit of contributing to conversations between his employer and the American ambassador.

Churchill says that he and Harriman were able to get a call through to Roosevelt within five minutes. I wonder if Mr Cameron could speak to Mr Obama so easily.  

Where are we? A day further forward, anyway.

The Sensible Christmas Project is getting on well, and should be finished in comfortable time. It's not exactly much fun, but satisfying to see it emerge from the needles. The yarn is identified as “100% wool yarn by Brown Sheep Co.” – it comes in a little kit – and it is very nice indeed to the hand. DK weight, I would say. The two colours are simple and violent – that's what they're meant to be.

The pattern is sort of intarsia, but since there are only two colours, they are carried across the back from block to block. I am knitting like a small child, picking up and dropping yarns rather than weaving one around the fingers of my left hand and giving it the Fair Isle treatment. This is having the desired result of not tightening the fabric but, as I said, isn't much fun.

The pattern says that you can log on to a video somewhere to see how it's done. Row and stitch numbers on the chart would be more helpful, but I'm managing.

Little else to report. Computer problems – transferring programs from Old Slowcoach -- are more or less in suspension until after the solstice. Card-writing progresses. Present-buying is pretty well finished. Father Christmas will need some help with stocking-fillers. That needs thought. The whole thing is enormously depressing.

Helen is planning to “do” Christmas dinner, cooking at a friend's house around the corner. I'll do the turkey itself, with stuffing and bread sauce, and I'll set the table if I can find the red tablecloth. Alexander is going to do most of the shopping and bring it over on the 23^rd. This might or might not work. Helen is ruthlessly efficient, and Alexander knows what Christmas dinner involves, but it's going to require some serious list-making on the part of all three of us. I will need to think of all the other meals. My husband wouldn't dream of skipping the subsidiary meal, even on Christmas day. (Scrambled eggs and smoked salmon is the usual answer to that one.)

I'll be very glad indeed when the story about vaginal knitting works its way through Zite and falls off the other end. Trouble is, new people keep spotting and repeating it, and Zite keeps picking them up.

Today is Pearl Harbor Day.