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 Anyone in Britain will tell you that the weather has been truly Baltic over the past week. January started with heavy rain, then continued with snow, ice, frost and freezing fog. Here in Caithness we’ve been lucky, and have only had a minimal amount of snow and ice, although it has been cold. Other parts of the UK have been badly affected.
But this morning, as if activated by a light switch, the snow and ice disappeared overnight. The weather has changed with a warm wind from the south, and the forecast for the rest of the week is positively balmy. While I like the snow and the beauty it brings, I can do without the cold.
 Snowy Skies Hunkering indoors in a blanket hoodie is a good way to avoid the chill. While doing so, I heard a word, probably in a movie, and thought, ‘where does that come from?’. The word was ‘tweezers’. With the resources of the internet at my beck and call, I did some research, and it was much more interesting than expected.
‘Tweezers’ comes from the noun ‘tweeze’. A tweeze was a case used by surgeons or barbers for carrying small instruments. ‘Tweeze’ is believed to come from French ‘etui’ (plural etuis), which was anglicised into ‘tweeze’. Today, an etui is usually a sewing box with fold-out sides – searching for ‘etui box’ will bring up many examples. Over time, the plural ‘tweezes’ became ‘tweezers’. ‘Tweezers’ first appeared in the early 1600s, and by the middle of that century was also being used to denote the instrument as well as the container. But what was the instrument called before then? The internet could not provide a definitive answer.
 Following on from last week’s word of ‘Twixmas’, today is a far older holiday – Plough Monday. It’s the first Monday after 6 January, and marks the return to work after the Christmas holidays. First recorded in the 15th century, on this day the plough was blessed, and young men would take it round the village collecting coins and sometimes performing a mumming play. The EFDSS has more information here.
Although I’ve had to unpick and reknit a row or two due to inattention, no tweezers were required. The sleeve is coming along. Unlike a gansey sleeve, where the knitting is faster as you get closer to the cuff, this is the opposite because the sleeves are bell-shaped and thus wider at the cuff. The original yarn has now been used up, and a new one started. It’s very similar in colour and weight, but it too is from a Colourmart set, and when it’s gone it’s gone. I’ll have to start digging through boxes.
 There’s a newish word I’ve been hearing on the radio for the last few years: Twixmas. Unfortunately, it doesn’t derive from the name of a popular candy bar, but from ‘betwixt’ and ‘Christmas’, and is used to denote that lazy, relaxed period between Christmas and New Year. That brief period when the TV schedules are completely out of whack, the news seems to be mostly human interest stories, and you can’t remember what day it is. It’s not found in the Oxford English Dictionary (yet). It seems to be an up-and-coming word, being used more frequently year by year. It certainly is easier than saying ‘the week between Christmas and New Year’.
 Speaking of Christmas, my friend and I had a relaxed day. We lounged about in our ‘at home’ clothes, nibbled on crisps and dip, had Chinese food from the supermarket for Christmas dinner, listened to The Christmas Revels, and imbibed wine, drinking a toast to absent friends. And solved first world problems and got some knitting done.
New Year’s Eve was also quiet. I stayed in, and hadn’t planned to stay up until midnight but miscalculated the length of our traditional New Year’s Eve DVD – The Mikado by Opera Australia. It was just as well I’d had no plans – the weather was stormy and wet, with many outdoor celebrations cancelled or delayed at the last minute.
 Snowdrops January 5th or 6th is Twelfth Night, depending on when you start counting, and is the day that signals the end of the Christmas season, when decorations are tucked into their boxes, cards taken off the mantlepiece, strings of lights carefully coiled and stowed away. Christmas wassailing is over, but there is still time to wassail your apple trees to fend off evil spirits and to ensure they thrive.
If only there were a ceremony or ritual to make painful memories happier ones. I can’t help but remember that this time last year Gordon’s memorial service took place, and a few days later, it was the last time I saw his brother. ‘The first year is the hardest’ has been extended to perhaps ‘the first 18 months are the hardest’.
