2026 Finished Project No 6, and wool stats for February.

 I literally can't remember how old this project is. I know the wool came from Rowan as part of being a Rowan Member and I was only one of those for two years and it was a long long time ago. The pattern came from a small booklet included with Knit Now magazine, and it has been kicking around as an unfinished project for many years. 

I don't know why we knitters ( or possibly crafters in general) do this sort of thing to ourselves because, when I looked this out to finish it off, all it needed was for the hat to be seamed up and the cord to be made and inserted, and for the jumper to get six buttons and two press studs. For that it had been taking  up space for years? Part of not finishing it was not liking the hat very much and part of it was not having anyone to give it to, but this being the year of Finishing Things, and given that this didn't need much doing to it, it was a high priority. I even have someone I can send it to so it's a win/win. 

Stats are looking very good this month, thanks largely to finishing the Debbie Abrahams blanket and selling quite a large amount of sock yarn leftovers. 

Wool in was Nil ( hooray!) and wool out was 2297g and the cumulative total for the year to date is therefore 2413g. Not every month will be this good I know, but it's still a pleasing start. 

Well, that was a week!

 

My feet have hardly touched the ground. quick recap - 

Monday: to West Yorkshire and back for the funeral of our friend Christine. Memorable for the stress induced by the Satnav taking us through the traffic light hell that is  central Harrogate  for no discernible reason,  which had me giving vent to the memorable phrase 'I did not get up at half past s*dding five this morning to be late for a midday funeral'. Also for my Dorothy Dunnet reading friends  all agreeing that I looked much happier since the move back to the mainland,  and one telling me it had taken fifteen years off me. 

Tuesday: to a small village the other side of Stirling for a talk at their Heritage Society ( a friend helps run it) on Scottish Arts and Crafts Silver by someone who is a silver expert on the Antiques Road Show. The OH and I both went and it was  very good. Afterwards there were refreshments - 

there aren't any of the delicious homebakes in the photo but the tables all had these pretty teapots with lovely silk flower arrangements in them. 

Wednesday: a friend came for lunch and she brought the beautiful spring flowers in the picture at the top of the post. A very enjoyable occasion, with much laughter.

Thursday: i.e. yesterday  I took myself off to Dundee and met up with my friend S. We went to see the Palestinian Embroidery exhibition at the V & A Dundee followed by a visit to Dundee's MacManus Art Gallery for their new exhibition 'Curtain Call' which features costumes from film, theatre and television, with an emphasis on those created by people with a Dundee connection. A more detailed blog post on this coming shortly. 

It should have been knit group this morning but I was too tired to even think about it; however after lunch we went off to a local garden centre. Treats were consumed 

(three cakes because Son No 2 has been with us this week) and plants were bought, but again more about the plants with photos when they've been potted up. 

We have no plans for next week, but I daresay it will fill up!

2026 Finished Projects No 5

 

But Anne, I hear you all say, that is not a finished project, it is a single sock. And you're right it is a single sock, but you're wrong because it is a finished project. This is because it is The Replacement Sock.

Many year ago I made the OH a pair of socks in this yearn; Noro silk sock for the curious. Noro was incredibly fashionable in the knitting world at the time, although it was a bit marmite. For some it was Too Rustic which meant they didn't like all the bits in it s that weren't excluded in the processing as they should have been. But others didn't mind that because of the amazing colours that it came in. Let me say immediately this is not a good representation of how wonderful the colour combinations could be and it was never  a favourite of mine. Let me also add that although at the time I was a big fan of Noro yarns this is no longer the case because I cannot cope with the wide variation of thickness you get in the skein. This silk sock varies from places where it is no thicker than embroidery thread to others where it is practically aran, which is disconcerting, especially the thin bits. 

Anyway I made the socks and the OH loved them and then one wore through on the ball of the foot.Quite soon in fact and big time. One day there was  complete foot on his sock and the next there was practically nothing between the toe and half way down the length of the foot. It was not darnable. However I had a lot of the yarn left and I said I would throw away the one with the big hole and knit him another one, but not straight away because I was a0)sick of the sight of the colours and b) quite disheartened. 

Now, with my determination to work through my wips and kits this year, this rose to the top of the pile, basically because I am obviously going first for the low hanging fruit. All I needed to do to count this as a finished wip was to knit a sock. How long would that take  before I had the satisfaction of marking somethign completed on my lovely spread sheet? The answer was 4 days and I was working on another wip at the same time, a rather more complex one that I occasionally needed a rest from. 

So there you go, No 5. 

And the excitement just kept coming ....

... because after our extremely busy Saturday we were out again on Sunday.

This was for a valentine themed afternoon tea at the Japanese garden at Cowden. I've posted about our visits there with lots of photographs before; we love it. They have a very nice tearoom, often  very busy specially in the spring and summer, but you can usually find a table and it's well worth the wait. 

