Busy, busy, busy.

And when you are so busy this is just what you don't want:



Oh, yes. It's the circular needle that fell apart. Not too much damage done. The pink shoulder cozy is finished. The pattern says to pick up stitches all the way round the outside. She even tells you how many stitches to pick up. I'm sorry to say that once I get over about thirty, I can't keep count. So I threw caution to the winds and just picked up the stitches as seemed appropriate. I don't even know how many there were. It was a miracle that it was an even number, so the ribbing was perfect. Then she says to cast off and sew the hem down. Oh, dearie me. Give me a break! What is the point of casting off and then sewing the thing? It uses up more yarn (and at £8 the ball, 5 balls needed, we don't need to use any more yarn than is absolutely necessary), it adds bulk - this is lovely yarn but it is heavy, we don't need more bulk at this stage.

I did an Elizabeth Zimmerman. I took an executive decision. I am the boss of my knitting. I didn't cast off. I knitted until it was long enough (and I don't even know how many rounds that was) , and then I sewed the live loops:



to the corresponding stitch at the beginning of the hem:



and that was the end of that.

Of course, I needed a button. A big button. What with one thing and another, I didn't have a button. Big or otherwise. But I really, really wanted to wear the thing. Extreme measures had to be taken:



I just happened to have a pair of short pink needles. They all thought it looked great.



So did I.

I'm in the middle of making White Stilton Soup. It's our soup of Christmas Day. I'm also in the middle of working my way through a bottle of red wine (provided by a grateful punter) and I do have the rare red Bounty in the freezer. All's well with the world.

We brought out the crib the other day:



Yes, I made all that. It won a prize, too. It was the "presepio piu originale" one year when I lived in Torino. (I was informed by one adolescent boy that it couldn't possibly win the "crib of cribs" because it didn't include a palm tree. You win some, you lose some, I suppose.)

The Baby Jesus seems to have lost an eye:



but I don't suppose it matters if he looks like a pirate. It's His birthday -He can do what He wants.

Happy Christmas!