Desiderato(que) acquiescimus lecto

I can be as highbrow as Franklin although a lesser knitter and utterly non-artist. The line is from Catullus and means, roughly, that it's awfully nice to get home and lie down on one's own bed.

We had a very nice time away, too. Not only Alexander and Rachel and their entire families, but James and Cathy and theirs (who had come from Beijing to spend Christmas with her family, in Cheltenham, and came to London on Boxing Day for two days with us). And a fair amount of art -- an unpleasant Italian-American whose name I forget, at the Gargossian Gallery; Samuel Palmer at the British Museum; Derain at the Courtauld; Douanier Rousseau at the place my husband calls Tatmo; and finally the huge Chinese exhibition at the Royal Academy, which we had the added pleasure of strolling through with James and his family. He complained that there were no labels in Chinese. Many of the visitors were Chinese, all -- or almost all -- of the exhibition came from there, some of the other visitors must have been English students of Chinese. It does seem a bit off.

All this, plus Christmas.


Knitting

I worked hard on the current pair of travel-socks. 2005 has been rather short on FO's. I didn't expect to finish, but I did. When we set out last week, the second sock was represented by less than an inch of ribbing.

And I got the next one started, on the train yesterday. It's for Cathy, who is so small that it should be finished almost instantaneously. She likes her socks short, too.

I did the Kitchener'ing in the evening when we were back here.

There will be other knitting pictures from London in the days to come.







One of the things to be done in the next couple of days -- after I have laid in provisions; Scotland still takes the New Year rather seriously -- will be to write the Annual Summary of the year's knitting. This will be the tenth time I have done it. I print them out and keep them in the loose files with records of my FO's, and occasionally re-read them to my intense interest. They are guaranteed to bore the shirts off everyone else.

The first eight appeared on the Knitlist. Last year, I put a brief note there with a link to this blog. This year, I know from Marian Poller's experience that I am not allowed to do that. I could post the whole thing to the Knitlist and bore the shirts off them, but I fear that that may not be allowed either under the new regime, and I certainly can't risk a rejection. So it will just have to blush unseen here. Be warned.