We didn’t have Christmas. We had the norovirus.

I’m pretty well back up to speed by now – although “speed” doesn’t imply anything very brisk, these days. My husband is still very weak, although making progress. We are living on Jewish penicillin.

We had Christmas Eve.

We had Boxing Day.

But nothing in between.

My husband was taken ill in the early hours of Christmas Day. We cancelled Mass-going right away – it would have meant leaving him alone in the house for nearly two hours, by the time we got to Inverary and back..

James and his family were sleeping a mile or so away, in the former butler’s quarters of the Big House, now converted into a pleasant self-catering flat. We soon learned that James had been sick all night, so we cancelled Christmas Dinner. His daughter Kirsty joined him on the casualty list a few hours later.

So we who were still walking had a lovely, leisurely day, lunching on delicious left-over lasagne. It couldn’t have been planned. I can’t remember why we cancelled champagne and present-giving as the dark drew in. I was disappointed about that.

Boxing Day started well (see above). I was stricken in the late afternoon. The Little Boys joined me during the night. The next day – it’s Thursday, by now -- James drove us back to Edinburgh in the huge people-carrier he had hired. James was fine by then. My husband and I found it tough going, but  it was good to be back in our own bed. James’ daughter Rachel fell to the dread lurgy on Friday.

Before we left Loch Fyne, however, on Thursday morning, Alexander trumped us all. He hadn’t been feeling entirely well throughout. He felt tingly, he said. Now he had developed a painful rash, self-diagnosed as shingles. A doctor confirmed the guess that afternoon. He’s taking anti-viral drugs and pain-killers. But it means weeks of pain, at the very least.

Big-Rachel’s family from London replaced us on the shores of Loch Fyne. When I last heard, one of them had gone down and another wasn’t feeling very well.

But they are safely back in London now, and the Beijing Mileses are back in Beijing (and didn’t get sick during the journey). And, as Alexander said the last time I spoke to him, it only happens once a year. 

I’m not getting anywhere with this.

Anonymous, I do want most emphatically to say that my quarrel is not with single parents, but with absent fathers. This one seems to have been a bog-standard, middle-class middle-life divorce-after-28-years-of-marriage. I’m not greatly impressed with the father’s statement: “Our family is grieving along with all those who have been affected by this enormous tragedy.”

Which family is that, then?

Libby Purves wrote in the Times in 1997:

“The literature of parenthood deals overwhelmingly with the first few years, with bracingly simple issues like broken nights and ear infections and daycare. Perhaps it is as well for the species that nobody ever really expects 18 years of supervision and a lifetime of worry. I was fussing over a baby in a carrycot at a BBC seminar once when Bill Cotton, well retired by then, thundered: ‘You think it’s tough now. Just you wait until he’s fifty.’”

But when I stop to think about it, the majority of the suicides I have known or known of – one is far too many – have been the sons of stable marriages. Including the baby in the carrycot just mentioned – he didn’t make it to 50.

So I’d better not go on pontificating.

I think, in fact, I’ll pause here for the solstice.  I’m not doing at all well at trying to think about knitting. We should be back from Loch Fyne for the weekend at the end of the year.

A very happy solstice to all, however observed.  And sympathy to cat and her friends, who are about to find their light diminishing. 

A day further forward.

Christmas is coming along nicely. Our little tree is up, the cards dispatched, the pudding made (although not yet steamed), the hat knit. I have a couple of days in hand to re-group and try to advance the non-seasonal aspects of life – clean clothes, accounts, that sort of thing.

Except that Newtown has drained all the savour from this.

Is gun control possible? Would gun control help?

I’ll go get the Sunday paper in a moment and read all about it. One detail on which I feel completely confident without waiting to be told, is that the killer’s father wasn’t a member of his household.

Each morning’s blog is pretty much a distillation of thots entertained during the previous day. And so today there is nothing else. 

Desperate, terrible sadness.

In a few minutes now, Alexander will set forth into the semi-dark, to walk to the school bus stop with his beloved Little Boys. He will be reluctant to let them go.

Amy Kaspar has written something for the Examiner about knitting for Newtown. (I can’t find it on the Examiner website, to give you the link. I read it on Zite.) My first thought was derisive. Knitting? But it’s a sensible article, about prayer shawls and stuffed toys. If I were in America this morning, there are few places I’d rather be than in a seat at the table in my LYS.

