The poor carers were late again tonight, and I must be off to my bed soon.

It wasn’t the best of days, but I still did more than two rows of shawl border, and advanced the tax a wee bit. I think I remember from other years that I’m doing the worst part now, and when it’s finished, P60 and National Insurance Pension and even Gift Aid payments will slide past quickly.

The Sunday Times (filling up space) urges us to get cracking with acquiring the “unique taxpayer reference” and “activation code” we’ll need to log on and pay our tax. I’ve been doing it for four or five years, and ought to have all the codes I need, although I don’t actually remember having either of those.  I might be happier if I logged in tomorrow just to see if I can do it.

The single thing I can do for myself to make this easier, is to deal with financial papers as they arrive. I’ve been sloppy lately; papers are missing. The information can be found in bank statements, and if they’re missing, it’ll be on-line. But if I had dealt with every paper as it arrived, things would be much easier.

As for the shawl, I’m doing row 31, and it’s slow. Not difficult – there’s nothing remotely difficult here. But it’s a busy row, with lots of k3tog’s. I had a disaster in an Amedro pattern once in a passage with a lot of k3tog’s, when I discovered that the middle stitch of half of them had quietly tiptoed away. I centre such decreases now, unless there's a reason not to: slip 2 as if to knit them together, knit the 3rd, pass the slipped stitches over. It's a bit safer. 

Row 31 is the last on page 3 of the pattern leaflet, so tomorrow I’ll turn over to page 4, and that, surely, is a significant landmark.  

The new edition of Knitting has a paragraph about Stephen West’s new scarf book. It costs 30 euro’s which is a bit steep even for my extravagant self. But I’ve got a book of his, and his wonderful Craftsy class: a Westknit scarf might indeed be a possible project to plan and have in my pocket for the EYF market.

Non-knit

A near neighbour and dear friend knocked on the door today to say he had solved yesterday’s puzzle, as, clearly, have several of you. Catriona, you’re right: the link between Prunella Scales, Jeffrey Archer, and Siamese twins is the zodiac, in English:  Libra, Sagittarius, Gemini. The questions I couldn’t answer will have supplied the other signs. I didn’t get it. I had to look up the answer in the Financial Times magazine.

My husband’s carers were late tonight, coming to put him to bed – through no fault of their own, I am sure, nor did they grumble. But that means that it’s later still, now, so I won’t linger.

I didn’t manage much more than my two rows of shawl border today. I’m well across row 27, establishing the new lozenges. There are 86 rows in the borders, so my earlier calculation is looking even better, what with all this frantic knitting of late. 60 rows to go, at 2 rows a day, brings us to early February for finishing the borders. I could finish the whole thing before Lent! let alone before Easter.

And I moved forward with the tax. I am now wrestling with questions such as, why did we not have a payment from F&C Asset Management (whoever they may be) in May, 2015, although they paid us £2.48 in May, 2014? The tax return asks only for totals but I always imagine HMRC bursting the front door open with one of those sledgehammer things and shouting “What about F&C Asset Management?” (I found the answer: we have been bought out for a small sum.)

Totally non-knit

Here’s a puzzle for you. Every Saturday, the first thing I turn to in our armload of newspapers is “A Round on the Links” – a quiz in the Financial Times Magazine in which the answers to all the questions are connected with each other in some way. Usually, I can’t answer any of the questions, or perhaps only one. But there have been times when I have answered two or even three, and have grasped the link.

Today, I got three answers (and they were right) but I couldn’t see the connection at all. Can you? The questions don’t matter. The answers I knew were:

                Prunella Scales

                Jeffrey Archer

                Siamese Twins

Answer tomorrow. Of course, if you read the weekend FT – a highly recommended thing to do – you know already, so you mustn’t answer.

A good night’s sleep seems to have cured the computer of any wish to speak Greek, but I am proceeding with caution.

Barbara (comment yesterday) – you had the same idea as Duffy, who emailed me privately. And of course you are both absolutely right – I should get in touch with Hazel Tindall before the class if I want her to show me how to pick up stitches from a lace edging. I’ll think about it. I mean, I may be so embarrassed as to abandon the idea altogether.

