Friday, November 01, 2013

The Athenians are gone. All is quiet. The really good thing about Christmas is that it fast-forwards us through these, the toughest days of the year. The Athenians will  be back soon. I emailed Helen last night with preliminary thoughts about what bird to order for Christmas dinner.

The idea will be to keep everything as simple as possible. No cake... 

Buy a pudding. But after that, simplicity becomes difficult. I want to make an American-type stuffing with breadcrumbs and celery and no meat. And one can’t buy in cranberry sauce! Or brandy butter! Supermarkets may, however, come up with some ready-to-cook potatoes and sprouts.

The new second cousin, Ted LeCompte, has been added to my Lotus Organizer calendar. What a cluster of birthdays we have this time of year! Between October 30 and November 19th, four grandchildren, a husband, and now a great-nephew.

So, November. Forward. Maybe I’ll knit the first little piece of my Silly Christmas Knitting Project today. But I also want to finish the first rank of rams’ horns, on the Rams & Yowes blankie, so that I can show you how it’s looking.


For my progress bar – and I know, it’s not rocket science nor meant to be – I am allowing 80% for the patterned centre, 20% for the edging of this thing. That may not be quite right. There’s a lot of edging; it’s knit double. That is, you knit it outwards and then you put in a fold line and knit it inwards. There’s a lot of picking-up-of-stitches and of securing the edging, one way or another, to the back of the blankie at the end. But there’s no colour work. We shall see.

3 comments:

  1. I'm starting to think about Christmas more seriously now, a low input Christmas sounds like a good idea. Perhaps a grandchild could bake something? Delegation is a great thing!
    I also have vague plans involving crocheted snowflakes.
    You are right about Christmas helping through this patch of the year, our ancients knew what they were doing when they had Christmas celebrations and then separate New Year's celebrations in March to look forward to and carry them through the winter.

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  2. Jean that is one of my favorite Gorey cards. (The other is the Great Veiled Bear.) I'm making basic socks as I ponder larger more specific projects. Socks always find a home at Christmas.

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  3. Anonymous8:20 AM

    Cranberry relish! One bag cranberries (16 oz?), two oranges, run through a grinder of some sort (we use one of the old cast-iron hand-cranked meat grinders), peel and all on the oranges, sweeten to taste, and you're done.

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