A reader complains that you've had nothing to look at but a haggis for too long. True. It's been a long, hard week on the Knitlist (my duty ends with today). I'm thinking of quitting.

Here's the latest on the Fair Isle jacket. I think the photograph shows how the colours are settling down -- so much so that perhaps I ought to put in another stripe of pink or the bright blue at some point just so the discrepancy isn't too marked. In the corner of the picture you can see the poor old Ribwarmer. I have decided to get the jacket as far as the armpits -- not long to go, now -- and at that point resume the tedium of ribwarmer-binding.

My sister reports that my handpainted alpaca from Honey Lane Farm has arrived -- in CT; I won't see it for another month or more. It's to be a skinny ribbed scarf as a graduation-from-law-school present for nephew Theo's girfriend Kristin. Alpaca is sheet chocolate to knit, of course, and I'm greatly looking forward to it. My sister will bring it when she whizzes through London on her way to Africa in late February. Meanwhile I'll try to get a picture.

My seeds have started to arrive. Oh, happiness! We're going to the country on Monday, probably for the week, not that it will be possible to do anything yet. One of the things I did last year, in my constant search for something to eat before July, was to sow some turnips (the small, round, white watery ones, I mean, not the delicious big yellows) which one is said to be able to eat the leaves of. I presume that means there will be new leaves in the spring. They were sown late in the summer, rather thickly. Came up fine. The leaves are now lying flat on the ground looking miserable but at least the deer didn't eat them. I discovered in a foodie magazine yesterday that turnip leaves are called cime di rape and this news has filled me with hope and enthusiasm for my crop.

The new VK has turned up (but still no Knitter's). One recoils in horror, as usual, from a first look, but a more thorough perusal offers some possibilities.