It's Awfully Dark...

...but at least there's less than a fortnight to go to the solstice.

I got a lot of knitting done in the country. The never-very-satisfactory portable computer I use there gave up the ghost entirely -- a liberating experience. And daylight was brief, so relatively little could be done outsoors. I should have taken more Christmas cards along, but I didn't. So I knit, and attended to the most delightful of gardening chores, choosing my seed list for '05.

The ribwarmer went faster than I expected. I should finish the body of it when we are next there in January (insh'allah). I'm using the four skeins of Debbie Bliss "Maya" which I fell for recently, and it's going to be touch and go as to whether I have enough, but I think I'll make it. The collar is done, and if the instructions are to be believed, the back is a couple of rows shorter than the front. It's that close.

I'll edge it with i-cord. I was delighted with the effect on the recent Baby Surprise. But I can use a different yarn for that.

The instructions were unspecific about whether to wrap the next stitch when short-rowing to make the corners. I was working from Woolgathering 58, March '98, "The Ribwarmer Revisited". The knitter who had done one of the longer models illustrated there, specifically said that she didn't wrap. I tried it that way and thought it looked horrible, so ripped out the first corner and did it again with wrapping. Much better.

The neighbour's party was very pleasant. We had champagne to drink, which I always enjoy. This was a party, industrious readers will remember, launching a widower's new lady friend as mistress of his house. We don't know what the dead wife's family think of this. It is, in fact, their house, still.

It has also to be reported that the deer have been down and helped themselves to my vegetables. I try hard to have something available to eat from the garden in other months of the year besides glorious August and September, but without deer fencing it's a mug's game.