I cast off the Therapy Scarf last night. I haven’t tidied it up yet. In repose, it doesn’t seem as enormously long as it did on the needles. I’ll stretch it a bit in the blocking, I think.



Then I attempted Meg’s brioche-in-the-round hat from the latest VK, but came adrift where one round ends with “wool fwd slip 1 p’wise” and the next round begins with the same instruction. It sounds perfectly straightforward by the cold light of day. Maybe I’ll try again.

Or maybe I’ll knit an old-fashioned back and forth brioche hat, as per the instructions in Knitting Without Tears. I’ve done a couple in years past, and I love them, to knit and to wear. It’ll come in useful for someone on the Xmas list, and postpones the day – which mustn’t be much longer postponed – when I face to up winding all that yarn and starting Alexander’s Fair Isle.

Non-Knit

Carlarey, you asked about November anxiety. It’s all to do with the failing of the light, and I try not to complain too much now that Seasonal Affective Disorder has made its way into the list of fashionable diseases. (Nor do the journalists understand. I always feel enormously better by mid-January, and I’m sure a lot of other people do too. And yet January is even darker than dreadful November.)

Anyway, on Sunday morning I was worrying about Christmas, mostly. Who should I order a turkey from, if I’m not sure whether I’m going to be able to drive? How can we get a rooted tree? These problems seem manageable in mid-morning when one is on one’s feet, and don't matter much anyway, in the grand scheme of things. But it all seems insuperable at 5:47 am in the darkness.