…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.