Misty musings

I hope you can see all the wonderful fall colours here. Much better in person, I can assure you. A lot of the leaves have fallen since, after all, it's December, but there are still these beautiful golds and browns and rusts and greens and olives and greys all over, with a Victorian pillar box to really liven things up! This was taken one day when I was on my way from the library (where I had to return Rowan Babies because someone had put a hold on it) to our college for lunch (Stephen gets a number of meals per month, and I was just helping him reach his quota). The college is not romantic and neo-Gothic or even Victorian; it was built in 1969 and has some quite uncomfy knitting chairs in the lounge. It does have family suppers, and we suspect that the Big Guy in Red will be at the December one. So, we like it.

We are gearing up for Christmas. I've finished one chenille stocking and I'm halfway through the second, and when I've done four, that's really all the knitting I have to do for Christmas. I'm also working on the denim (I'm making Solo for some random 2-3-year-old and am thinking about a pair of Blu jeans, too!) and my pondering about the Perfect Sweater has taken me in some funny directions. Somehow I've gone from making myself a nice wool cardigan from Yorkshire Tweed, to deciding on these for the kids*! Now, "deciding on" doesn't necessarily mean that I've got the wool or anything, but it's at least my present plan... It all started when I went to see the Goblet of Fire and got taken by this sweater and found myself wandering the web till I found Ron's great afghan. Anyways, the Harry Potter knitting just took my fancy, and although I'm one of the last moms to knit a Weasley, I think I shall order the kits and get on with them, and I'll just make myself my Summer Tweed sweater before the spring....

Oh, back to Christmas... We got ourselves a fake tree from a charity shop and hope to get it up this week. The kids are winding themselves up, of course. Elaine is in the school production. She will be an angel, dressed in a long white T-shirt (and we got a note asking if we could make sure she wears plain white undies on the day of the show! Show me a 5-year-old girl with plain white undies!). In Toronto the kids will be singing Frosty the Snowman and Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer, but here we get the full Nativity story, Away in a Manger, Silent Night and all that! Elaine likes to read the blog, and was quite taken when I mentioned Going Jesus, and she's always saying, "We're really going Jesus at school these days!" Yes, well... I can't wait till Easter.

And to end on a "smallish world" note: We had a little party, which was really only 2 other families and us, but with 6 kids in total it seemed to totally fill the house. One of the families are our neighbours, whom we met because their kids and ours ride bikes up and down. And we know the other family because in 1980-something the woman and a friend of ours from Vancouver worked together on an archeological dig here in England, and they have kept in touch. So, pretty funny connections. But, these people were talking, and our biochemist neighbours were talking to the biophysicist husband of the archeologist, and they know people in common (for example, another neighbour!) and it was kinda weird. Six degrees of separation indeed.

*PS. I ordered these kits Wednesday online, and indeed, they put them in the post that afternoon and now, Thursday morning, they arrived! Nice wool with 10% silk, could be a bit scratchy, and I'm wondering if I can knit one by Xmas. Pretty sure I can't knit two. Will keep you posted.