 Winter Sunset This is where knitting comes in, which at least is a distraction. The first sleeve of the lacy jacket is finished, and the second begun. As I got nearer and nearer the bottom of the sleeve, I realised that a game of yarn chicken on the second sleeve was in the offing. It’s going to be close, really close. I’ve found some other yarn in the stash that won’t look too out of place and is approximately the right weight. Buying more isn’t an option, because the yarn is an off-cone set from Colourmart. I’d need to buy a full cone to replace any of the colours, and the last thing I need is more yarn.
Happy New Year to you all! May it be cheerful, productive, and above all, better than 2024.
 It’s blowing a gale outside as I write. The Met Office has issued a yellow wind warning, and travel disruption is expected. But I am staying close to home. If things had been different, I would have travelled to Northamptonshire to spend the holiday with my brother-in-law. He loved Christmas, putting up the decorations each year, and even though he lived on his own for the last few years, he still made himself a proper Christmas dinner. In contrast, I have not put up any decorations. I usually don’t get swept up in the Christmas-tide until it’s nearly time to put the baubles away. Maybe next year.
 I understand the desire to have lights and decorations. They cheer us up at the darkest time of the year, joyfully changing our environs. The little rituals around Christmas – carol services, Christmas parties, having the family over, putting up decorations – also take us away from our ordinary habits. As my mother-in-law used to say, “A change is as good as a rest”. There’s some wisdom in that.
This Christmas, I’ll be going to a friend’s house. We plan to eat party food, drink wine, and watch old movies all day. There will just be the two of us. We will not get dressed up; she plans to spend the day in her jammies, I haven’t decided yet. I am looking forward to it.
 Last light of day This time of year is always busy for musical groups, and the handbell ringers are no exception. In past years I haven’t attended any of their bookings as we’ve usually been away. This year I’ve been to every one. Last Saturday, we rang Christmas carols at two nursing homes. At the first facility, we had a small, quiet audience. At the second, they were launching into carols the moment the title was announced. Wednesday night, there was a joint concert with the brass band. It was a full house, which was excellent considering there was another carol concert elsewhere. On Sunday, we performed with the Caithness Orchestra at another carol concert. And finally there’s another booking at a day centre on Monday morning. We’ll have earned our Christmas break!
 The Happy Recipient For all these events, we’re requested to wear Christmas jumpers. I’ve got one, but it’s super huge and not very warm. It got me to thinking, what about a Christmas Gansey? A gansey that could be worn all year, without looking too Christmassy? Obvious motifs would be trees and stars. Today I thought of another –snowmen made from seed stitch diamonds. I doubt I’ll ever make one, but I might brainstorm some charts.
 Reasonable progress has been made on the lace jacket. I’ve started change colours by blending from one shade to the next. The yarn is two strands knit together of a fine laceweight wool from Colourmart. To change colours, one strand is swapped out for one of the next colour – going from colour AA to colour AB – and later A is swapped out for another strand of B, giving colour BB.
A happy Christmas/Hanukah/choose your celebration to you all. I have truly appreciated your support over the past year. I’m having a short break for the holidays and will be back in the new year.
 I know of two anniversaries that take place on 16 December. One is well-known – the Boston Tea Party in 1773. One less well-known is the birthday of Beethoven. And thinking about this I wondered, what other notable events occurred on 16 December? Of course, in this day and age we need only log on to the internet to find out, which is precisely what I did. Here are some of my findings:
1965: Jingle Bells was the one of the first songs played in space. Astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra smuggled sleigh bells and a harmonica on board Gemini 6 and played it to mission control. Jingle Bells was first published in 1857 in Boston, MA as One Horse Open Sleigh but the song wasn’t associated with Christmas until decades later.
 Drizzle drops on a spiderweb 1775: Jane Austen was born in Hampshire, England. Richard Arkwright receives a patent for a cotton carding machine. He is also credited with developing the modern factory system.
1653: Oliver Cromwell is appointed Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. As we know, the Puritans cancelled Christmas in Britain in 1647. Christmas was outlawed in 1649 in Boston, MA, and the law repealed in 1681. And in Scotland it was banned in 1640 and didn’t become a public holiday until 1958. In all these instances, the ruling was largely ignored.