We have seen this particular pattern before, including at Dunblane. Augmented suicide. There has been at least one previous instance where the killer began by killing his mother. I don’t trust myself to write about this. The hellish unhappiness of that young man. The dangers for all young men of the white-water years of adolescence.

Archie is in Athens, and today I’ll get back to work on Christmas. Maybe even make the pudding. Cards are nearly finished – there are always a few stragglers. People we didn’t hear from last year, probably because they are dead or demented, but deserving of one more try.

(I rang up one such friend the other day. Not dead at all, just 85 and very arthritic. She’s given up sending cards. We’re going to Do Lunch in January.)

Archie seemed in fine fettle. He told me on the way to the airport that, early in his Merchiston career, he was required to run a mile and couldn’t do it. He broke down in tears half-way through, he said. This week, he ran two miles.

I told my husband when I got home and he harrumphed that that was what you would expect of any good boarding school. I think he misses the point. Prince Charles went to a sporty, outdoors-y Scottish boarding school and no doubt did lots of running. He was notoriously miserable and his own sons weren’t allowed anywhere near the place. It is obvious that Archie isn’t miserable.

I told Helen about this when she rang at the end of the afternoon to say that he was safely home. She knew about the earlier episode, not about the two-mile run. There was no harrumphing in Athens.

The needles turned up yesterday at last – so much for first-class post at Christmas time – and I resumed the Sixteen-Cable Hat (Ravelry link). It’s looking good. There are only four cable rounds altogether – or five, if you add some optional extra rounds to make the hat slouchier. I don’t know whether I’ll have yarn enough for that. But the cables are eight over eight, so the cable rounds themselves and the immediately following rounds are pretty slow.

Still, it won’t take long. I did two of those four cable rounds yesterday.

Comments

Tricia, I thought of magic-looping when the needle problem first presented itself. I watched a video and decided this Wasn’t For Me. Maybe I’ll come back to it. Thank you for the link.

Needle sizes: Yours is an interesting tale, Sarah JS. So the old British sizes didn’t go out with pounds, shillings and pence as I thought. There was a rule – I don’t need to get it right since the British numbers are no more – that if, for any given needle size, you added the British and American numbers together, the answer would always be 14. Or maybe it was 16. So there's an overlap in the middle (obviously, there would be) at size 7 or 8, where the numbers were the same.

I calculated, and re-calculated, and finished casting on, and have now knit myself somewhere into the second inch of ribbing on Ed’s Gardening Sweater – and isn’t it bliss not to have to count rounds? because back and front are being knit together in a tube; and not to have to measure and worry about whether I’ve done enough ribbing, because I’m the boss and can stop whenever I think I’ve done enough?

The experience is fully as wonderful as I anticipated, and this is only the ribbing, which I don’t much like doing. I should be well enough along by the time I see the recipient on Boxing Day that some judgement can be made about size and suitability. I feel I don’t care – I wouldn’t mind ripping out and starting again forever, with this wonderful yarn, like Penelope at her loom.

Perhaps 2013 will be the Year of madelinetosh. If I decide to abandon the Japanese shirt, I could order some more tosh sock yarn (oh dear, naughty) and do a finely striped tee. I need to talk to possible female recipients about what they might actually like. Rachel, Ketki, Cathy, Hellie and Lizzie will all be on the shores of Loch Fyne soon, and so will I. Knitting for men is easier. Simple shapes. The idea is to keep warm. It’s no use endlessly knitting for myself and then not wearing the result: what would women wear?

I took my husband to a podiatry appt yesterday and sat knitting the current sock while waiting for him. I sat next to a woman who admired what I was doing – “Those are very fine needles. Twelves or thirteens?” She was referring to the old British sizes (the opposite of American sizes, where big numbers mean big needles). They went out when the currency was decimalised in the late 60’s, I would say. Since then we have used millimetres.

She said her family was tired of being knitted for, so she knits for a charity that sends lorry-loads of sweaters to East European children. I told her about the Dutch woman with 60 years of sweaters piled up in her house. She – my companion in podiatry – doesn’t have a computer or a television, and listens to the radio sparingly. She reads. Those smart men and women in suits who run the country need to be reminded sometimes that not all of us care to keep up with them.

