Here we are! 2013! We made it! I hope it will be a splendid year for all of us.

I think my husband and I both continued to improve yesterday. Thanks for the sympathy. Liz, I was encouraged by your comment, about how it takes a fortnight to recover. The younger sufferers seem to spring back to their feet.

FiberQat, you hit a nail on the head. It was a great comfort, when my husband was first stricken on Christmas Day, that Alexander began calmly calculating whether/when we would need to drive him to Glasgow for emergency rehydration. (Ambulances eventually come, even on the shores of Loch Fyne, but by the time they do you may well be dead; it is a hazard of country life.) And when I was myself stricken the next day, it was even more of a comfort to know that people were looking after him.

And Meezermeowmy, I was also cheered by your observation that anti-virals really help with shingles, if started promptly. Alexander saw his dr right away, as far as I know – and couldn’t have been concealing that rash for more than a day or two.

Knitting

Let’s get back to basics.

On the First of January, I like to write down the Possible Projects for the near future which are currently bubbling near the top of consciousness. Some years, lots. Sometimes, I can’t think of anything much. This year, I must finish Ed’s Gardening Sweater and decide what to do about the Japanese shirt. And – this almost amounts to a resolution – I must face up to what I am going to do with my Koigu collection. 

I have added a new tradition – to write down my plans for the sweaters I will knit for the Little Boys on Loch Fyne, if Scotland win the Calcutta Cup. Last year, the idea was Norwegian. This time, I think it’s going to be EPS hybrid shirts in unimaginably beautiful madelinetosh yarns. I can plan any extravagance – the match will be played at Twickenham. Has Scotland won there since the war? And we’re rubbish, at the moment, anyway.

I’m getting on fine with Ed’s sweater. I had hoped to confer with him about a couple of minor design points. I’m not sure, in the event, that I even set eyes on him. I’ll have to wing it.

I had also hoped to take a picture of this year’s recipients of knitted pressys – there were quite a few of them. (Mary Lou’s Reversible Cable scarf was a particular hit.) And to get a new, better-populated “various grandchildren” pic for my sidebar. Those things didn’t happen.