And, Shandy, I am delighted to hear that your Houlland is to be reprieved, and agree absolutely that what you have hit upon must be defined as a workaround. The Blind Followers I was grumbling about, were the modern knitters, with the world at their fingertips via the Internet, and with all the wonderful books now available, who would still follow an old pattern that told them to knit a Shetland shawl – any shawl – in six pieces and sew them together.

In 1958, when I did exactly that, even “Knitting Without Tears” was still 13 years in the future.

Knitting went well again today. I have reached, indeed almost finished, row 24 of Mrs Hunter’s border pattern. A major landmark looms – the next row will finish off the first set of motifs, and row 27 will establish the next one, lozenges again, but different lozenges. And I am more than halfway to the first decrease row, namely row 40. There’s still a long, long way to go, but this is definitely progress.

And the tax continues well. My ambition is to finish it in the next fortnight, so that if anything goes wrong with the terrifying task of logging in to the government website through multiple layers of security, and actually filing the return, I will have time to panic before the January 31 deadline.

The thought of Hazel Tindall and my class has focused my thoughts on the Edinburgh Yarn Festival. I am sure I will spend a foolish amount of money, and for the next few weeks I can enjoy thinking about what patterns I might like to buy yarn for. Brooklyn Tweed is coming this year – do you think that means Jared himself? – so one thing to do is to wander through his recent lookbooks.

It might be salutary to look in the stash cupboard and see how much EYF 2016 is still there. I’ve looked at my Ravelry queue and find that either I’ve got the yarn already, or I’m not sure I still want to knit whatever-it-is.

News: I’ve had an email from Nick LaPensee (what a wonderful name!) of Knitzi to say that mine has just been returned to him from the Royal Mail, marked “Not Called For”. Nobody ever told me to call for it. He will send it again, marked as a gift. I have replied with delight, urging him to bill me for his extra costs.

I had completely given up.

I had another good day. I have finished gathering in interest-received for the tax man, and am ready to go on to the next question, which concerns dividends. I didn’t do quite as much shawl-border as on previous days, but I did get past my self-imposed requirement of two rows a day.

Beth, thank you for Donna Smith’s remarks about picking up stitches from an edging. I’m sure she’s right, that if it looks OK, it is OK.

But I had a thought today. I have signed up for only one class at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival this year (to leave plenty of time and strength for the market). But that one is with Hazel Tindall. What if I knit six or eight inches of lace before the class and took it in with a spare needle and just asked her how she would do it? Of course she’s not primarily a lace knitter, but she is a Shetlander and must have knit some lace.

But then I thought that such an action would place me precisely among Franklin’s Ten Knitters You Meet in Hell. (Go read it, if you never have.) I would be the Game Changer, the man who turns up in the class on Introduction to East Andalusian Four-Way Intarsia and wants help with his cabled socks. So maybe I had better not do that.

I have been having a lot of trouble this evening with the computer suddenly changing into the Greek alphabet. I had better stop while I’m ahead. Was it something to do with Franklin's article on the Twist Collective website? I was writing in Word, and thought that everything would be all right once I went back to the wider world, but it wasn't. EVERYTHING I typed came out in Greek, even "Help" which the system, understandably, didn't recognize. I felt a bit like King Midas. What did I do wrong?

That was another fairly good day. I did nearly four rows of the shawl border. The first motif is a lozenge and I have passed the point where it is at its widest -- a first milestone, of a modest sort. The object is beginning to look like a piece of knitting.

And I made some progress, at least, with identifying and entering into a spreadsheet the miserable sums of interest we were paid in the past tax year. I had been slightly concerned not to have had a reminder from the tax man by post – but today it arrived in the form of an email.

I was very interested in your comment, Marion, about the Paton's Cloud Drift baby shawl which is the same pattern as Mrs Hunter's. Sure enough, it is. Some of the knitters on Ravelry even illustrated their projects with pics of the very leaflet I am knitting from, inherited from mother or grandmother or aunt.

I was surprised at how many of them were doing it the way the pattern says -- knitting it in six separate pieces. I even shared, for a moment, EZ’s exasperation at Blind Following.

LizM, I will try to find the correspondence about how to pick up stitches from the Houlland edging. I pursued it for a while without success, but I think I was getting close. Thanks for that.

And speaking of KD, the latest pattern for the Inspired by Islay club is a wonderful all over patterned sweater called Oa, the name, apparently, of part of the island. 