The new needles for the last-minute hat didn’t turn up yesterday, despite having been posted first class on Monday. Surely today?

To return to earth: Thank you for the help both with long-tail cast-on’s and short rows.   You have persuaded me to use the latter to lift the back neck, when I get there. At the moment – remember, I am doing this bit by bit, with Meg’s four articles in Knitter’s 2000 – she is suggesting them below the armpits, even perhaps in front to accommodate a paunch. I don’t need that.

Or do I? Don’t miss JeanfromCornwall’s comment on yesterday’s post, about how men put sweaters on.

You have also persuaded me to attempt the phoney seam described yesterday. Meg says that you can drop the stitch when you get to the underarm, and persuade it to run down, or “you may do [the seams] incrementally as you inch your way up the body”. How would that work? Ladder back after a couple of inches, crochet up, restore the stitch to the needle and knit on?

And I shall retain and ponder your suggestions for calculating the long-tail. Someone said something about this in Franklin’s lace class. Do you remember, Shandy? I think it was your idea, BlueLoom. But I think next time I’ll try using two balls of yarn tied together.

Today’s excitement is that Archie will turn up under his own steam this afternoon or evening, and I will drive him to the airport tomorrow and dispatch him towards Athenian warmth and sunlight. So if I’m not here tomorrow, that’s why. 

Here’s some cheerfulness from Alexander – the Glasgow where he was born.

Another good day on the Christmas front – six or seven cards written, three presents wrapped. I begin to feel like the old horse when its head is turned towards the stable – a fortnight from today will be a little bit lighter than the day before. And the day before will have been lighter than the day before that. Unless the world ends on the solstice as the Mayans predict.

And I got to the post office and dispatched a heavy package to Greece. Expensive, but not as expensive as EasyJet excess baggage. And it’s done.

I tidied up the brioche scarf – there was less to do than I thought.

And I swatched for Ed’s Gardening Sweater. Goodness, this stuff is beautiful. I had a moment almost of panic – what am I going to do when I finish the swatch? I can’t knit the hat until those needles come. The scarves are finished. I can’t just sit here.

The answer would have been the perennial lurking sock, but I didn’t think of that. I just went ahead and opened Knitter’s for Spring 2000 and got started on Meg’s instructions for the EPS.

She wants a circular swatch, or a flat one where you loop the yarn across the back and start again at the other side, so as to knit every row. I didn’t do that. But then she very engagingly says that, even after doing it right, she measured 4.25 stitches to the inch and in fact got a gauge of 4. Try it and you may, I say, in the immortal words of Sam-I-am.

So I measured and did the arithmetic and attempted to cast on 238 stitches. It’s been a while since I did anything like that – I didn’t leave enough yarn in the Long Tail, and  had to start again. That gave me time to reflect that if I want a 2x2 rib, it’ll have to be 236 or 240. So that’s where I am at the moment – casting on.

This first article gives the proportions for the body, and instructions for knitting up to the underarm, and some suggested embellishments. I don’t think I’ll need short rows to avoid it riding up in the back, as I’m knitting for a fit rectangular man. Phoney seams are an interesting idea – drop a stitch at the underarm, run it back, and then crochet up, alternately taking in two ladders and then one. I’ve never tried that.

She also includes a brilliant arithmetical trick from Cheryl Brunette for spacing the increases in the ribbing-to-body round. It’s from her Sweater 101 which is still out there.

I’ve knit two other sweaters recently for Ogden men: Thomas-the-Elder’s “Brownstone” is a bit too generous. 

Joe’s Grandson Sweater is just about perfect. 

Hope for the best.

Change of subject: Queer Joe remarks on Facebook that he google’d “Knitting blogs” and found himself third and felt terribly pleased. I tried it – I was 8^th, I think, but Joe was 10^th on my list. Maybe Google knows. Then I tried “knitting blogs UK” and that moved me down to the second page, 14^th or so. Jared was top of the first list, my neighbour Kate Davies of the second.

Another good day on the Christmas front. Six cards written, three presents wrapped, today’s strategies planned. We shall see.

