It begins to look as if the Uncia may have been lost in the post, although we haven’t quite despaired.

I can't remember when I sent it, but I thought I was in plenty of time for my sister's birthday on the 3rd. And there have been several delivery-days since then. I feel quite calm -- I knit it, I wrapped it up, I wrote "Happy Birthday" on it, I addressed it, I got up to the Post Office and posted it. Job done. She's the one who unfortunately has to do without an Uncia.

But I hesitate to consign her husband's Whiskey Barrel socks to the Christmas mails, although their loss would be fairly trivial by comparison.

I got all the socks toe-grafted and finished today -- four pairs. There has also been a pair of Vampires of Venice which I gave Cathy at some point -- those five pairs are probably the whole story for '16, sock-wise. It'll be easier to keep track next year with my projected list in the side bar.

When I knit the first stripey hat, I was surprised to find that I didn't seem to have a 16" 4.5mm circular. Since that Christmas decades ago when I knit hats for everybody, I thought I had short circulars in every imaginable size. So for the first hat I knit the whole thing on the 4mm needle required for the initial rib. ("Knitting is forgiving stuff": EZ). But this time I mean to do it properly, so I sent an order to Meadow Yarns this morning.

And as for Ross' hat, Ravelry would seem to suggest that  Bruce Weinstein has the answer in "Knits Men Want" -- which I've got, and have, indeed, knit from. I haven't looked it up yet. For today, I went back to the shawl. I’ve now done slightly more than ¼ of the scallops for the second side.I love the way it's looking.

Carol, you were right -- I found Paton’s leaflet 893 while I was tidying things away after finishing off those socks. I'm trying to knit the shawl edging-inwards because that's the way I learned to do it from Amedro in her book "Shetland Lace". The yarn is Melanie Berg's Portland Lace in the shade Morning Rain, from the Yarn Collective. I am increasingly delighted with it. 

And I got the first Christmas cards written today. We're edging forward.