Of course it snowed on Sunday. We had a phone call from the garden warning us about that, and telling us which approach road was the best to use.  We set off 10 minutes earlier than we normally would to allow for that, but what we couldn't have factored in was getting stuck in a long queue of traffic which had built up so far ahead of us that we couldn't see the reason for it. Stressville. I hate being late and after edging forward not very far in 15 minutes the satnav was showing that we certainly  would be. In the event we turned around and found an alternative route and I was able to call and say we would be about ten minutes late. So much for leaving extra time!

They were very understanding and said it wasn't a problem and it truly wasn't. We had a beautiful afternoon tea;

three different sorts of sandwiches, none of them fish which was a win for me, although generally the OH can be counted on to eat my fishy sandwich and let me have his ham or egg or cheese one, sausage rolls, lemon and blueberry scones with cream and jam, little buns with raspberry icing and on the top layer - a chocolate fondue, with shortbread biscuits, strawberries and marshmallows for dipping. I thought that made  a lovely change to a standard afternoon tea. 

We'd planned a walk around the garden afterwards but the weather was shocking and in any case I have a painful leg just now and I'm limping so we just drove home and cosied up to watch some Olympic action - probably some ice skating since that's all that really interests me when it comes to winter sports. 

Great end to the weekend though. 

A Very Busy Day

Due solely to my own insouciance several months ago ( to wit: yes I'll book the matinee in Edinburgh without checking the calendar because we haven't got anything else in it for February yet) we found ourselves with a play to see in Edinburgh and an opera to see in Glasgow both on the same day. Saturday just gone in fact. Since the play was a matinee and the opera in the evening it was doable but it meant a very busy day with an early start, a lot of train travelling and a late finish. 

The moral of the story is,  however sure you are that there is 'nothing in the calendar' always always check! 

The play was A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, and as son no 2 is a huge fan of the Goes Wrong shows and as it was designed as a mid-February treat and  cheer up we had bought a ticket for him too, so we met him in Edinburgh and had lunch together before the play. 

The play was of course a riot; the company is so good at both funny dialogue and physical comedy. Here's the opening set: 

the beautiful intermission curtain 

and the curtain call

I have never found a box of Maltesers quite so hysterical. Also Tiny Tim was 'played' by a demonic ventriloquist's doll which was hilarious and sinister at the same time. Highly recommended.

Once the play was over we hurried to the station and caught a train for Glasgow, after which Son no 2 went home and we went to the opera. After the opera we came home on a noisy train with some very badly behaved youths on it and no members of staff to be seen. Possibly cowering in the end carriage. 

Once home we discovered that Scotland  had thrashed England at Murrayfield, which ended the day on a very high note indeed. 

Competitive Telly!

 Yes it's that time of year again; I am watching all the Ps; potters, painters  and professional chefs. 

I'd like to say that I'm glued to the programs they appear in;  The Pottery Throw Down, Landscape Artist of the Year and Masterchef the Professionals, but the best I can do is semi-attached. Maybe the formats are getting old, maybe my boredom threshold is lowered, but whatever it is  I'm only half watching the programs.

I think the pottery one is the worst offender; I find a lot of this year's tasks quite boring which  doesn't mean that the contestants aren't producing some amazing work; they are. That said I'm not convinced this years are as good as last years overall either. Maybe it's just that in the first few series I was learning lots, since when it started I knew nothing about pottery but now that I do know some,. it's not quite so interesting. I'll watch  until the end of this series but whether I'll tune in next time is another thing. 

Landscape Artist of the Year has had a change of judge. They have lost Kate Bryan who the OH used to describe as The Cute One (!) and who, despite that,  was my favourite. I have yet to warm to her replacement and I have seen references on social media claiming she is 'too good' for the show and wondering what she's doing on it! Again I am finding the process of watching the paintings develop less compelling than I have in previous years but I am still enjoying it. Since I cannot draw I am always amazed at the talent some people have for reproducing landscapes, sometimes quite busy and challenging cityscapes, and I generally love  seeing the way the same scene is interpreted differently by the different artists who are competing. 

What can I say about Masterchef The Professionals? Well first off it's a damn  sight better than it was, now the loathsome Greg Wallace has been ditched. Long term readers here will know that I have loathed Wallace since Day 1 and I have to say that all the revelations over the past months  about his behaviour towards women have not surprised me one bit. The new judge is obviously still finding his feet but seems pleasant enough and he is at least a professional cook which Wallace never was,  so that's  an improvement. The Professionals was always my favourite program in the Masterchef stable because it showed people who were mostly already very good and watched them improve and progress and develop and I always found that heart warming. We're not very far into the current series but already there has been some amazing talent on display and some mouth watering looking food. 

While I'm here I suppose I could take a moment to write about Game of Wool: Britain's  Best Knitter. I did not like this program for al the reasons that many knitters I know, both on and off social media didn't like it. Too wide a spread of contestants ability at the beginning, the constant presence of crochet even though that's a different skill ( I have nothing against crochet but if you call a program the search for Britain's Best Knitter then knitting is what they should be doing, some bizarre judging decisions, and actually now I've used the bizarre word, let's work it a bit harder and apply it also to Di Gilpin's headgear and Tom Daley's outfits and presenting style. It could also be applied to some of the challenges, like knitted swimwear and the decision to make members of Britain's swimming team model it, and deckchair covers. Finally it became very obvious that what the judges were looking for was not a knitter but a designer; that being the case the fact that there was a contestant who was a designer with a textile background tipped the contestant's plating field so far from being level that it was practically vertical. Will I watch Series 2? I'll maybe give it a go to see if it has had any improving tweaks, but I'm not holding my breath. 