Two years ago I planned a big family Christmas in Strathardle. Savage weather made it impossible, and in the end we spent the day here in Drummond Place with the Beijing Mileses and a tree from Poundland. I think we spent as much again on decorations for it. We loved it. My husband suggested yesterday that we set it up again. It’s a brilliant idea, and we’ll do that.

On the knitting front, I again left the Brioche scarf unfinished. I cast on for the last-minute-present hat. I’ve got a lot more Cocoon than Vatican Pie left over from the two scarves, but Vatican Pie is much nearer the weight of yarn the hat designer intends, so I’ve gone with that. I’m pretty sure there’s enough.

I thought I had short circulars in every gauge known to man, left over from that Christmas when I knit a hat for everyone on the list. But I don’t seem to have a short 5mm, and that’s what I need. I jumped at the chance to order a Knit Pro from Meadow Yarn – their service is first-rate, it might even be here tomorrow. I’ve knit the brim, on a 4mm which I did have to hand. The rest won’t take more than a couple of evenings.

Except that Meadow Yarn is out of short Knit Pro 5mm’s. After a moment’s tremor, I  went for 4.5.

And then I wound a skein of madelinetosh sport yarn “Firewood” and cast on a swatch for Ed’s Gardening Sweater. Bliss awaits.

Yarnologist, I am deeply touched that you have nominated me for the Liebster Award, although daunted at what I have to do. I am not sure I know eleven things about myself. I waste too much time here, that’s one.

I ordered a copy of Vogue’s “Ultimate Hat Book” the other day, in the midst of all my on-line Christmas shopping. It turned up yesterday – have we ever before had a mail delivery on a Sunday? I haven’t spent much time with it yet. It has a good analysis of the anatomy of hats and, needless to say, some nice patterns.  

It’s been a while since we had a picture. Here’s the finished Reversible Cable scarf – you’re seeing both sides. The flash has brightened the colour, but you get the general idea. Here’s the Ravelry link to Mary Lou’s pattern. Recommended. The yarn, to recapitulate, is Colinette’s “Art” yarn in her “Vatican Pie” colorway.

I should polish off the Brioche scarf this evening – I’m about half-way through that tidying job.

Speaking of which, Nancy Marchant – she who wrote the book – is offering a Craftsy class in brioche knitting. I’m seriously tempted. I’ve got the book, but have never made any headway with it. Maybe video classes would work better?

I continued to make progress with Christmas yesterday, apart from finishing the scarf. I like doing cards, but could wish there were more hours in the day. I like reading last year’s messages and thinking of old friends, many of whom we’ll never see again. And writing at least a sentence or two for each. The object of the game is to keep working steadily – not to get behind and have to rush it and make the messages perfunctory.

I also got a bit more wrapping done. I don’t think I’ve ever spaced that chore out before, and it’s a good idea.

Here’s a seasonal note to end on – Theo just sent this picture of his Christmas tree. We've got horizontality issues again -- at least by now I know better than to spend Sunday morning struggling with it in vain. That’s Helen’s wedding present to Theo and his wife on the wall behind – “Our house ever fortunate with its own”. Must be a quotation.

And on the tree you can see one of Arne and Carlos’ baubles, knit by me this time last year.

The knitting of the Reversible Cables was successfully resumed – there’s only an inch to go, so I should finish tonight, and maybe have time to tidy up the Brioche Scarf as well. Reversible Cables is looking splendid, Brioche is less than perfect which is a bit distressing. It’s a very difficult stitch to repair.

And then, perhaps…

I have finished my Christmas shopping. One present seems slightly less than adequate. (I might mention that I have never been disappointed with anything I ordered on-line. This one is exactly as described, and is something I think the recipient will like. It’s just that it looks a bit small-sized and mingy, compared to what other grandchildren are getting.) So I might knit this (Ravelry link) – that particular grandchild hasn’t had a hat since ’09.

I got on pretty well with Christmas yesterday. If I can keep on writing six or seven cards a day, I’ll have them done in a week. I started wrapping, a disliked job even where wrapping-for-the-post is not involved. But the result, a pile of glittery packages, is gratifying. I’ve done two.

