In slightly more detail:

• I’ve cast on the child’s placket neck sweater from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts (that was Knitted Gits first time); I have some rather lovely Rowan wool in, worryingly, a shade called ‘Rage’. Does this indicate the shape of things to come, I wonder? Probably, as I’m relearning the magic loop technique for this sweater, and wishing – so, so wishing – that it was just knitted flat. And on BIG needles, rather than 4mm ones, which seem rather piddling after the 9mm variety I used for the last knitting I did. Anyway, we shall see. I really hope that I find my knitting zen; I think that despite my professed love of winter, I am finding the stultification of a very wet, muddy January a bit of a bummer, technically, and as previously discussed, I need to achieve things if I am to avoid feeling a bit shit, really.  I’m also hoping to kick off the hourglass sweater in the same book for myself (the first thing I’ll have knitted for me! all me!), but am a bit dismayed at the concept of 15 skeins of Noro anything; approx. UK price for that would be somewhere over £100, so I’m going to be attempting to come up with an affordable – hopefully tweedy-looking – alternative. Any suggestions? I would love to just use up some of the stash I’ve accumulated since I started knitting, but as ever, nothing is the right size, or the right quantity. Typical, no?

• Why do I keep seeing knitting things I want to do, but which always call for either a different sort of wool or a size of needle which I don’t yet possess? Also, as an aside, how is it possible that I don’t now own at least one instance of EVERY SIZE of needle, given the vastness of my inherited/purchased collection?

• I find the prettiness of my circular needles rather distracting. I keep finding myself wandering off, mentally, and completely forgetting how many stitches whatever particular form of torment I’m engaging in at the present moment I have actually done. This has lead to an interesting border to the bottom edge of the sweater. (I’ve now frogged the blighter and started over.)

• I have submitted my tax return, though I hope to all that’s holy that the calculation is wrong; it’s over £100 more than I’d estimated. Fortunately, I’ve got a week to speak to someone about it before the deadline, so if it’s out, I can hopefully sort it before simply stumping up. Sodding, sodding student loans.

• Today, I declare to be a baking day. This morning, the small girl is at a toddler group with Quercus brandishing craft supplies in line with the theme of shopping; this should mean that she probably wants a reasonably quiet afternoon, and baking is our default activity at such times. I’m itching to try something new, though; cake suggestions, anyone?

• Preschool: the pros and cons thereof. Please discuss. At present, the small girl goes to a toddler group once a week, and we meet up with friends who have similarly-aged children probably most weeks, so she gets a reasonable quantity of socialising, but, left to our own devices, our rhythm is pretty home-centred. Lots of people we know are now looking at preschools, or, indeed, have had their infants merrily toddling along for the last few months; are we doing ours a disservice by not following suit? I can’t imagine leaving her somewhere on her own at the moment; she is going through a particularly mother-centric, well, life, really, although she is confident with people she knows reasonably well, and will quite happily toddle off with some of our friends and so on. I don’t want to push her into something for which she isn’t ready, but at the same time, I do think I underestimate her sometimes, so I am wary of being simply selfish in my desire to keep her with me, all the time. Ahem.

• Wet, dank, grey. That is Devon this morning.

And you?

SLEEP • more time outdoors • exercise • what to cook for fucking dinner • where did that money go • cars cars cars • window leaking • mould on sodding wall • freelance work • TAX RETURN!!!!! • where is my sodding P60 • must remember to go to the post office • sod – when is MOT due on car? • why does Renault persist in stupid, stupid key cards which you can’t put on a keyring? •  why does sodding key card not work? • where is sodding key card? • haven’t blogged for ages despite best intentions • lists, lists, lists • should we re-render the inside of the house this summer, or give ourselves an easier time, but with renovation spread over a longer time, thus meaning less time in the house when it’s finished before we end up moving? • garden like the Somme • mud, mud, mud • grocery-shopping = minefield • tax bill set to be £200 more than I thought • will Quercus have a job after this summer? (Civil Service UK = bad place to be working at the moment) • what are we going to do for money? • why is our ‘hard-standing’ parking now soft-standing mud? • SLEEP • teething, both the small girl and Quercus (wisdom teeth) • dentist • managing expectations • must start knitting again if am to maintain sanity • pick project and DO IT • choose bulbs for garden • plan veg for later this year! • hanker after Anna Marie Horner’s flannels (does that mean brushed cotton?) • why do all white things end up cream or worse? • make marmalade • Seville or Seville? BBC says latter yet I think former… • bake bread • make soup • stare at moon while drinking hot chocolate on the patio • ponder life, and its many insanities.