A good day. I advanced the Income Tax quite enough for one day, including finding last year's computer files. I have been flitting from computer to computer lately, winding up with my husband's neat little Toshiba. I doubt if he will use it again, and if he does, I haven't done it any harm.

But the tax files weren't there. I found them on a different machine, and copied to Dropbox. I'm ready to start on the actual tax return. The first question is about interest earned which will mean quite a lot of work gathering up statements from various banks although the total sum will be ludicrously small.

And I had a good day with the shawl -- I'm now on row 11 of 86 border rows. If I can do two rows a day -- and I did better than that, today -- I will finish the borders sometime in February, and the centre, surely, by Easter. That's fine.

I'm knitting the borders back and forth as one long strip. I realized that the three internal corners are going to look a bit odd compared to the fourth one, which will be seamed. I am used to borders which have mitred corners due to decreases every other row -- the decreases would form a line which would compensate, to some extent, for the lack of a seam. In the original, of course, four borders were knit separately and all four corners were seamed. No problem there.

But the borders of this pattern are knit straight for forty rows, and then fairly severe decrease rows are introduced. No mitres to form a line.

So I have introduced a little yo, k3tog, yo at the internal corners to form a degradation (to use a family word). We shall see.

Tamar, thank you for your comment. As always, your head is clearer than mine. I was a bit uneasy about that sentence as I was typing it last night. Knitting the first row tbl completes the attractive twisting of the row of picked-up stitches. It also, of course, produces a row of ordinary knit stitches from which one proceeds to the rest of the shawl.

Shandy, I’m sorry you’re thinking of abandoning your shawl. I think your standards are higher than mine. I also think I must now seek out YouTube or some other source and try to get a definitive answer to this question.

Change of subject

Laine, the Nordic knitting mag, is not cheap.  It really must be as good as it looks, to have sold out everywhere so fast.

I knit on, although I did no paper work today. That was not good. I will have to work tax affairs into my mornings, when I've got some oomph. And that's not entirely easy. But I did look in the place in the file where the P60 ought to be – and it’s there! If I’ve got a P60, I can probably wing the rest.

I've reached row 8 of the 86-row border pattern of Mrs Hunter’s shawl. It's a start.

Shandy, why should picking up those stitches be so difficult? Admittedly, you've got an awful lot of them.

I do it from right to left, slipping the needle, from back to front, stitch by stitch into the back loop of each link in the chain edge. That leaves a neat little ridge of the front loops, but that doesn't worry me. The resulting stitches are all backwards -- with their leading edges to the back of the needle. Hence the next instruction, to knit the whole lot tbl thus uncrossimg them. That’s the row I find slow and difficult.

Why does one not slip the needle through the front loop of each link in the chain? I somehow think that would be harder. But the picture on page xxiv of Amedro perhaps suggests that she took a different approach -- I think my stitches sloped in the opposite direction. Maybe she's coming in from the front. Maybe she has eliminated the little ridge thereby. 

But this is all very 20^th century thinking. There must be something on YouTube.

I think I have decided to go on with the shawl exclusively at least until I have some sense of how long it is going to take. And maybe I'll just carry straight on until it’s finished.

But what I need to do is choose the next pair of socks. It is very rare that I don’t have a pair of somewhat-knit socks in a bag somewhere, ready for snatching up, but such is the case at the moment. And medical emergencies can come suddenly, and nothing would be worse than a long tedious stretch in a&e without a sock to knit. Yarn, needles: that’s all I need, but I do need them.

Ysolda, too, is sold out of Laine -- the Nordic knitting magazine. Did you find one, Mary Lou?

A very good day’s knitting – a great way to start the year.

Sliding the needle through the chained edging stitches was easy and fun. Then I had to knit a round tbl, which was a bit fiddly but produced that nice little row of stitches with their legs crossed. Then two rows of plain knitting during the second of which I put markers in every 50 stitches and got a proper count done.

Then the thrilling row in which the lace pattern was finally established. That went well in borders One, Two, and Four. A silly lack of concentration during Three led to a miscount which in turn led to quite a prolonged tinking session before it could be put right. But it was done. And now I have progressed to row 5, plain knit again. The lace pattern, now successfully established, will itself prevent future egregious mistakes.