I opened my husband’s Microsoft Surface. This is going to be fun! The packaging is impressive. The electrics – that’s what I was a bit concerned about – look fine. The keyboard is pancake-thin, separate from the main object. I think it will suit my husband better than a virtual keyboard, even one as good as the iPad’s. There is no hint of an instruction book. I am of the generation who used to enjoy reading computer manuals in the bath. But I am sure Alistair will be equal to the challenge.

Non-knit

I have had messages from people who were hurt by my remark that we had advised granddaughter Lizzie not to apply to an East Coast college for her junior-year-in-America. It shows how dangerous it can be to write hastily.

I love the East Coast. If I should return to America I couldn’t think of living anywhere but Boston or Princeton. (No, that’s not true: Kendal in Oberlin would be a possibility, or Seattle.) But the East Coast seemed to all of  us the most European-like part of the US, and we thought Lizzie should experience something that many European visitors never see. My sister lives in CT, at the mouth of the Connecticut River. Her son Theo and his wife Jenni are in DC (and likely to remain! since the election went the right way). Lizzie will surely visit them in the vacations.

And she has already visited them – each of my grandchildren has had a fortnight in the US at the age of 11-12, a tradition started by my mother with my own children, and nobly carried forward by my sister. And, of course, she was at Theo and Jenni’s splendid wedding in CT three years ago. So she has had a bit of a taste of the East Coast, and has at least seen the New York skyline. But no taste of Kansas whatsoever – and I think she’s going to like it.

Lizzie is the middle grandchild in the back row of the picture in my sidebar.

I’ll keep you posted.

So now you know where to come if you want help knitting a haggis! Many thanks to yesterday’s commenters.

A slight setback here yesterday – I was knitting peacefully along on the Reversible Cables and came to the end of the current ball and went to get the final skein of Colinette’s “Vatican Pie” – and couldn’t find it! Could I possibly, in fact, not have ordered it? Were there only three? After quite a bit of looking, I gave up and ripped out a few rows in order to have the yarn to finish off.

Then I found it.

The stitches have been recovered, I’ve figured out where I am in the pattern, I am ready to resume (except that I have still to wind the skein). But the net result is that I seem to have advanced only two inches yesterday – still six to go.

Christmas

Some progress yesterday – I made a good start on the cards. I have heard from Alistair in Beijing that he will be delighted to teach his grandfather how to use his Christmas-present Microsoft Surface, and I’ve ordered a stylus for it. I was most encouraged, Catdownunder, to hear how well your father, at 89, is getting on with his iPad.

I think I read somewhere that the Surface automatically backs up to the cloud, and if not, my husband can learn to use Dropbox. He has a healthy respect for the routine of backing-up. Alistair says that they were burgled recently in Beijing – nobody told me – and ‘[Daddy] was like: "Oh no my laptop!" but then he was like "Ha Alistair! Sugarsync backed it all up! The cloud isn't so useless after all"’

I had trouble with that blasted credit card again yesterday – but this time it was probably because I typed a wrong digit. Payments to other sources went through yesterday, and another one did this morning. I’ve paid the one that failed from another account. Lots of paying, this time of year.

If this business about the Mayan calendar proves right, the world will end the day before we go to Loch Fyne. That will be a disappointment.

Miscellany

There was an article in this week’s Sunday Times about the new Canadian Governor of the Bank of England. It said that his “firebrand wife” is “prone to frequent outbursts of anti-capitalism and yoghurt knitting patterns”. That’s a new one. Neither yoghurt nor knitting was mentioned in the rest of the article.

Rosesmama and Catmum, thank you for the pointer to the Turban(d) pattern (Ravelry link) – I’ve downloaded and printed. 

Not much was accomplished around here yesterday.

However, the scarf now has but eight inches to go. A couple more evenings should do it. Zite came up this morning with Lorna Watt’s Chunky Turban Headband (Ravelry link). I’m not thinking Christmas-present. I’m thinking leftover-yarn – from both scarves – and I’m also thinking baby-it’s-cold-outside. The pattern wants super chunky and I don’t think either yarn qualifies as that, but I also think adjustment would be within my capacities.

So I bought the pattern. Someone commented recently that she always prints out a pattern right away, after downloading it: so do I. So that one is ready to roll.

