Wick (Cumming Bros): Week 5 – 30 December

And so that’s Christmas over for another year; all that remains is to put the wrapping paper in the recycling, plan next year’s vendettas on the basis of who didn’t send us a Christmas card, and wonder where another year has gone. As I get older I’m coming to the realisation that Christmas is a pretty good metaphor for my life, in that every morning is like waking up to discover the batteries weren’t included and all the shops are closed.

We spent Christmas in Northamptonshire, where the weather was unseasonably warm and wet. The land had clearly absorbed as much rain as it could hold: the fields were saturated, and a number of rivers overflowed, turning low-lying roads into impassable, muddy pools. Country walks became grim slogs through mud, and the evenings were spent looking up synonyms for “clag” in the dictionary. On the plus side, there was an hour and half’s extra daylight compared with Caithness; a fire blazing in the hearth on demand; and Christmas seeing family and friends. What’s not to like?

I didn’t spend as much time knitting as I’d expected, largely because I seemed to lapse into a sort of coma in my downtime, but I’ve still made progress and am about to divide for front and back. The original of this gansey was evidently knit on narrower needles than mine, and with yarn of a finer gauge than this particular lot of Wendy’s, which resembles the sort of rope used to rig a man o’ war in Nelson’s navy. We’ll see how it works out, but the plan is for the yoke to consist of three pattern bands (two zigzags either side of a herringbone), of which the first band is almost complete. (I’ll hopefully post pattern charts next week, once the jet lag wears off.)

Christmas by the Canal

Fire in the Inglenook

One memorable evening last week my brother took us for a drive to look at the Christmas lights in some nearby towns (Daventry, Towcester and Brackley). The civic illuminations were really rather lovely, but it was also fun to drive through some of the backstreets and estates. Most people hadn’t gone overboard on their houses, but suddenly one would flash vividly out of the darkness, as tasteful as a Las Vegas casino offering Santa stripteases. We felt like deep-sea divers encountering new and exotic forms of life, dancing with bioluminescence, and it was all rather wonderful.

Next stop: New Year, or possibly Hogmanay. However you choose to welcome in 2020, may your year be joyful and full of good things, always remembering to be, in the words of the Ghost of Christmas Present, most excellent to each other.