Here we are – 2012. New years acquire a certain piquancy in old age.

Yesterday I made the list of knitting-I’d-like to-get-done, and this time there’s plenty there. Today it is my practice to write down the first two headlines of the first news broadcast I hear; even the most boring examples, of which this year provides two, acquire some interest as time goes by. And I note what I have achieved/what has happened in the year just past, and what I hope to achieve in the new one.

Some years I also try to notice and write down the main topics of my internal monologue today.

We don’t stay up for “the bells” – rarely have. But I like the idea of eating 12 grapes, Angel, and will put it into practice if I’m ever there again.

As for 2012: the Greeks will arrive late this evening, so today I must wrap their Christmas presents and make ready their beds. Helen wrote yesterday:

“We'll put the boys in the spare room and sleep in the dining room ourselves - if you leave the stuff out we can make up the beds when we get there. Remember it will be two hours earlier for us so we'll be pretty sprightly.”

But it won’t be two hours earlier: it’ll be two hours later.  They won’t be sprightly at all. The whole subject remains intensely confusing. The Chinese flew home to Beijing yesterday. I asked Cathy (over the phone, the evening before) whether that meant they would be flying towards or away from the New Year and we were hard put to work it out.

So I probably won’t be here for the next week. The weather is remarkably open for the time of year, and Helen is game, and we’re thinking of going to Strathardle. If I can find anyone awake at the insurance company, I can put her on our policy for three days, she says, and she’ll even drive. Barring a typhoon or the dreaded snow, even one full day would let me get some serious things done for my poor vegetables. And a few rows knit on the Japanese shirt.

As for knitting here, I pressed on with the anthracite ribbing. Nearly done. At midday, at a south-facing window, the stripes are wonderful; still barely perceptible in the evening.

Miscellaneous, knitting-related

Diana, thank you for probing deeper into the Moray Firth Gansey Project. You’re quite right, the pictures of the Ganseyfest show lots of colour. I would very much welcome some serious comment on this subject.

I meant to tell you yesterday: Lord Kitchener is dead. He was the great-nephew, I believe, of the original title-holder, the eponymous inspirer (presumably) of grafted toes on socks. He was in his 90’s. This will be the man I wrote to a decade or so ago, who replied eventually that he had never heard of “Kitchener stitch”. He had no heir, so I think the title lapses.