I’ve also been thinking about what sweaters to knit for the Little Boys on the shores of Loch Fyne, if Scotland win the Catcutta Cup next year. It’s good fantasy knitting, because Scotland won’t win. Quite apart from the fact that we are rubbish at the moment, and England really rather good, the match is played in London in odd-numbered years. Scotland never win there.

The 2012 celebratory sweaters (not needed, in the event) were going to be Norwegian. This time, I’m thinking of carrying on from Ed’s Gardening Sweater and knitting smaller EPS Seamless Saddle Shoulders (KWT) in beautiful madelinetosh.

QueerJoe in his post for December 3 says without explanation that he has “started getting regularly scheduled deliveries of madelinetosh yarns” – I want in on that one! He illustrates a wonderful colorway called Bitterroot, not far off Firewood with which I am soon to begin knitting.

“Knit Your Own Scotland” turned up yesterday, and it’s delightful – but, oh! Kristie! There’s no haggis!

Comments

I had the same idea – that it would be worth my while to pay EasyJet to let Archie take another suitcase. Helen’s husband David did the work, and reported that it would cost £14 for a physical extra bag plus £69 for up to 9 kilos. That’s booking-in-advance. So I’ll squeeze anything I can into his suitcase – and his mother has told him to wear as many clothes as possible – and face up to posting the rest.

Dawn, when I was in China I saw, like you, museum attendants knitting, and others with jobs that left time on their hands. One day James took us out in the country to visit places where bits of the Great Wall exist (as well as the famous site near Beijing where princes go).  In one village, there was a group of women sitting on the pavement in the afternoon. One of them was knitting a one-piece baby garment into which it looked as if a small child could usefully be sewn in November. She didn’t want to be photographed, even when James asked her politely in Mandarin.

The only Chinese patterns I’ve seen are western spin-offs. But on the strength of that one baby-gro I’d like Kirsty to probe more deeply. If people in the cities knit, there could be a country tradition behind them.

Christmas

You win some: my husband’s present, a Microsoft Surface, arrived yesterday – one potential major source of worry nipped in the bud. I haven’t dared open the package yet, but must soon, if only to make sure that the electricals are right for charging the battery from British electricity.

I’m counting on James and Cathy’s son Alistair to teach my husband how to use it, when we meet on the shores of Loch Fyne, and, especially, how to surf the web. My husband is aware of the infinite resources of cyberspace but up until now has only been able to tell me what he wants fetched from there. 

And Alistair can play with the Surface himself when we have gone to bed.

You lose some: Helen writes from Athens that Archie will be travelling EasyJet when he goes home for the holidays next week. The baggage allowance is very limited – I won’t be able to fill a small suitcase with presents and just hand it to him, after all. I think I’ll be able to insinuate his brother Fergus’ present into whatever luggage he is taking. It’s long and narrow, awkward to wrap for the post, and light-weight. For the rest, it will have to be that expensive trudge to the post office after all.

Thank you for the kind comments about Lizzie’s forthcoming adventures in Kansas. Considering that there are only about 350 of us world-wide, on a very good day, it seems remarkable that so many have connections to the University of Kansas. Lizzie is, alas, not a knitter so almost certainly never looks at this blog: I gathered up all the relevant comments and emailed them to her just now.

I know of the Yarn Barn, of course. But I don’t think I have ever ordered from them, and I didn’t know that that’s where they are.

(So far, Alistair is the only one of my grandchildren who has shewn a real aptitude for knitting – but his early interest was squashed by strict Chinese views on gender roles. I still have hopes of his younger sister Kirsty. I need someone to go into the Chinese countryside, speaking the language -- as Kirsty does -- and write the book about Chinese peasant knitting.)

As for actual knitting, I left the brioche scarf unfinished and returned to the Reversible Cables last night. It’s slower work, but progressing nicely. I could stop any time. But I have determined on seven feet – 14 inches to go, therefore – and will proceed with that plan.

I must remember to allow time for making the Christmas pudding and perhaps cranberry sauce. Not to mention writing those cards. How did I manage it all when I did the whole thing myself, and had a job, and had to move the household from Birmingham to Strathardle in the darkest days of December?

I didn’t have to cook lunch in those days – that’s how.

…and wasn’t it Laura Linney with whom Frazier rode off into the sunset in the last reel?