And you?

Chrimbly was good – lots of snow and sitting about and then lots of slush and ice and wishing it would sod off while eating mince pies and eyeing up the ginger wine.

Post-Chrimbly – so far, still just cannot believe that I am back to getting up at 6.45 and sitting at a desk for five mornings a week, but other than that, life is good. I have News, but I’m not yet able to share it here because of the, er, width of my readership… But I don’t want to fall completely out of the habit of blogging, which I am in danger of doing if I don’t pull my proverbial out and get on with it.

Ugh.

Which isn’t very helpful, really, is it, but still, it will make sense in due course, I think.

Still to come: this year is going to be the year we destroy the inside of our house and rebuild it. Given that we live in our house rather efficiently, using ALL OF IT ALL THE TIME (well, nearly), it’s going to be quite challenging finding a way to take down ceilings and strip off old plaster while still, well, living here. Knackered it may be at present (and let us not speak of the gaffer tape and wallpaper paste required to preserve wall integrity lately), but it is sort of intact, if that makes sense, and the idea of hacking into that order, even if it is utterly duff in nature and deeply deserving of a refit, is slightly daunting in a way that the kitchen and bathroom just weren’t, given that they are tacked on in an extension. I think the thing is going to be to just move into those rooms (now finished, complete with tiles and grout! of an oatmeal sort of colour!) and try to ignore the chaos beyond the kitchen door.

So, intentions, in a slightly more verbose manner than is strictly decent:

1. Garden: we’re going to have a bit of a January push on sorting out some outstanding business – paths in the muddy hellhole which passes for a garden, some beds dug in for later in the year, some grass seed sown. I’d really like to be able to get back to growing some proper veggies this summer; with the extension self-build and the re-rendering taking over most of the summers since the small girl’s birth, we’ve done little more than tomatoes and the odd herb for three years, so it would be nice to get back to a level of produce which might actually have an impact on our sodding, sodding grocery bill. The intention, then, is that we get path sides in, and find some paving slabs for stepping stones. (My role in this is probably going to be chief bottle-washer and whatnot, as it tends to work out that Quercus does Heavy Muddy Things while I ponce around with the small girl, making something out of felt.)

2. Food: veg boxes. Anyone out there get them? And from whom? And do you like…? We are spending about £65 a week on groceries, and I am determined that January will be the month when we bring that down by a tenner a week. Part of the problem is that food just seems to cost more than it did a few years back, by a disproportionate sum – i.e. 7p for tinned tomatoes in 2005 now = 42p – but we also need to trim how much we cook (we often have leftover rice, for example, but now we’re henless, this ends up composted more than it should), and our tendency to stockpile, which is fine in theory but we never quite seem to get to the bit where we find ourselves shouting smugly ‘ooh – no need to shop this week!’. So, I’m hoping to get more organised, going back to menu plans but perhaps on a fortnightly footing, and maybe switching to veg boxes delivered, with just possibly meat boxes too. These scare me slightly, given my veggie tendencies and lack of familiarity with general Meat Cooking, but I want a change, and I want to get away from spending lots in evil supermarkets, and I’d also like to eat more organically. So, anyone with tuppence-worth to add, please be my guest.

3. TAX RETURN.

4. Organising: we need to start pruning our possessions where possible, after the chaos of building work and having things in storage; when we get to the rendering work later in the year, we’re going to need to pack up the main house and put things away for a while, so it would be useful to have somewhere to put them… This means… sorting out the attic. I’d like to Freecycle/sell/donate to charity half a dozen things this month, and I’d like to organise some of the utter bedlam up there into some semblance of order.

5. Start knitting something. I have shitloads of wool. Oh yes. Now to knit something and actually stick with it, after months of thinking ‘oooh yes, knitting – I remember that’. I’d quite like to do something like a cardigan for myself; I have eight very large balls of pure Cornish wool which I inherited from my mother, and it would be nice to do something with it, finally.

So, a short list, but a corker nonetheless.

Witter, witter.

How about you? Good break? Lovely food? Horrendous presents?