It feels strange to be doing a blog post about tv programs again; there are so many things  I| used to write about that I don't any more. This is basically because life in general is just busier and I have more interesting things to write about than television. For example we have a super, actually stupid, busy weekend coming up, so that should  keep the fingers typing next week. 

A Sad Loss

 Some readers may remember our trip to North Yorkshire last December for a lunch in celebration of our friend Christine's's 90th birthday. While it was a lovely celebratory occasion everyone present knew that two days later  Christine was due to start radiotherapy treatment, although by her own expressed wish this was not discussed at the lunch. It was hoped that the radiotherapy might get her to  a place where she could start chemotherapy but it was not to be. The radiotherapy did not go well, Christine became very poorly and after a short spell in a nursing/convalescent home she was returned to hospital where she died peacefully in her sleep last Friday. Despite years living in Australia she was the epitomy of a Yorkshire woman; forthright, occasionally acerbic, and a great lover of cricket. She was also wise, had a great sense of humour and felt a deep loyalty and affection for her friends. I will miss her. 

I didn't put a photo of the celebration on the blog then,but now seems to be a good time to do so. Here are the Dorothy Dunnett readers, with Christine on the left in the beautiful scarf. 

2026 Finshed Projects No. 4

 And yes, this is it, this is the big one. 

It's the Debbie Abrahams Mystery Blanket from 2019.

I am indebted to a friend at Knit Group who pointed out to me that if I finished it it would make a massive contribution to my stash reduction statistics. I don't know why this had not occurred to me myself, but it hadn't. But as it was undeniably true, and as I felt I could  now face rectifying the  mistake that had had me dropping it in the first place, I picked it up towards the end of November and finally finished it yesterday. And yes, the stats for February,  unless I go unexpectedly mental will look very healthy. 

Have to be honest I'm not loving it.  Probably because I 'm not totally on board with the palette, and also of course because I can still see all the small imperfections in it which I will forget about as time goes on. And on the plus side it's very warm! 

2026 Finished Project No. 3

 No, it's not that one. Although that one is almost there. Meanwhile. I needed a small and mindless project  to take to knit group or for when I was watching TV or was feeling too tired for The Big One. So, voila!

New socks for the OH knitted with the wool he chose at East Neuk Knits. So that skein at least didn't hang around for too long. 

Nutcracker in Havana

 

We went to see this at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh on Wednesday. We had a chance to see a filmcast of the ROH one before Christmas but we decided against it, I think on the grounds that we were a bit 'Nutcrackered Out'. Odd for me tbh  but that's how I felt and we went to see the Cinderella instead. 

However when I saw this advertised on a marketing e-mail from the Festival Theatre I thought it might be fun and a great antidote to February gloom, so after a bit of humming and haaaing I booked it. I should not have hummed and haaed for as long as I did (all of two days iirc)  because by the time I went to book it there were very few seats left. I suppose that's not really surprising as there were only four performances. Anyway I booked some upper circle seats which were about all that there was left and on Wednesday we got up quite early and got the train to Edinburgh. We wanted to visit a hobby/model shop which was recommended to us by the OH's brother when he was with us recently. A railway modeller's dream I should say and they had a few bits and pieces of doll's house furniture so I splashed out on a kitchen table and chairs for mine, and the OH looked longingly at a very small gauge train set which he didn't buy and which I have been trying to persuade him to purchase, or rather let me purchase  for him,  ever since. Then it was back to the centre of the city and the ballet. 

Can I just say that the seats we had were not what I would describe as Upper Circle? They were what, in any other theatre, would be described as Balcony seats, or even, for those theatres that have one, Upper Balcony,  with all that that entails, mainly climbing stairs for what seems like forever and emerging into a space that is not at all suitable for people with a tendency to vertigo i.e. me. Apparently developing vertigo  is quite common in post menopausal women. Who knew? Well not me until recently. Vertigo, constantly itchy skin and thinning hair, what joy.  But I digress. 

I was not a particularly happy bunny by the time we had mountaineered our way to our seats and so was inclined to not enjoy Act 1 of the ballet which was not nearly as colourful or energetic or generally 'Cuban' as I had anticipate to be honest. And I was inclined to think the Cuban bits gimmicky and cliche'd. However my equilibrium was somewhat restored by the interval and I enjoyed Act 2 very much. Perhaps it was the unavailing attempt of the man in the seat next to us to purchase an interval ice cream that perked me up: he found a seller, queued up and then discovered that they only took card payments and he only had cash on him. I shouldn't have let that cheer me up, goodness knows I had the same experience at the TheatrerRoyal once when I discovered you could no loner pay for programs by cash and therefore didn't bother to get one. A practice we have continued ever since when we are familiar with the opera we are about to see.  I did however buy a souvenir program for Nutcracker in Havana since it was the Carlos Acosta company  and so  a Special Occasion. I did have to think twice though as it was £10 which struck me as ludicrous. At least it did until I heard from a friend who had been to see the Anniversary Tour of Dead Ringers recently and who told me programs there were twice that much! 