We’ve had rather a burst of good news around here.

n      Granddaughter Lizzie is reading American Studies at Birmingham University. Next year will be spent in the US, and she heard yesterday that she has been assigned to her first choice – the University of Kansas. We all told her to get well away from the East Coast. I sent her the lyrics to the Sunflower Song but can’t seem to persuade the computer to sing it for her.

n      Her brother Joe, who graduated from Nottingham last year, has got a job. He has been doing an internship with a company which has something to do with sport promotion. Internship = toiling unpaid and living on air: you don’t qualify for Jobseeker’s Allowance, since you’re not seeking a job. They have offered him a real job, from January.

n      James will be in London any moment now, staying with Rachel – mother of the two people just mentioned -- for a couple of weeks and working in the head office of the Economist.

n      I succeeded in ordering Kate Davies’ book, and heard from Amazon that “Knit Your Own Scotland” is on its way. Kristie wrote to say she has had a similar message from Amazon. She wants to knit a haggis for her cousin Kath – we all three had a very happy lunch at a pub in the Grassmarket last year. We didn’t have haggis, though.

I got through all of yesterday’s chores all right. I spent £49.17 at the post office, sending one package and a dozen cards airmail to the US, and buying stamps for the domestic cards, as yet unwritten. That’s a lot of money.

And in the afternoon, we got to the Eye Pavillion and back. My husband agreed to go by taxi – a definite milestone on the downward path. We owe all our prosperity in old age to a lifetime of never taking taxis. We managed the return journey by bus. (We've got a perfectly good car, but there would have been nowhere to park.)

And I’ve cast off the brioche scarf. Tonight I’ll tidy up the ends, and pick up the Reversible Cables.

Shandy has a good note in her latest blog entry about knitting at Christmas time, the craziness of panicking about it. I can’t imagine anything much sillier than getting stressed over one’s knitting instead of letting it soothe and comfort. Kaffe mentioned in his talk last week how knitting calms and sustains him. And I have a little theory that knitting round-and-round is even more comforting than back-and-forth. Although Kaffe won’t have much experience of that.

That’s part of what I’m looking forward to with Ed’s Gardening Sweater – not just the beautiful madelinetosh yarn, and the pleasure of knitting from EZ’s and Meg’s pages again, but the joy of going round and round.

There has been a great leap forward in the number of Followers since Franklin’s recommendation. I fear I will fail your expectations, but you are all most welcome.

Today is my sister’s 76^th birthday. She’s catching up with me fast. Happy Birthday, Helen. Our mother always said it was her best Christmas ever – she had to get everything done well in advance, and she did. A healthy baby under the Christmas tree was a welcome plus.

Romulus Linney: I didn’t know it was lung cancer, Shandy. I did know, Beverly and Catmum, that Laura is his daughter. “The Truman Show” is one of my favourite movies.

I think we overlapped at Oberlin only by a year, Rommy Linney and I – he was a towering figure when I was a freshman. He was on stage at a welcome session in my first few days. He told us, at one point, to turn around and shake hands with the person behind us. We all tried to do it, and then all laughed. I think of that moment often, in relation to Christmas. It’s fun giving people things, and imagining in advance how their faces will light up when they unwrap our present and discover the very thing they wanted. Less easy to bear in mind that one will, oneself, be on the other end of such exchanges and that one’s own reaction will be equally necessary to the jollity of the moment.

Knitting: the brioche scarf has about five inches to go. This evening might polish it off.

Kate Davies’ book went on sale at 8 a.m. this morning. Now, at 9:10, she says she’s sold out!

Christmas: once when my mother was moving house, she grumbled to a neighbour over the garden fence about all she had to do. Start with the job that bugs you most, he said. It was good advice. So yesterday I wrapped my sister’s present, as well as polishing off the rest of the USA-bound Christmas cards. Will I get to a post office with them today? The local one closed some years ago. I think they explained at the time that they were doing it for my greater convenience. Or will I be required to devote all available time and energy to getting my husband to a routine diabetic retinopathy examination at the Eye Pavillion this afternoon?

You were quite right, Kristie – getting started on the Christmas cards was all it took to make me feel happier. A bit happier. Chores are like that old computer game with moles – hit one on the head, and there are two more behind you.