I haven’t yet joined the shawl into a circle, and now I don’t think I will. I am going to knit back and forth anyway. Garter stitch is required, and purling on that scale would be intolerable.  I had planned to wrap and turn. But that will make a strong line at the fourth corner; a seam could hardly be worse, and might be better. And by leaving that corner open, I am spared the anxiety of joining without twisting which is not as easy as it sounds with hundreds of stitches.

I did it wrong once, and only discovered the problem when I was several inches into the shawl. I took the scissors to it. Cutting open the corner, I mean – not destroying the whole thing.

I looked Mrs Hunter’s pattern up in Ravelry. There it is – not much gets past Ravelry. It’s available free in some archive. But so far there are no projects! I really must bestir myself. I am a poor Raveller – relying on them as we all do for information, and very rarely contributing anything myself.

So lots of knitting, but I also sorted some more paper as a preliminary to tax-filing.

Non-knit

Jeanfromcornwall, together we will crack the question of Eliquis. I have launched myself into a Dry January (so far so good) with the thought of eliminating Weston’s Vintage Cider as a cause of my fatigue. I don’t take any other medication. That still leaves old age and stress as possible causes – nothing much I can do about them.

(Easter is late this year – I’ll have time for a whole Wet February before Lent starts on March 1. Or maybe I’ll abandon abstinence once the tax is done. We’ll see.)

Catdownunder, you must already be well into 2017. I hope you're enjoying it. I have high hopes. I think I prefer the odd-numbered years (perhaps because I was born in one). Except that there's no hope of winning the Calcutta Cup, because the match is played at Twickenham in odd-numbered years, and Scotland never win down there.

Rachel got a ticket for next year's match as a Christmas present. She is related to enough England supporters that she should be able to suppress her disappointment and have a grand day out for their sake.

But even that is just as well -- a Calcutta Cup win would mean a Calcutta Cup sweater right at the top of the to-do list, and the queue is long enough as it is.

Hellie and Matt came to see us this morning, on their way south after the Loch Fyne house party. She looks very well, and thinks the baby has quickened. She's about half-way through, so that's probably true. Medically, not a significant moment any more, if it ever was, but exciting for the family. 

And we’ve heard this evening that Rachel and Ed are safely restored to south London, despite alarming predictions of freezing fog; and that Hellie and Matt have reached their b&b in Northumberland somewhere, in time to watch Liverpool beat Man City.. So all is well, for the moment. And the moment is all we’ve got.

Susan Crawford (of all people) put me on to Laine magazine, Nordic knit and lifestyle. It looks rather wonderful. It is clever of her to have got hold of a copy -- Loop and Meadow Yarn are sold out. I’ll have to wait until later in January. She is recovering from a double mastectomy only a few days ago, and sounds well enough to look forward to an evening of Thornton's chocolates and the magazine. One could scarcely begrudge her that. 

Knitting

I finished the edging of Mrs Hunter’s shawl, a splendid end to the year. Tomorrow, perhaps, I will pick up the stitches (there is a good picture of how to do it in Amedro’s “Shetland Lace”). 32 scallops per side x 4 sides x 6 stitches per scallop. I’ll leave you to do the arithmetic.

Income Tax

I have been very grateful for all your comments. And I’m afraid I didn’t get anything done today.

It really isn’t all that difficult. And I do like the clean-slate feeling of starting the year with things in order. In the olden days, I used to file by the end of September (is it?) at which point you are allowed to do it on paper. But then one year something went wrong, and once one misses September, Christmas rises up out of the swamp and overwhelms all else, so there is nothing left but January. And the first time I did that, it felt so right that I have gone on with January ever since.

I think what I need to do is gather up our ragbag of share holdings and get them into a broker’s account. I’ll think about that, once this year’s return is done.

And -- hey -- happy New Year to all!

Not much about knitting. here...

But: my sister’s husband Roger sent me this excellent picture of his Whiskey Barrel socks. He said he didn't write until he had done five miles in them. They have passed the test well. They looked awfully big when I finished them, but on him they look about right, for serious walking socks.

And I have only four scallops to go, before the edging of Mrs Hunter’s shawl is finished. There’s still time to get them done before the bells (as we say around here, and probably elsewhere around the world).

