Happy New Year, everybody. Happy Ought Six. It’s going to be a magical year. I will finish the Princess Shawl, and Scotland will win the Calcutta Cup. We don’t celebrate, but the palpable feeling of excitement on the streets in the last hours of the old year in Scotland is always invigorating – it’s just the same in Kirkmichael as in Edinburgh. And, here, the midnight fireworks wake us up and can be seen over the trees in Drummond Place Gardens, if we open the bedroom curtains. I love fireworks.

I have some little things I do on New Year’s Day. I write down the first two headlines of the first broadcast news I hear. (Today, Russia has cut off gas supplies to the Ukraine. That’s a big one.) I try to write down, later in the day, the main topics of concern to the internal monologue I carry around with me. I write down what has been achieved in the dead year, and some Achievables for the year to come. All this on a page in my Filofax.

The first Achievable, now that the chore of writing Christmas cards is definitely over, will be to get my husband’s Magnum Opus to the publisher. Every file – there are hundreds – has to be opened and then saved in Microsoft Word. I’ve done about 160 files so far, and I’m not half-way through. Then I have to make a CD. Then persuade him that I have used the most up-to-date version of every file. I hope to get the donkey work done in a week or so, and reserve a second week for the persuasion bit, which will be harder. And get the CD to them in mid-January, as promised.

On or near this day I write the account of the year’s knitting as already mentioned. I made a good start on that yesterday. You will hear more soon.

And on or near this day, I write down the knitting I hope to do this year. Not resolutions, definitely not; just what’s-at-the-top-of-my-mind-at-the-moment. That goes on an electronic Filofax page in Lotus Organiser. It’s interesting to look back on them. Most years, I knit most of what’s there. I didn’t do as well as that in ’05, but I did the big one: I started the Princess Shawl.

Beginning with these deathless paragraphs, I’m going to keep a private archive of blog entries, too.

I got a bit more Communion Veil done yesterday. I’m now very near the point where I plan to introduce my granddaughters’ lacey initials. I will therefore have to take some knitting time off to chart them. Chiz.

Today’s illustration is another Christmas one – Rachel in her Swirly Scarf, on Boxing Day. There’s Cathy in the background in her Round Trip jacket.