All my favourite bloggers are too busy basting the turkey to write, so I wandered a bit further afield this morning and found these nice hats to knit. If anybody wants to join me in Christmas madness. And don't miss Helen's brilliant suggestion, in a comment yesterday, for a quick knitted present.

I have four more long plain rows to knit of the swirly scarf, before doubling the stitch number again in the contrast colour, and casting off in the same. Yesterday I laid out a few more potential swirlys. The blue yarn, a shade called Aegean, was a present from Candace Strick when I bought a sweater's-worth, still unknit, of her wonderful Merging Colors yarn. It's sort of a strong colour, but the kind of thing which is wonderfully comforting to knit in these dark days. With black for the contrast? Or striped with black?

The Aran-coloured Koigu, the background yarn in Thomas-the-Younger's striped Koigu sweater which was seen here a day or two ago, could be striped with variegated Koigu's for a sunny and cheerful stripy.

The other yarns are just lying there.

Non-knit

Today is James' and Kirsty's last day here. We plan to go see The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

James keeps remarking on the darkness. Beijing is on a line with Madrid, or Washington DC, roughly, and things are a lot lighter down there. He's had brilliant sunny days almost all week, too, which lightens the load a lot, darkness-wise. I usually suffer badly from gloom and anxiety during this Dread Decameron, the last ten days of November. From there until the solstice, it's so awful it's funny. But this year, what with the excitement of the birthday and James's visit, I've hardly noticed.

Another thing I've been doing which helps a lot, is Christmas shopping on-line. I spent an hour in a crowded shop a couple of weeks ago. It was full of expensive things I couldn't imagine anyone wanting, and awful people, and was pretty depressing. So I've been going through those catalogues which rain down on one. My husband says he wouldn't want to buy things without seeing them, but so far I have been pleased with the quality of what has turned up. And the process is blissfully painless.