I’ve finished the first bauble, except for closing the top and crocheting a chain for it to hang by. The next one will require me to wind one of the two remaining skeins of madelinetosh scarlet. I’d better get that done. Stuffed with kapok, or whatever that stuff is called, it looks slightly lumpy perhaps but acceptable. I want to do two more, at least. Pic tomorrow, I hope.

Arne and Carlos are in the new VK, although I don’t think we learn anything of interest about them there. They’ve got a new book out about dolls. It seems reasonable to hope that they’ll do a sweater book. I’ll be right there in the queue for that one.

Meanwhile the little Brownstone obstinately refuses to measure 12 ½" no matter how industriously I knit. Surely today.

Zite came up with this seriously tempting jacket this morning. One for the HALFPINT list. It is my practice, you may remember, to make a list at the end of the year of things-I-want-to-knit. Not resolutions, just an attempt  to pin down and record whatever is bubbling on the mental back burners (to mix a metaphor) as the year dies. A year ago I sat there in gloom, scarcely able to think of anything. This year there’s going to be a lot.

I usually get most of it done – or, at least, abandoned for a good reason.

Miscellaneous

I made the Christmas puddings yesterday and will steam one of them today. That’s something done, but chores spring up hydra-headed this time of year.

I have spent only one Thanksgiving in the US since I married – in 1960. The idea of a Great Big Meal so soon before the annual Great Big Meal is disconcerting, but I think it had the contrarian effect of rendering Christmas slightly less horrible. Perhaps it was just that Christmas is intrinsically slightly less horrible in the US.

I have made a tentative resolution to do more Christmas knitting next year. I avoid it on the whole so as not to add stress to stress. But the sight of all that stuff piled up in the shops, to be bought by people who can't afford it and given to people who don't want it, depresses me more than ordinarily this year. They may not want another hat or scarf, either, but at least it says "I love you" cheaply and efficiently.

I was worrying here recently about how to get books off the Kindle app on my iPad. One of you told me – I am ashamed to say that I have let the comment go, and can’t even thank you by name – that when I archive a book it goes to the Book Depository in the sky, whence I can retrieve it if I change my mind. So that’s fine; I know how to do that. I thought “archive” meant that it was somewhere else on the iPad.

Greek Helen asked when she was last here, whether one was aware of the financial crisis in daily life here, as they are in Greece. I thought not – but now it has come home: Grandson Joe can’t find work. He graduated in the summer and doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. Right now, he just wants to earn a bit of money. He had a temporary job for a few weeks gathering statistics about school exam results. That has ended, and now he can’t get anything – the Post Office doesn’t want him as Christmas relief, or Sainsbury’s to stack shelves. The other day his application to be an elf was rejected. He is a sober and personable young man. This is serious.