January, however, will have to be devoted to the Income Tax, as November and December were to Christmas. And the difference is, that unsent Christmas cards result in losing touch with old friends, which is bad enough – but unfiled tax returns are regarded rather more severely by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

A dear Oberlin friend writes a private blog, almost daily, greatly treasured, addressed to a few dozen family members and old friends. She is within a year of my own age, on the shady side – but she seems far more energetic than I am. She was struggling with accounts the other day, and wondering how long she was going to be able to carry on doing it.

The trouble is, as far as I can see, having an accountant do it means getting all the info together for him, just as now, and then paying him a very substantial sum to do the easy bit. If I became incompetent, poor Alexander would have to do it – he has our power of attorney.  And I don’t see any halfway house.

So my resolution for ’17 is to keep finances in order day by day. At the moment, there is a considerable pile of money-related papers on a table in the Catalogue Room. I made a good start today at sorting through and filing them:

a)       Papers relating to ISA’s and PEP’s, which HMRC is not interested in.

b)      Papers relating to dividends and interest payments, which HMRC wants to know about

c)       Bank statements

d)      The OhmyGawd pile – did I pay that bill? What shall I do about the building society account which is being “treated as dormant” because I haven’t done anything with it lately? And I haven’t renewed Rachel’s subscription to Delicious magazine.

It doesn’t sound quite so bad, when I spell it out like that. I hope to get a lot more done tomorrow with the other papers on that table, and then – next year! – get started on the tax return itself.

It was not an entirely successful day, today. My husband was/is sort of dopy, didn't want to be got out of bed this morning. I insisted on that, for the sake of some post-insulin breakfast, but dopiness persisted and he spent much of the day in bed. A dr came, found his Vital Signs in pretty good shape (oxygen saturation and temperature, at least), prescribed a just-in-case antibiotic given his history of chest and urine infections, and given the total shut-down of the country for the next week.

So, some anxiety and not much knitting. However, I have reached the final quarter of the fourth side of the edging of Mrs Hunter's shawl, and, with only seven scallops to go, should have finished easily by the start of next year.

I was grateful, as always, for your comments yesterday. It was good to know that you didn't all think my anecdote about the lovely celery completely absurd. And I was very glad to learn that you had looked up the Torquatus ode, pgknitter. I know it by heart, as well as Eheu fugaces Postume, Postume, and trust they will be comforting to me on my deathbed. Perhaps I should memorise a third.

Non-knit

James' and Cathy's Christmas present to my husband, opened only yesterday, turned out not to be for him at all: it is a wonderful machine in which you can pursue a toy mouse -- if you are a cat. Perdita loves it.

What a lot happens in a week, and doesn't.

We had a very jolly Christmas, as I hope you all did, if celebrating. (Is the tradition of going out for a Chinese on the 25th restricted to American Jews?) But very tiring. Helen’s youngest son Fergus took this picture of Perdita on the dining room table after the detritus of Christmas dinner had been removed to the kitchen.

Such knitting as was done, has consisted of more shawl edging. I'm now on the home stretch, the second half of the fourth side. 

I've joined KD's "Inspired by Islay" club -- good stuff for these dark days. The first pattern was the beautiful cardigan she wore at her wedding to Tom, the second the equally beautiful kilt hose he himself wore on that occasion. I may attempt them one day. And today we had a hap, knit as I am knitting mine, edging-in. And indeed, the edging pattern is the same.

I was taken aback that KD asks for only 84 scallops -- I'm doing 128. Did I fail in my arithmetic somewhere? I think not -- she's knitting with Buachaille, I with a fine lace-weight. 

Two things happened on Christmas Eve.

1) A friend of Greek Helen's, Daniela, has come to Edinburgh to start a new life with her husband and son. She cleans for me two days a week, and she's terrific. We don't have much in the way of common language but Daniela is learning very fast.

On Saturday she made us a lentil soup. I had to run down to the corner shop for some celery.

When I was young, I was much taken with a Greek couplet, No. 126 in the Oxford Book of Greek verse, by our old friend Anonymous: "Where are my roses?  Where are my violets? Where is my lovely celery? / Here are your roses. Here are your violets. Here is the lovely celery."

These lines have stayed with me, in Greek, while much else has fled. And when Daniela dispatched me to the shop, using that very word for "celery", I very nearly burst into tears. Although, on reflection, if you have a perfectly good word for “celery”, why should the passage of a mere 2500 years provoke you to change it?