One nice thing is that there has never in history been a year with so few packages to wrap and post – a chore I truly hate, and an expensive one.  Archie will save me a great deal of trouble and money by carrying the Greek presents to Athens when he goes home for the hols – gosh, next week. I’ll see everybody else on the shores of Loch Fyne. That leaves only the present for my sister to entrust to the mails.

The credit card worked fine yesterday. There are now only a couple more jobs for it to do.

The still-to-do part of the brioche scarf is now measured in inches rather than feet. Two more evenings? It doesn’t look as if there’s any danger of a knitting panic, anyway. And the prospect of starting Ed’s Gardening Sweater stretches ahead like a sunny pasture. I’ll take it along over Christmas.

Franklin has posted about Loop. Wonderful pictures, including one of me. That should boost readership into the stratosphere for a day or two. And if I ever get to London again, I am going to have to insist on a day to myself to go back to Loop.

But how’s this for seasonal gloom:

I opened up Zite on the iPad just now, to see if there was any knitting news to fill a paragraph. The opening page always consists of five items on any subject which Zite thinks might be of interest.  One of them, today, is a poem called Wild Before Winter, written by someone I knew at Oberlin. (Either that or there are two men in the world named Romulus Linney.)

“In my eightieth year” it says in the poem. Just like me. And at the end it says, “Used by permission of the Estate of Romulus Linney”.

On a brighter note: I was overjoyed, as you guessed, Metropolitan Rebecca, to learn that the norovirus is named after Norwalk, Ohio. Wikipedia confirms it. The virus laid the mighty All Blacks low last week, to the point where England beat them yesterday.

Today, panic and gloom. I still haven’t started the Christmas cards. I can’t find the piece of paper on which I’ve written my passwords. It’s December. There are only three weeks to go. (Alexander is planning to come and get us on Saturday the 22^nd.)

I ordered a Microsoft Surface for my husband’s Christmas yesterday. The credit card company phoned from New York within the hour, asking if I really wanted to spend that much on the silly old fool. I am grateful to them for looking out for me, but apprehensive about what will happen when I try to use the card today.

This annual misery is all very well. Three-weeks-until-Christmas-HELP really means three-weeks-until-the-solstice-HURRAY. I worry – I’ve said this before – about Catdownunder and her friends, who are being hustled through the best weeks of the year.

Odds and ends

Schaefer yarns are about to disappear. Cheryl apparently is going to retire, without selling the business on.

Jamieson and Smith have some nice new kits ready.

Packages are arriving by every post – the great thing about shopping on-line is that it feels as if I get a present every day. But “Knit Your Own Scotland” isn’t here yet. I look upon that sort of knitting as utterly fiddly and not-me. But on the other hand, the few times I’ve tried it – I think Sam-the-Ram would count, and Arne and Carlos’ Christmas tree ornaments certainly do – I’ve enjoyed it. So I am at least open to the possibility of knitting Scotland.

The program for next year’s Games is out already, and the knitting categories are dreadful. “Fish and chip baby suit (Pattern supplied: to be donated)” and “Cushion cover (no pad)”. A recipe is supplied every year for one of the baking categories – it’s a “smiddy loaf” this year – so that the playing field is completely level. I suppose it’s an interesting thought, to apply the same idea to knitting.

Unfortunately, the pattern isn’t supplied, at least not yet. I would do very badly, I’m sure.

The new VK turned up yesterday – I didn’t even know I was expecting one. There’s nothing there I want to knit, but the magazine is exciting.

Kaffe had some interesting things to say on Thursday. Avoid white and bright yellow when you’re mixing colours – darker is better. He regards the colour wheel as the work of the devil. He doesn’t (I gather) knit socks himself, but it sounds as if the sock yarns he has designed for Regia have been a nice little earner for him. He doesn’t like most hand-dyed yarns. They look stunning in the skein, but when you get them home and knit them, they look like cat’s vomit. I think that was his analogy.

He showed us a scarf knit with two space-dyed yarns in which the colours change slowly – just knit eight-row stripes of each yarn alternately, and let them change as they will. I think I’ve seen that idea somewhere before. The result was very nice. Maybe that’s next year’s Christmas scarf?

I am currently pressing on with the brioche scarf.