Still cold. The forecast of relief has now retreated to Sunday. On the other hand, we have had only a dusting of snow, not the three or four inches expected. So far. There’s still time.

But Daniella is back. All’s well.

Again, I have done much less knitting than I would like to be able to report. I have at least abandoned the back of Fergus’ sweater and embarked on the front. It is lower — that should help.

The pattern is written with a hood, which I won’t be doing, but I haven’t yet addressed the question of whether my decision on that point will involve any other modifications.

Rachel phoned. She has handed over the Christmas-dinner baton to her daughter Hellie. They all will be together — Rachel and Ed and their four children with spouses and seven granddaughters. Only Hellie, I gather, has space for the necessary trestle tables. Or maybe only Hellie has strength for the ordeal. But it also makes me older by a significant notch, to be two generations away from actually doing it.

Kate Davies logged in with a wonderful essay this morning for the Allover club, about carrots and the associated colour. I trust it will be in the book, as there are bits of it I want to go back to — including a wartime recipe for a steamed pudding involving, of course, carrots. 

Wordle: We’re nicely spread about today. I did it in four, my preferred score as you know, and better yet, I did it briskly. The starter words produced two greens and a brown. My first guess made it three greens and another brown.  The answer was easy from there. The secret is not to use Jean-words (which I know aren’t right). Yesterday I was swimming in a sea of browns and it took all day to post a dim result. 

We were spread everywhere today. Big Rachel (my daughter) beat us all with two. I’ve never scored two.Alexander, Ketki, and Little Rachel  had three. Mark and Theo and Roger and I were all four. Thomas, so often the best, struggled home with five.