When I got back from the shop I handed it to her with the last four words of the poem, in Greek, "tadi ta kala selina". Who would have thought, 60 years ago, that I would ever be able to work the phrase into conversation?

 2) The other thing that happened that day was the news of the loss of Zara Phllips' baby. There are many people to feel sad for, most of all the parents, but I felt especially sad for the Queen:  like me, looking forward early next summer to the birth of another great-grandchild, her daughter's daughter's child. She probably wasn't knitting a shawl, but you never know. And not all her wealth and art and furniture and castles, nor her life of often (surely) tedious devotion to duty, could save that baby.

Non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te

     Restituet pietas.

Horace’s idea was not the same, but the echoing sadness of the lines felt appropriate, on that sad day.

Here we are, dear friends! We did it again! I don’t understand all this stuff about sunrise and sunset not behaving quite as they ought. Alexander was here yesterday and raised that very point and I was unable to elucidate. Never mind: we’ve held on, darkness has been defeated – or so we hope. Catdownunder and her friends, of course, have had the opposite experience.

I’ll stop writing until (I hope) some time next week, the “back end” of the year. I’ll miss you guys a lot. I hope you’ll all have a jolly time, however you celebrate it, if at all.

I finished knitting the first half of the third side of the edging for Mrs Hunter’s shawl. That leaves 48 scallops to go. Six or seven a day will see it done in a week. Maybe.

Hellie herself rang up today, sounding very buoyant. She and Matt are going to be joining the Loch Fyne house party after Christmas, and propose calling in on us on the 31^st, on their way south. I am concerned about the lengthening of their journey, especially on that day, especially if the weather is (as often) unpropitious. But the thought is very welcome.

I got out my notes for my husband’s sleeveless madtosh vest, knit a year ago. They are rather sketchy. I am inclined to take the resulting vest as a great big swatch, and knit the basic v-neck sweater in Bruce Weinstein’s “Knits Men Want”. Maddeningly, my notes don’t mention needle size but I’m pretty sure it’s safe to take them from the ball band.

So, one day soon, maybe even tomorrow, when I’ve done six or seven scallops, I could cast on.

Non-knit

Throughout married life, we have read aloud at bedtime. In the beginning, we alternated, but I regularly fell asleep after listening to two paragraphs at the most, so we soon adopted the practice of having me read every night. Sometimes I fell asleep while reading, an interesting phenomenon. I would start producing nonsense, and my husband would have to wake me up and nudge me forward.

That’s by the way. We have read widely, without a programme. Tonight, we finished “Greengates” by RC Sherriff, the author of “Journey’s End”. (Wow!) We’ve covered an awful lot of 19^th century English and American novels, but we’ve also taken in War and Peace and Churchill’s “The Second World War” and, most spectacularly of all, “Ulysses”.

I was very doubtful about that one. It turns out it was made to be read aloud.

The other day, my husband said that he thought we should embark on another big project. I suggested Scott Moncrieff’s translation of Proust. Volume One (1000 pages plus a few) arrived today. The first page is suitably soporific. We shall see.

We don’t often abandon a project, but we don’t mind doing so. “Brighton Rock” was too gloomy for bedtime, Wodehouse too funny. So Proust and Scott Moncrieff have got to be on their best behaviour.

If we succeed, this will, almost certainly, be our Last Book.

All went really quite well today. Perhaps the secret is to pay but little attention to Christmas.

I finished-finished the second stripey hat, although both it and its predecessor could do with a brief pass of the steam iron because the three rounds of ribbing at the beginning tend to flip upwards.

Then I wound a skein of “Tannehill” – goodness, it’s nice; why on earth discontinued? And then returned to Mrs Hunter’s edging. I’ve now done 10 scallops on the third side – 16 will be halfway. I continue to be surprised and pleased at how attractive this very simple edging looks. But by now “very simple” = “boring” and it’s going to need seriously gritted teeth to get the rest of the way around. Tomorrow’s target is that halfway point.

I thought I had a lot more to say. We watched a television program this evening about Balmoral, from its construction by Victoria and Albert to the present day. Some are horrified by the décor and bored by the regime – someone was quoted, as an example of the latter, as saying that the Queen spent the evening knitting. I think (given the point in the program at which the remark occurred) that that would have to be Mrs George V, the formidable Queen Mary of my youth, grandmother of the present Queen.

