Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Christmas Countdown

I have done no Christmas knitting this year. I did some birthday knitting for my mother - a scarf from my first handspun wool on the new spinning wheel. It is beautiful and will keep her warm in the Trentham cold. This sounds quite crazy, given the weather we've had lately and the fact that today a smoke haze hangs over Belgrave - but perhaps that's from a small fire at Ferntree Gully.

I finished Stray Dogs Cafe, a short story suite. It's the first bunch of short stories I've written for a long time and it was kind of like writing a verse novel in that the stories are all connected. It was a relief to finish them, but also something of a wrench. It's always like that.

Meanwhile I'm trying to do domestic things and thwarted by the usual school holiday activities of unexpected groups of children, unexpectedly missing children and the occasional need to drive a child somewhere. I tell myself, if that wasn't happening, my domestic front would be swifter and more efficient. But I have a sneaking suspicion that my domestic front limps on as it always does because it is the domestic front. I write little lists of To Do things and they sift down amongst the mail on the dining room table, to be discovered when it's far too late to do the things on them. If you were being cruel, you could say that it's a strategy.

Just so long as it keeps working...

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