The package from Meadow Yarns arrived. The house is awash with knitting needles, my husband said, why did you buy another one? Not understanding that if one wants a 100cm 4mm circular Symfonie, that's what one has to have.

The Sirka counter is a delight. Thank goodness I got it in time to handle the last few rows of buttonhole-every-12-rows, sleeve-increases every four, back-and-front-increases every other. I over-estimated progress yesterday – I've still got four more rows of yoke to do, and six more of placket. Maybe today?

I used to have a peg-board that handled the same sort of multiple reckoning -- until one lost too many of the pegs, as eventually happened with me. 

Today's excitement is another trip to the dentist. I might take Archie's sweater along. I'm nearly finished with the second skein of yarn; still too early to guess whether I have enough.

Knitalot, I think willy warmers might do rather well, in the right sort of Christmas Fair (comment yesterday). Quick and easy to knit, too. I remember a fair amount of giggling on the subject in the dear old days of the Knitlist, and I am sure that Google could produce all the patterns you might need. Let us know how you get on.

Christmas

Wedding panic is being replaced by Christmas panic, which is, if anything, worse. I really don't like November. At least I am spared Thanksgiving. The family decided last summer to stop giving each other Christmas presents. That sounded good, but it turns out that it's all right to give presents to the people you actually see at Christmas – eliminating those horrible queues in the post office, at least, but still leaving a fair amount of Thinking and Doing.

What about knitting? Last year I knit a Marmite jar for James and a KU beanie for Lizzie at Kansas University. I am apprehensive of Christmas knitting in general – absurd to add stress to one's only refuge, and at such a stressful time of year. But I might cast an eye about for a quick and easy and wonderful idea.

At least the horror of Christmas helps speed one through the worst weeks of the year. Goodness! Could November be half-gone already? I worry about you, Catdownunder, having to assign a portion of glorious summer to it.

Other

I wonder if I can express this both safely and comprehensibly.

My husband was for many years director of the B^rb*r Institute, a small and very distinguished art gallery attached to the University of Birmingham. It had – has – its own endowment and could hold the university at arm's length if it kept its nerve. At some point in the 80's or early 90's the university got a new vice chancellor who thought he spotted an opportunity, and the B*rb*r trustees capitulated. My husband was eased out to be replaced by a go-getter. Subsequent appointments have been even more go-getting and briefer. For the first fifty years after it was established, B*rb*r directors stayed until retirement. The provisions of Lady B*rb*r's trust deed have been in several respects disregarded.

Please tell me if you think I should take that paragraph down.

But what provokes it, is a page in yesterday's Telegraph about how to spend a weekend in Birmingham. The City Art Gallery is mentioned – strong on pre-Raphaelites. And the Ikon Gallery, an old friend. But there is no suggestion that you might want to hike out to the university campus and take in the B*rb*r. Twenty years of go-getting, and they've got nowhere! We were very happy.