The one good thing about our seats was that the balcony has such a steep rake that the sight lines are excellent. I couldn't take pictures during the performance naturally but I did get a few at the curtain call; this is the best one 

The light is always rubbish for these things. 

We are due back at the Festival Theatre shortly for A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong and I was filled with foreboding lest we had seats once more in the misnamed Upper Circle. Having checked I was relieved to find that we are actually in the stalls for that - this still means one flight of stairs for some reason but I can manage that! 

January Reading Round Up

So, what did I read in January? I ' finished ' seven books - the reason for the  ' ' will become apparent.

I continue to read any J D Kirk that comes my way via my two libraries and I think a 99p Kindle Daily deal this month too. This means I am not reading them in order which is not ideal but I'm not that bothered. I should however try not to read too many of them all at once or I shall O/D and get sick of them. That's easier said than done though when you're prowling the library shelves and find one you haven't already read. So this month I read A Litter of Bones, which is actually Book 1, and shows it, the first in a series can sometimes be a bit below par as the author finds their feet,   and Come Hell or High Water which is somewhat further through. 

I have already mentioned/put out a warning on the book club choice of The Malt Whiskey Murders. Nuff said, as per N Molesworth. 

My two 'fall asleep to' books this month were Elly Griffiths' The Last Remains and Mick Herron's Slough House. Slough House is a bad choice for night time drowsing as there are some very tense moments in it which, even though I have read the book several times, I still find very difficult to listen to. But not, you know, so difficult that I don't! Fall asleep books have to be ones I've listened to before so that I have some way of finding the point at which I fell asleep the previous night and picking up from there. I usually put the timer on to 15 or 30 minutes, but that's less help than you might think! 

After that we have The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennet. I'd seen this favourably reviewed by crime and fantasy reviewers since it is a crime novel set in an imagined world. I didn't enjoy it held as much as I thought I would. The murder mystery was fine as far as it went although  I thought the author cheated a bit by making the central murders and their solution reliant on the particular oddities of his world. It's  tricky to explain, but it seemed to me, and I may be wrong, that he made some things up as he went along, rather than having thought out the basic parameters of the way his world differed from the one we live in, just to make his life easier. A sort of 'oh if I say this is a thing, even if it's on page 201 and not previously mentioned then x can do y and therefore discover z'. I didn't take to either of the two main protagonists, and it seemed a novel driven almost entirely by the mechanics of (admittedly slick) plot,  and not development, or even display of character. That said, it's not a bad book, goodness knows I have encountered much worse, and if you like crime fiction or imagined worlds, it's probably worth a look. 

Finally we have I Who Have Never Known Men by Josephine Harpman and which was recommended to me by a friend as 'thought provoking'. This one was the cause of the ' ' above, because I have to confess I didn't listen to it all. I got about 2/3rds of the way through, some of that at 1.5 speed to make it go quicker. I then skipped to the last 20 minutes. And that was  a mistake because in a novel that was outstandingly bleak the final few pages were the bleakest of all. I know that the author probably wanted to say interesting things about what makes life meaningful and how communities work and the value of knowing things, but when you boil it down, she didn't. If you are any more curious about it, I refer you to the Amazon plot precis and then in particular to  the 1-3 star reviews. The reviews will a least raise a smile, which is more than the book did. 

Wool Stats for January

So, wool in 200g, wool out 316g net decrease for the month is 116g 

This is not the flying start I have had in the last two Januarys but I'm not too downhearted about that. The main reason for my equanimity is that I am still ploughing through this large project that I have mentioned before and, just as in December I failed to finish it in January. But, it is very close to being done now; I am confident it will be complete by the end of the coming week. And then it will go on the bathroom scales and I will be a very happy bunny. Not just for the weight reduction but also being able  to use the finished product which is lovely. 

The other reason is that I have bought very little and resisted the temptation to sign up for various yarn clubs, new yarns, treat boxes etc; e-mail notifications for which have been filling my in-box all month. This augurs well for very little wool coming into stash over the year. I bought the yarn for the Sophie Scarf which I have already shown here and the other 100g was this 

obviously destined to be a pair of socks for the OH. I won't go into all the details of how and why but it was a once only chance so I snagged it. 

Only two finished projects this month, which is hardly surprising given the amount of time I have spent on the Big One. They were the Sophie Scarf, and the baby blanket for my friend's daughter and I've already show them off in blog posts so won't  repost those. 

I am currently going through my knitting stash identifying, kits, wips, things I have wool and pattern for so that I know where they all are as I try to make my way through as many of them as possible over the coming eleven months.  I feel spreadsheets coming on whihc is good; I do love a good spreadsheet! 

 

Celtic Connections

 

Given that we lived in Orkney for 20 years without, despite our best intentions, ever once getting around to going to the Orkney Folk Festival I suppose it's not surprising that we had never thought about going to Celtic Connections. the huge celebration of folk music held in Glasgow every January.  

