I’m going for one of our walks with our niece today – the Pencaitland Railway Walk, along an old railway trackbed. Nice and flat, and impossible to get lost. It will be interesting to see how much I can do – and how many steps it will put on my pedometer. I’ll be unhappy with fewer than 10,000.

I’ve stuffed the Silly Christmas Object. It’s lumpy and misshapen. I thought I was good at stuffing. My husband has several plans for its improvement, including a stiffener in the base so that it will stand up better. He’s certainly right about that, and after a couple of days to recover I’ll have to unpick the top and try again. He thinks I might get a better shape if I line the whole thing with tissue paper before stuffing. I wonder. Maybe use the too-soft acetate?

Any moment now, knitting will have to take second place to Christmas Card Writing. My usual scene of action for that job is the dining room table, but recently my husband has commandeered it with his new portable computer. Books and paper cover all the visible surface. It's warmer than working in the study, he says. Maybe I can find some table space in there to do my cards, but those flat surfaces are equally obscured by books and paper.

Shandy, I suspect you will neither love nor hate my new Sensible Christmas Project. It will be more a case of “Ahah! Of course!” as it was with me when I saw that ad in IK. Let’s hope the kit gets here quickly.

Having stuffed the SCP unsatisfactorily, I got on with the other things last night. I’ve finished the first (of three) rows of upside down rams on the Rames & Yowes blankie. And it’s time to start measuring the Milano to see how near I am to the back shoulder shaping.

I’ve just ordered “The Knitted Shawls of Helga Ruutel” from the Schoolhouse. It’s Estonian.

Now I must go. I can’t go for a walk without first eating my porridge.