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beginning to snow, and sticking even to the streets

Today, I pulled out my expired passport to take it in for a new one and, behold, it has the wrong birth date. All this time I could have been shaving ten years off my age and if someone hadn’t believed me, I would have had an official government document to prove it. Too late now.

This morning, up real early and still trying to clear my ears, I’ve added gravatars and tags to my comments, cleaned up some formatting and other such nonsense. I’m also trying to integrate the booklist as a database table with an eye to eventually making it a full-fledged plug-in.

Reaching Back

Some knitting did get done last year, but not all of it got photographed. This is a shawl I gave J’s mother last χmas (2007).

This triangular shawl was knit in elann.com’s worsted weight Peruvian Highland Silk in Antique Blue, using the Crystal Pattern from Barbara Walker’s A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, p.266, and a generic triangular construction.

I also finished three socks.

The grey are from two skeins of Regia I bought not realizing I needed to two of each color. I had one cuff done before I realized that. Those are worn by J. The gold is half a pair I have yet to complete for my older niece in Koigu KPPPM. Not particularly practical, but soft and regular in its patterning. I will start and finish the other when I get over this cold.

cold, dry, somewhat January-ish.

These are the upper halves of a pair of socks I’m working on for my sister’s Χmas present. I am disappointed with the gaudiness of the fuchsia and yellow; seeing the hank, I thought they might blend better. My opinion may not matter, however; everyone I have shown them to thinks they look fine—not at all like clown socks.

I am not technically late with the presents. The same sister informed me on 11 December that she and the other sister had decided at Thanksgiving not to draw names for one gift as we have done for a few years now, but to do small personal gifts for everyone. We are not a close family. I have not lived within 500 miles of a family member since 1986. I talk to each of my siblings once or twice a year. They are as bad about e-mail as I am. We forget/ignore each others birthdays and all but two fall within a month of each other. I’m supposed to come up with a half dozen personal gifts in the two weeks before Χmas and mail them?

My solution was to send them Amazon or Half Price Books—recycling books is good for you—cards with a note for each to e-mail me back for the second half of the gift. I would then present them with a choice of yarns and what I could make from them. So far only the above-mentioned sister has responded and that is the yarn and item she chose. I admit she saw the yarn in cake form and I told her it was less pink than it has turned out to be.

Given the family avoidance of e-mail, I could be working on 2008’s presents into 2010.

The sock ribbing is a Tunisian Rib Barbara Walker’s first pattern book. My sister wants shorter socks and the Tunisian Rib is stiffer than the usual k2p2 rib and does give an interesting variation to the variegated yarn