We went this year though, courtesy of the OH's brother who bought us tickets for one of the concerts as his present for the OH's Big Birthday. It was on Wednesday evening so that was  a busy day; picking up brother from the  station, showing him the new house, giving him lunch and then taking him over to Glasgow where he was spending the next few nights at the flat so that he could explore Glasgow a bit. 

The concert (gig?) was in the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow where we have never been before. We were impressed, it's a bit Tardis like given that it's much bigger on the inside than you would expect from the outside. My only grumble would be the number of stairs - of which more anon. 

We saw three bands

Staran

Imar

and Rura 

I say this as though I knew all about them; the truth is I hadn't heard of any of them before we got the tickets. After my experiences last autumn I am now very wary of reviewing any live performances except in the most glowing of terms, lest I be to taken to task by a marketing or press officer. In those circumstances it is a good thing that I enjoyed the whole evening immensely.

I understand that Rura are 'one of the most sought after bands on the current Scottish folk scene' which I can totally believe as they were fabulous. Of the other two I preferred Staran, mainly because they had a vocalist (who was very good). The OH's brother vastly preferred Imar but he is biased as two of the players come from the Isle of Man, a place he loves and where he used to work many years ago.

I think it's probably safe to say that that won't be our last visit to Celtic Connections. 

We should have been going to a totally different concert at Glasgow Uni yesterday lunchtime but we had to call it off as I could hardly walk. The many many many stairs at the Concert Hall somehow aggravated that knee problem from the accident in Finland back in 2024 and not only that but my left hip came out in sympathy overnight so it became obvious quite quickly that I wasn't going anywhere. I was really disappointed. 

All things considered January wasn't as empty a month as I had feared it would be. February is looking busy but not too busy, and, as long as plans don't get upset by the weather, it should be good.

A biscuit baking disaster

 

This week I tried my hand at Anzac biscuits and do not be fooled by the photograph, they were a disaster. These are the only reasonable looking ones I could salvage to take a picture of. 

Don't get me wrong they taste fine. But apart from these few, they look a mess. They spread too far and too thinly and mostly all ran together into an amorphous blob. Very discouraging. 

I will however not allow myself to be discouraged. Check in next week to see what biscuit recipe I can massacre as January draws to a close. We might even have managed to finish eating the Would-Be Anzacs by then; they will go nicely with ice cream. If I'd only put in some ginger I could have pretended they were brandy snaps....

I think the problem was that the oven was too hot. It's difficult to set with any accuracy; I may have to look out the oven  thermometer. And new ovens are definitely on the agenda although not for a while as they will be expensive. 

A Dayin Edinburgh

 Last Thursday we went up to Edinburgh for the day. 

I love how I can just say that, almost as much as I love that we can do it. There were a couple of exhibitions we wanted to see ( a recurring refrain over the next twelve months I suspect and not just applying to Edinburgh) so we just hopped on the train and there we were. 

Edinburgh was blessedly empty. Empty is a relative term of course when you're talking about a much visited tourist capital but there weren't all that many visitors about (well, it is January!) which made walking not only easy but actually a bit of a pleasure. Walking down the lower half of the Royal Mile it was possible to  look up and appreciate all the beautiful architecture from  many different periods without worrying that you were gong to bump into anyone while you gawped upwards. 

Here's a photo which is a great example of how the old and the new live alongside one another.  On the left, The Palace of Holyrood. On the right part of the Parliament Building. Bottom left a car which I would have liked to edit out,  but the editing software thing-y has changed and I'm bowed if I can work out how to use it. 

First stop was the cafe at Holyrood where we swelled the Windsor coffers by having a snack.

That was,by the way,the second most disgusting scone I have had while out in my life. Scones are not meant to have a crust on either the bottom or the top, let alone both. The walls were adorned with lots of large photos of the Royal family. It occurred to me that even if I ran a cafe with my family I would not decorate the walls with pictures of the OH, the sons, the siblings, etc etc but I suppose it's different when you're royal. 

Annoyingly we had passed several very nice looking cafes on the way which would probably have served us much nicer food, but we had no idea what the queues would be like for the exhibition so wanted to get to Holyrood to suss that out before we thought about eating. In the event there were no queues and I think next time we go to an exhibition at the King's Gallery we will pass on the Windsor caff and eat elsewhere. 

The exhibition was something the OH was keen to see - Drawing in the Italian Renaissance. When I say the OH wanted to see it, I don't mean to imply that he dragged me there kicking and screaming, because he didn't; have to do that. I just prefer paintings to drawings, probably because, as noted here many times before, I cannot draw to save my life, and therefore the techniques of people who are talented in that direction are a Closed Book to me. That said  there were a few drawings that caught my eye 

A pleasingly muscular Enthroned Christ  and 

a little botanical drawing of a blackberry branch. 

There was of course a shop and it did not, of course have postcards of the exhibition but it did have a box of notelets relating to it that was half price so I got that. 

