Thursday 4th January

All change on the knitting needle front again.

The nice little circular needles have turned out to be too short to hold all the stitches securely, and I find that the very short length of the handle bit too short for comfort. 

I found some bamboo straight needles in the wastepaper bin I use to store all straight needles and switched to them -  much better. I'll see how I get on. The yarn is a Christmas present from a student who is also a good friend. When I realised I'd probably need a other ball I went online and looked it up; I knew from the label it is Pebble from Woolcraft, and shade 8050 turns out to be called 'rhythm'!

We've had a lot of unexpected entertainment from our battery powered candles. Here's why;

from left to right;

1  operates the candles on the Christmas tree. Mostly. You have to walk around the tree to make sure of zapping them all.

2  for the red candles. But also switches on most of the older white candles and the four small new white candles which aren't marketed as remote controlled.

3  for the older white candles. The red candles blink when you use it to switch the older white candles off (are you still with me?) but stay on.

4  only works on the oldest white candle, which we gave to my godmother 5 or 6 years ago as she loved candles but was in her 90s, very frail and becoming forgetful. We just brought batteries with us when we visited in case they heeded replacing.

Then there's the television remote which seems to switch the candles randomly depending on the direction of aim and which channel I've chosen.

Switching everything off at night is a bit of a challenge. I consider it a major achievement if I succeed in getting 'complete offness' at the first attempt!