The Daft Days - Part the First

Someone posted recently on Facebook that the days between Christmas and the New Year are known in Scotland as The Daft Days, courtesy of the poet Robert Fergusson. Well I don't know about that, mainly because I know very little about Fergusson and most of what I do know is very sad. I do know I've lived in Scotland for over twenty years and had two Scottish grandparents but had never heard the expression before. That said I quite like it, so I've adopted it. 

Life is, if not exactly returning to normal, at least taking on a semblance of it. This basically means that when we go to the supermarket we are no longer picking up 'Christmassy bits' to add to the trolley,  we have ventured out for a walk and I have started to feel guilty about the ironing again. More than time to pick up the metaphorical pen and return to the blog. 

We never did manage to find a proper topper for the new Christmas tree and so had to make do with popping our little Druid guardian of the home on there. Next year, having exhausted local outlets this year without  success, it will have to be Mr Amazon I fear. Meanwhile here is a picture of the said new tree

We have two trees because we couldn't agree to get rid of the old one before we moved. Heaven knows I would have been more than happy to leave it behind in an Orkney 'civic amenity site', but the OH is excessively attached to it. I have no idea why, we had had it for quite  along time before we moved to Orkney and we were there for 20 years so it was old, discoloured and getting a bit thin in places. Not to mention all the grumbling when he attempted to put it up each year. Also it was getting a bit overloaded with the  decorations. He refused to get rid of it though so, as we have the space for it, we agreed to get an extra tree this year. So now we have His and Hers Christmas trees. Mine has all the fabric decorations and things people have gifted to us, and his has all the other things; little wooden trains,  glass and metal baubles and lots and lots of tinsel. I kept the tinsel on my tree down to a tasteful one strand. I may throw caution to the winds and add a second one next year. 

Christmas passed quietly as it always does these days although we had the added excitement of a teams call with the grandchildren this year which was nice. I'd just settled down under a lap blanket with a complicated piece of knitting that had three separate balls of yarn, one of them metallic,   attached to it and which requires me to balance a chart on my knee and keep an eye on a small bag of beads so that they are to hand but don't   tumble to the floor every time they're looked at, when they said it was an OK time to call, Not the best timing in the world, but obviously it was more important to extricate myself from the knitting clobber than not talk to them. They seemed  in fine fettle and the younger one was hoping for a bit more snow so that he could get out the sledge. Brrrrrr, is my response, to that but then I'm not 10 and I wasn't born and brought up in Ontario!

And before I go a quick advent update. This is the whole of the weekly advent from Beth at Beehive Yarns, plus the Christmas Day sock set. 

I was a teensy bit disappointed by the fifth Christmas Day skein as I had thought it would be part of the overall fade and I wanted to use the whole thing to make a  So Faded Sweater  Four skeins is not enough because I want to do the longer version (I don't have the sort of shape that cropped sweaters are good on) and the fifth skein just won't look right with all of that blue in it. So now I don't know what to do with the advent. I could make socks with the individual skeins, although they are rather too nice to be 'wasted' on socks, I could make the pattern that came with it which is a large wrap, but I suspect it would test my lace knitting skills beyond the edge of reason, I could try and lose some weight until I am a size that 4 skeins will be sufficient for ( as the Young Folk say these days 'That's not happening') or I could make a sleeveless/short sleeved top that I do have enough yarn for and try and cobble up the fading technique on my own. Or, what is most likely to happen, I can put it to one side to 'think about' and it will probably still be there in its box this time next year. A Lowering Thought. 

Tomorrow, some post Christmas walks. Unless I am so carried away by the ironing guilt that I spend the whole day chained to the board.