Once out of Holyrood we made our way back towards the station, opposite which is the City Art Centre.  I've been there before and it has some excellent exhibitions.  The one we were there to see was Scottish Portraiture and this was much more my cup of tea than the drawings. I loved it. What I didn't love so much was the lighting which,  as always seems to be the case at the CAC was very badly placed so that too much light reflects off the pictures. I also didn't love the fact that you're not allowed to take pictures, but that seems to be a bit of a lottery with galleries these days so I didn't stress. I wouldn't minds seeing that one again before it's over but we'll have to see if we can fit it in again on another trip. 

When we'd finished there we crossed the road to the station and by the time we'd found when the next train to Stirling was and located the platform it was only five minutes before the train arrived. So much easier than seeing things in Edinburgh used to be for us. 

Happy Mail and 2026 Finished Project No 2

I was never going to knit a Sophie Scarf. For those who may not know the Sophie Scarf is a pattern which has gone viral in the places where people knit, and everyone and their grandmother has made one. I wasn't going to bother; partly because I thought it was just a little bit of nothing and partly because I tend to be a bit iffy about making things that everyone else is knitting. This may be why my wardrobe includes neither a Love Note nor a Ranunculus; both patterns for knitted tops which  have also gone viral. I went to Glasgow School of Yarn one year and of the first ten people I saw six were wearing Love Notes. It's probably a great pattern but you know - I was on the road less travelled. 

Then - a friend made me a Sophie Scarf for Christmas and I completely changed my mind. It's a fun little thing that's easy to wear and I really liked it. Might bear it in mind to make myself one I thought. And then ...

I got an e-mail offering 10% off the price of a redye job of Yarn Unique's Artist Club for December. Some of you may remember I gave up on this club round about last August? because of mix ups, never knowing which artist was going to feature, missing one that I would have liked etc etc. But the December colour was gorgeous and I thought immediately of my plans for  Sophie scarf. As I just needed one skein I splashed out and got it on  a base that included yak as I've neve knitted with yak before. It arrived last Wednesday 

and I cast it on that same evening. 

It got cast off on Saturday 

and here it is modelled

To maximise use of the skein I made it a little longer than the pattern calls for. Then I used some of what was left to put a square into my cosy memories blanket and I've still got 10 g to play with. You can't do a lot of playing with 10 g of yarn,  although a Ravelry search threw up an alarmingly high number of possible projects (over 1100) that you can make with approx 20 metres of DK! Who knew?  

  

I Puritani

 

Apologies first of all for the quality of the picture; it's one I took at the cinema and subsequently cropped and it's not great but it's the only reasonable one I have. This is Lisette Oropesa taking her curtain call after performing the role of Elvira in the Metropolitan Opera's new production of I Puritani; we went to see the filmcast version at the University  Arts Centre on Monday.

We weren't sure what to expect really. We saw it lasted nearly four hours with the  interval. (We took snacks!) Our previous experience with serious rather than comic bel canto was confined to a very poor production of Lucia di Lammermoor by Opera North decades ago. It had all the cliches (bar servants folding up laundered sheets which directors seem to confine to comic opera, but which I have still been forced to watch more times than I would like) and was very very dark. (Literally. I mean it's a dark story but that doesn't mean you have to force your singers to perform in dangerously low light levels) I don't know if we would even have bothered to go to be honest but a friend from University days who I am in contact with on Facebook had actually been to see the Met performance live and was very enthusiastic so we thought we would give it a go. 

I'm so glad we did.  In a way it was like seeing opera for the first time because it was just so different to anything I had ever seen before. Which is quite something considering I've been going to the opera for  - oh dear - I just worked it out and at Easter it will be fifty years! The not quite four hours flew. I loved the music from bar one, and  the playing and the singing were all exceptional. I know people say harsh things about the Met sometimes, and point out that great opera is not guaranteed just because you chuck bucketfuls of money at a production, but this really showed that if you throw bucketfuls of money at the right people then what emerges is truly outstanding. I honestly can't remember the last time I enjoyed an opera this much. 

And it was great to be doing something again, I feel life put itself on hold after New Year; well let's be honest the weather hasn't been conducive to going out and I've felt a bit hemmed in and restless. However we are supposed to be going up to Edinburgh tomorrow for an exhibition so what with that and the opera things are starting to perk up a bit.Which is a Good Thing. 

Are Biscuits Boring?

 I realised recently that I've never been big on baking biscuits. A couple of times when I had the baking subscription I made cookies or biscotti but left to my own devices I wouldn't really think about baking  a biscuit. And in my younger days I made a lot of millionaires shortbread. But otherwise - nada! Not sure why, but it wasn't something my mother or my aunts ever made; it was cake or scones all the way, so presumably I just internalised the attitude that biscuits weren't something you made, you just bought them. 

I had thought about renewing my baking subscription when we moved as my baking had fallen into a rut and was sporadic at best, but I couldn't because the company has gone bust. But as is so often the case with me at New Year, I had a 'bright idea', which was to try and make biscuits instead. I could look at all the biscuit recipes in my baking books and make a different sort each week of 2026. 