The solstice, I gather, will occur between 10:30 and 11 tomorrow morning – if they remember.

Even less was accomplished today. I did walk down to Coco in Stockbridge to buy some Xmas chocs for all our carers. Now I worry that they would have preferred Ferraro Rocher. The distance is .8 of a mile according to Google Maps -- and back again, of course, and a certain amount of up-hill-down-dale is involved, so that is not too bad a day's walk. 

And I did finish knitting the second stripey hat -- and made some progress with finishing-finishing.

And I had my hair done this morning. At least Charles had heard of High Noon. Alas, Janet, it is no good for knitting. You really have to look at that wonderful movie.

Thank you for your contributions on the burning question of what I am to knit next. I think I will cast on my husband's sweater, for the reasons weavinfool gives (comment, yesterday) and because casting on is fun. I have the notes from the sleeveless vest I knit him recently, so I won't even have to measure and think. But the shawl will take priority until I reach the point where I feel completely comfortable about finishing it on time. I don't remember having any such anxiety when I was knitting it for this baby's grandmother 60 years ago. Well, nearly 60.

But I was young then, and couldn’t afford the yarn for multiple WIPs anyway.

The late, great Judy Sumner used to have a different WIP for every day of the week. I ought to be able to juggle three.

Non-knit

If you Google “winter solstice 2016” and then click on the offering from the Telegraph, you get a nice scientific article explaining rather more than we need to know, and a delicious count-down, second by second, like the closing moments of an eBay sale. Just at the moment there is/are one day, 12 hours, and a diminishing half-hour to go. So, not tomorrow but Wednesday.

That’s assuming that whoever is in charge remembers to throw the switch. That aspect of things always worries me a bit.

Very little knitting, today, but even so the stripey hat should be finished tomorrow, and perhaps even finished-finished by Tuesday. Then what? Immediately, more scallops on the edging of Mrs Hunter’s shawl. Dare I start my husband’s much-needed sweater (madtosh DK “Tannehill”)? Or does that pose too much of a threat to the half-brioche sweater for myself, ¾’s finished?

We watched "High Noon" on our television set after lunch. Goodness gracious me! that's a good film.  Have I seen it since I left Oberlin? My husband's carers came in soon afterwards. I was so full of the experience that I asked them about it. Both are lively-minded and intelligent young women. Neither had heard of "High Noon" nor of Grace Kelly nor of GARY COOPER. One sort of forgets how young it is possible to be.

I am going to cut “Hygge Schmygge” out of the FT and file it, I think, in Vibeke Lind, as the closest I can get to Danish knitting. The article isn’t entirely irrelevant – the author says that “expensive, handcrafted Nordic socks” are essential to hygge and the illustration includes two pairs of such, which one could copy if one were unusually determined. 

Not much, tonight. And not much of that, about knitting.

I’m very grateful for all comments about the side-effects of drugs, and I will  certainly keep you posted about Eliquis. Shandy, I have been a great fan of Mark Porter for a long time, and that is an interesting story of yours indeed.

Our cleaner was ill and didn’t come today, impressing upon me how much she does and how grateful I must be. I got through the minimum myself (no walk, no Christmas cards) and did rather enjoy putting everything in the kitchen in the place where I wanted it to be. There has never been much about housekeeping which agitates me one way or another, but I do like to keep saucepans within reach, and with their lids.

There is a headline in the Financial Times today: Hygge Schmygge. I was sort of pleased with myself for being able to understand it – knowing enough about 2016, and remembering enough of the New York speech of my youth. Never mind that – the article beneath the headline is very good, and very funny. I laughed aloud. Find it if you can.

I started the crown decreases on the stripey hat, and found the dp’s which will have to be deployed tomorrow.

Some cards written, no walk, the 2^nd stripey hat ready for the crown decreases.

I don’t think we’re recieving as many cards as in previous years, perhaps because everyone assumes that we’re dead. Perhaps because they’re dead themselves. It’s a gloomy time of year.

I am seriously thinking -- although I haven't done it yet -- of laying in a couple more stripey hat kits in case we have another winter solstice next year. It's great Darkness knitting, and I think there are several people on my Xmas list who would welcome such a hat (even though the grandchildren break 8-4 in favour of males). 