In 1620, Myles Standish, military leader of the Plymouth Colony, and a group of settlers had a ‘first encounter’ with 30 native Americans. The Mayflower Pilgrims first came ashore at Plymouth on 11 or 21 December (sources vary).
 Winter sunset In 1497, Vasco da Gama sailed from Portugal down the western coast of Africa, rounded the Cape, and after six months arrived at the Eastern Cape of South Africa. He named the area ‘Natal’ (Christmas in Portuguese). When he sailed on, he entered waters previously unknown to Europeans.
And the best for last – if you are in the US, it’s National Chocolate Covered Anything Day. (But isn’t that every day?)
This past week the gansey was taken off its wires, folded, photographed some more, and taken to its recipient. She was speechless. I made it for the wonderful woman at the funeral directors’ who made a trying time less stressful. She said she’s received many gifts over the years – flowers, chocolate, even jewellery – but she’s never received something like this.
 Hem detail In non-gansey news, you can see the crumpled heap of the lace jacket above. All lace looks like this until it’s blocked within an inch of its life. The pattern is an adaptation by Doilyhead of Lyra by Herbert Niebling. I took most of the week to figure out where I was, knitting a few rows then unpicking them multiple times because it didn’t seem right. Finally I took a good long look at the other sleeve, where the stitches are still on a holder, and noted down the stitches. From this I was able to definitively determine which row to start with.
 The first card of the season hit the mat a few days ago, heralding the start of Christmas with its mixed blessings of joy, togetherness, stress, and depression (not necessarily in that order). It’s the time of year when the frenzied preparations bolt forward at breakneck speed, to hit the buffers of Christmas Eve with a screeching halt. But that busy-ness makes us appreciate the relative peace that follows, the days when you can open your presents, sleep late, go for long walks. Unless you’ve got a pack of dogs and a busy family, of course. But we need that break in midwinter, when the nights are longest and the days shortest – to pause our normal routines of the old year and reset for the new.
 Sunlight reflections To continue with the tale of my travels. After the sojourn in Edinburgh, the last leg of the journey was the drive home. It was uneventful, starting off sunny but ending cloudy and dark, with two stops along the way. The house is still in one piece, though I haven’t looked carefully at the outside. There was a dripping tap in the bathroom, and one of the stereo components is kaput. The first is repairable, the second, probably not. The car was unloaded, the suitcase hauled upstairs, plants watered while dinner defrosted in the microwave. And then an early night.
When I left Caithness, it was still nearly summer, not quite summer but not yet autumn either. The wheel of the seasons has turned more than a quarter since, and we are now in winter, with bare trees, chill winds, steely skies, muted landscapes. At least the storms that gusted through Britain this past week did not reach us.
 Dusk And finally – drumroll – the gansey is done and looks rather fine. It’s taken far longer than it should, what with one thing or another. But what’s a few weeks when this is the result? The allover patterning makes it a showstopper. The Channel Island cast-on and patterned welt are decorative, but don’t detract from the brocaded body.
The next bit of knitting on the needles is not – gasp – a gansey. A year ago I was about three-quarters along knitting a lace jacket, but put it down because I couldn’t concentrate on it. It has been eyeing me ever since, sitting neglected on the side table, wondering when it will be finished. Now is the time to pick it up again. So far, I’ve finished casting off the hem of the body and have started the i-cord edging up the fronts. It’s knit from the top down, so the sleeves are half done. I hope that by next week some progress will be made on them.
 On the quayside
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Anyone in Britain will tell you that the weather has been truly Baltic over the past week. January started with heavy rain, then continued with snow, ice, frost and freezing fog. Here in Caithness we’ve been lucky, and have only had a minimal amount of snow and ice, although it has been cold. Other parts of the UK have been badly affected.
Following on from last week’s word of ‘Twixmas’, today is a far older holiday – Plough Monday. It’s the first Monday after 6 January, and marks the return to work after the Christmas holidays. First recorded in the 15th century, on this day the plough was blessed, and young men would take it round the village collecting coins and sometimes performing a mumming play. The EFDSS has more information here. 