This plan immediately ran into difficulties. The first was that as far as I can see I do not have 52 biscuit recipes and the second was that of the biscuit recipes I do have lots look very very similar indeed. And the third was that I came to realise that actually I'm not really a biscuit person. 

There again I won't be here for a whole 52 weeks, because we plan holidays, and if I work my way through the recipes I do  have I might find a biscuit about which I can wax lyrical and want to make again and again. Also when I run out of biscuit recipes I can switch to muffins. 

To be honest I don't think I will ever wax lyrical over a biscuit, but anyway, I made my first batch yesterday. These are Cornish Fairings, which are  basically ginger nuts with added cinnamon and mixed spice. They came out rather smaller than anticipated, probably because they didn't spread very much. That said they have the all important 'snap' whihc the judges on Bake Off are always on about in 'biscuit week' and, for a biscuit, they're very nice. 

And here it is!

 The first finished WIP of 2026.

The first picture shows the colour much more accurately than the second one,but the second one shows the whole thing  off  while it was still on the blocking board. 

This is not, self evidently, the humongous project mentioned previously which I  picked up at the the end of November and hoped to get finished by the end of the year, thereby finishing the 2025 stash reduction on a massive high. I am still working on that and it is inching towards completion. 

This one had to be finished as a mater of urgency. I started it in the autumn as a baby gift for the daughter of a friend. For some reason I thought the baby was due at the beginning of March and that there was no hurry to get this done.  Imagine my panic therefore when said friend posted on FB at the weekend  that the daughter had gone into the maternity ward! I rootled this out and set to immediately and finished it yesterday. Today it has been packed up, along with a book and it will go out  in the  post tomorrow. Phew!

Still, a project finished in the first week of the year - not bad going. 

2025 Reading Round Up

 Alert readers will have realised that I stopped recording all my reading back in May and I think realistically the days when I reviewed everything I read are now well behind us. There's just too much else going on. Look out though for the occasional post if something totally delights or annoys me. 

On the subject of totally annoying books can I just warn you off The Malt Whisky Murders by Natalie Jayne Clarke? This is the current reading for my U3A Crime Fiction group and it is dire. No plot to speak of, clunkily written and actually not really a crime novel at all. 

I see from my reading journal (exercise book with a list of what I read, decorated with the occasional sticker) that I set my self a challenge for 2025 which was one book every week, and that I was also intending to incorporate  the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge into that. The Christie thing fell by the wayside very early on; not sure why. Boredom? difficulty accessing the books without spending money? Not liking being told what to read and when? Whatever the reason it wasn't fun so I knocked it on the head. 

Despite this I read or listened to at least 72 books in 2025. I say at least because that's the number I have written down, but I am fairly sure I forgot to add some of them. I tend to re listen to things on Audible when I need to have something to help me sleep and although I get through these from beginning to end I tend to forget about them as books I've read and hence don;t record them. 

So. some highlights and lowlights. 

1) Biggest Disappointment of the Year Faithbreaker by Hannah Kramer. I've really enjoyed the first two books in Kramer's Godkiller trilogy so I was delighted to find Volume 3 in the library. I was not so delighted to discover half way through that I was totally bored with it and couldn't be othered to finish it. A real let down. Possibly this is a case of 'It's not you, it's me.' I don't know but it was a shame. 

2) Really irritating totally overblown book of the year The Hallmarked Man by J K Rowling There was a good plot somewhere in the hundreds of pages of this novel, but it was almost buried by a lot of tedious and repetitive relationship angst. I recognise a lot o readers come back to these books in the hope of a resolution to this 'will they-won't they' tension, but please - enough already. In any case I won't be back, I have totally lost patience with JKR and her unpleasant ongoing twitter spats with all and sundry. Her review of Nicola Sturgeon's memoir this year was the last straw for me; it wasn't a review, it was bile wrapped in slime. I get they disagree politically and on gender issues  but there's no need to descent to the insultingly personal.  

3) Discovery of the Year - J D Kirk and his D I Logan books.How have I not come across these before? I really enjoy them; they're dark but there's lots of humour in them and a good cast of recurring police characters whose relationships develop nicely over time. I've read 4 and there are another 17 to go which is good news. 

4) A total and unexpected delight was Bryony and Roses by T Kingfisher, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast with a very down to earth not very beautiful Beauty, a sympathetic beast and a vengeful rose tree. Funny, beautiful and sad by turns. 

Authors jogging on with whom I will keep faith; Natalie Haynes and Mick Herron ( although Herron's Clown Town was slightly disappointing). Jodi Taylor is hanging on by her fingernails, if her next one isn't better than the last two I shall give up. Banished to the No More list is Ann Cleeves after her pedestrian revisit to Jimmy Perez in The Story Stones. And I reconfirmed my inability to 'get' Rebus, by reading A Heart Full of Headstones, so I will waste no more time trying. Ditto incidentally Joe Abercrombie who is well thought of and writes grimdark fantasy. I have given him several chances, trying out both his series and his standalones, most recently in October this year and have come to the conclusion that, whatever he has, I don't get it any more than I get Rebus. 