Jean: my sister says that the FDA (Federal Drug Authority?) lists "fatigue" among the fairly common side-effects of Eliquis, even if the British haven't noticed it. I have to pick up a new batch from Boots next week, and will read the enclosed instructions again with even more attention. 

For some months last year, while I was taking warfarin, I wasn't allowed alcohol either. I didn't feel particularly sprightly as a result -- but that was immediately after the pulmonary embolism crisis which started me down this path. I remember that I took a bottle of Weston's Vintage along with me to Hellie and Matt's wonderful wedding in September, '15  -- surely I could safely drink one, on such a day -- and the only person who could produce an opener when I needed one, was the bridegroom himself.

Back to Knitting

Interweave has launched something called Wool Studio – think Brooklyn Tweed, think Twist Collective. The patterns are very much the sort of thing I like, loose and easy with some interesting stitch detail hither and yon. I think of my beloved Relax. I can’t get the LookBook to work properly on my iPad, but I’ll keep at it. 

Jean (fromcornwall), you can’t imagine how your comment yesterday cheered me. We’ll make medical history, you and I. I don’t take any other medication except Eliquis – unless you count Weston’s Vintage Cider. Doctors here are very severe about drink. But once Lent has removed that factor, we’ll be ready to roll.

And otherwise, it wasn’t a bad day either. I tottered twice around Drummond Place Gardens, reflecting on how much stronger I had been six years ago. In middle life, six years are as nothing. 

And I wrote some Christmas cards.

Kate Davies’ “Inspired by Islay” club has started functioning. What a good idea, to time it for these utterly darkest days! I have entirely forgotten what was promised when I signed up for it. The first goodie has been the pattern for the beautiful cardigan KD designed and knit for her own (extraordinary) wedding. I won’t be knitting it; I’m glad to have it.  I’m keenly looking forward to the next installment.

I have spent some time (as I often do) on the Schoolhouse Press website. There are some interesting things there, notably “Selbuvotter” – all in Norwegian and currently not available and really rather expensive. Never mind. It offers hundreds of pages about Norwegian mittens and Meg seems to be blown away by it.

Non-knit

Rachel rang up the other day. All is well with Hellie’s pregnancy. She is part of the web of auto-immune diseases which certainly don’t derive from my genes: thyroid deficiency (Rachel, Greek Helen, Mungo, Hellie, I may have forgotten others); premature greyness (my husband, his mother, Greek Helen); type one diabetes (James). Rachel says that Hellie is being monitored very closely. She is very slightly built, which adds slightly to anxiety.

As does darkness.

Not much of a day, accomplishment-wise. [Does that turn of phrase derive from Jack Lemmon in "The Apartment"?] A few more rounds on the stripey hat. Alexander came to see us and was rewarded with two wrapped and labelled Christmas presents. That’s about it. No cards. No walk.

Chloe, thank you for your concern. I did see a dr in the summer – she listened to heart and lungs and took “bloods” and apparently I’m fine. My current plan is to wait and see how I feel towards the end of Lent – will I be better off without Weston’s Vintage Cider? That could well be the case. (Ash Wednesday is March 1 next year, I have just discovered: the perfect day.)

And if abstinence does not produce sprightliness, I will then approach a doctor and ask about stopping blood-thinners, currently not rat poison but something called Aliquis. (Debility is not listed among its side-effects.) I feel rather as I felt in the six months after I had pneumonia in my 50’s, only now it goes on and on and then it got better.

One achievement today: I thought of someone who might possibly be willing to live-in and let me get away for a bit of r&r. I emailed him, he phoned promptly back – he’ll do it. It is someone my husband will be happy with and who, in turn, can keep him in line. Getting my husband into a care home for “respite” sounds like a good idea but is in fact next to impossible.

I’m thinking of taking Perdita to Perthshire in May, most glorious of months, and introducing her to the out-of-doors. I feel increasingly that it is cruel to a cat to deny her that. Another time, perhaps, I could go to Glasgow and see Alexander and Ketki’s house there and suss out the Glasgow yarn shops.

We’re all busy and cross and tired – but I hope, as in other years, to totter on here until the solstice and then declare a holiday hiatus.