The first days of 2013

Yesterday I went down to the Monbulk creek with the motorbike boy & girl and the LatteQueen and we launched our resolution boats. Or, rather, two of us launched resolution boats and the motorbike couple launched boats-for-fun.

The LatteQueen had a small armada, I had only three - one resolution boat, one wish-boat and one boat laden with old baggage I wanted to sink.

One of my aims this year is to mistress Cat Bordhi's revolutionary sock-making methods displayed in her book, New Pathways for Sock Knitters. I bought this book several years ago, made half a sock that was waaayyy too big, started another but, although I used linen stitch, that was the only element of the original pattern that remained - I just gave up on the techniques and stuck to my own traditional gusset and heel turn. This time round I'm beginning, as Bordhi suggests, with the small socks to learn the lessons on a tiny number of stitiches. These socks will be suitable to gift to babies, should any come my way in 2013. Although I'd have to say the black yarn with metallic gold thread on which I'm making the first of the small socks would have to be gifted to a small glamour queen!

I've been re-reading Hemingway recently in preparation for the CAE class I'm teaching in a couple of weeks, Summer in Paris. I do still love A Moveable Feast. I've bought his short stories on my new Kindle Touch (a pressie from the government for being a Premier's Reading Challenge Ambassador) - it's just a little too easy to buy books for the Kindle! We'll also be looking at Gertrude Stein - a couple of pieces from Tender Buttons and an extract from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. The three week course will finish with H. D - it will be so interesting to discuss some different writings.

I've been cleaning up my study in a very desultory way - it always seems that cleaning involves a number of seemingly unrelated tasks - this time, compiling my own recipe book from recipes cut out of various cooking magazines I want to discard. A pleasurable activity, but one which doesn't actually seem to further the cleaning part of the exercise....Ah, well, back to Paris!