I'm not giving myself an official  challenge this year, I don't need the hassle. My aspirations are to read a lot of the books on my bookshelves that I haven't yet read, and to try and read a lot more non-fiction. We'll see how it goes. 

Wool Stats for 2025, and Knitting Plans for the Coming Year

 

Well the best thing I can say for the bad news in December is that there's an explanation .... but first the numbers. In 1450g, out 100g , net increase 1350g. 

 The large amount of incoming yarn is accounted for mainly by advents, plus the last instalment of the Hercule Poirot club and  200g of undyed yarn to use with it. There were no completed projects which is why this post is headed up with a photo of a pair of socks which have featured here before, although this time they are being modelled by the recipient. Towards the end of November I rather foolishly picked up a huge partly completed project which I knew would make a very large inroad into my stash when it was done. Sadly, despite all my endeavours I didn't manage to finish it by the  end of December which was a shame. It was a big ask. If it hadn't been the run up to Christmas I might have managed it, but there you go - I didn't. That said, it has come on in leaps and bounds and I'm very hopeful of seeing it finished well before the end of this month. 

The overall reduction in stash for the year was 3864 g which, while not as good as 2024, was still quite impressive. 

So the plan for the coming year is to concentrate mainly on things I already have. This means finishing off works in progress ( some of which are very old), knitting up kits that I have purchased and either never started or abandoned part way through, and knitting things where I have bought the pattern and the yarn but just haven't cast on yet. I know I will not clear all of these things in twelve months but I plan to have a good try and see how far I get. I'm not going to tell myself not to buy any new yarn; I'd like to do that and believe I could stick to it, but I think previous experience has shown that that's quite hard and very unlikely to happen.  I do want to knit a couple of jumpers from my Kalevala pattern books and I will need to buy the wool for those but I don't plan to start on those  for several months - it will be a sort of reward for sticking to clearing other things from the decks I think. 

Progress as always will be noted here monthly. And tomorrow, a reading round up. 

The Daft Days Part the Second

 It was cold but dry, and actually quite sunny most of the time so we managed a couple of walks. 

First up was the Dunmore Pineapple. I hadn't really taken in that this was a National Trust for Scotland property although it is, and as far as that goes it's more than time they did something about the approach road which was abysmal. Honestly I must have got about 750 steps recorded on my watch without getting out of the car. It was muddy underfoot so we had to abandon our idea of walking through the woodlands, but as they're full of rhododendrons it's probably best left until spring anyway. We did however see the building, walk through the walled garden, do the top of the woodland walk and also visited the curling pond which our walks book blithely assured us was 'worth the detour.' Possibly in the summer ....But you know, fresh air, a  bit of exercise, out of the house. All the stuff that's good for you. 

the folly

the way into the wood

the 'worth a detour' curling pond (!)

The day before that had been a daft day indeed. A craft shop in a local village was having a closing down sale of the Everything must go - 50p' variety so we decided to go, and then the plan was to carry on to the Hobbycraft store in Falkirk where I could pick up some blank cards ( yes I know, I thought I would never need more blank cards in my life, but it turns out I've made more than I thought. I'd even used up some of the aperture ones I originally bought for putting cross stitch in. I also thought they might have some Christmas themed paper packs and washi tape on sale. Well there was nothing that really caught my eye in the sale, it had started at 10 o' clock and we didn't get there until 11, and obviously it had been a popular event; many shelves were empty by that stage. We got back into the car and were half way to Falkirk when I discovered I had left my phone at home and I needed it at Hobbycraft because the loyalty app thig is on there. Since they don't give you a physical card there was nothing for it but to go back home and then set out for Falkirk again. I'm sorry to say it was an expedition of mixed success; there was no Christmas paper or washi tape and I had to settle for white cards instead of my preferred cream. I did get a pack of red card and I also picked up some Christmas ribbon, so not a total loss. I can certainly make a start on the cards for next Christmas. 

Also during the Daft days the OH had a Big Birthday and considering how Big it was I splashed out and bought him a birthday cake from Betty's. This was extremely considerate of me since a) Bettys is humongously expensive and b) I regard any fruit cake not topped with marzipan and icing as a missed opportunity. But he prefers crystallised fruit so crystallised fruit was what he got. 

Our second walk was round Loch Airthrey at Stirling University which we have done before but which is a) lovely, b) quite close and c) just about the right length for us. We saw a couple of squirrels ( nothing to write home about as we have three squirrels who spend half their time in the oak tree right  in front of our house, lots and lots of water birds - well mainly ducks and swans to be fair , with a scattering of seagulls,  and generally enjoyed ourselves. Son no 2 was with us and so we even got a photo of the two of us together ( a rare thing) out of it. 

very pleased we had taken all our woolly accessories, it may look sunny, and it was, but ti was blooming cold as well. 

Yesterday we went over to a friend's house for the afternoon; lively conversation, coffee and stollen. A perfect way to spend New Year's Eve. 

And here we are in 2026. Happy new Year to everyone who is reading this; may it be a kind one to us all. 

Tomorrow I must face up to the horror that is the wool stats for December!