Happy New Year

I've probably said before how the New Year always fills me with dread and has done for many years, despite me being perfectly aware that it's nothing but an arbitrarily designated day for the convenience of marking time and parcelling it up into manageable chunks. 

The dread tends to have worn off by about the 5th of the month so I'm trying to ignore it and to think instead about the good things I know we have lined up for this year, as well as rejoicing in the fact that I will, in a stunning contrast to most of 2018,  actually be able to see stuff. 

We will be making quite a few trips to Glasgow, that I do know. We have a four day opera break in Amsterdam booked for the end of April (we're flying, so I do hope that all these doom laden predictions about planes not being able to fly after Brexit are untrue) and we're planning a trip to Oz later in the year. And in due course I will be submitting the Ph D and then that will no longer be preying on my mind. And I'm sure there will be lots of other great things happening too. 

I have actually made two resolutions for the new year. The first is to try to  be less judgemental, which will be difficult, but good if I can pull it off. And the other is Do It Now. I'm a terrible procrastinator and I can always justify putting things off somehow or other, but really it's a bad habit.

And in line with that latter one, here's some knitting pictures, of some just-finished knitting.  Both of these were made for the forthcoming baby of a friend. It's a girl, but I gather she's trying to avoid pink so: - 

I was particularly chuffed with the colours of the blanket. It was one of those big colour changing balls and called Tractor. My friend lived here for many years and her Ph D topic was connected with Orkney so it seemed fitting that I should use colours that reflect the islands; grass, ploughed fields, sky, sea,  and sand. 

Anyway, Happy New Year. I'm off to help Son No. 2 make an apple cake.