Study in contrasts

It was One of Those Days, weatherwise. Woke up to driving hail, and by 9am there had already been a period of blue skies, and then this (click to embiggen) which Never Bodes Well - that was the second bout of hail coming over. I do love the 'sun-before-the-storm' moments though - the light is so amazing.

It was vile outside, and a perfect day for just sitting around knitting and making copious quantities of tea, but I had promises to keep...

After a quick look round the shops (and a reassuring discovery that M&S's sizes for this winter are less punishing than last year) and very nice noodle lunch, Sue and I went to the Val McDermid/Mark Billingham talk at Winter Wordfest (.pdf link). I was delighted to find out the moderator was Nicholas Wroe of the Guardian review, but actually they hardly needed him.

While I haven't seen McDermid speak in person (I had to back out of a previous event), I've heard her on the radio a lot and was prepared to be entertained, which I was; Billingham was an unknown quantity, and because his books are on occasion very dark, I was unprepared for his being quite wonderfully funny (apparently he was a stand-up comedian before he turned to writing). It was a fantastic two-hander with a very light touch from Wroe; and the opening chapters of both books, Blood line (Billingham) and Fever of the bone (McDermid) were gripping enough to send me off to the library catalogue as soon as I got home to place reservations...

And in the interests of continuity; with just over 4 weeks to go the Christmas Threat Level is at Substantial...

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 17 (+2 - one I'd forgotten , and one I'd already done but forgotten to count)
Items started: 12 (+3)
Items finished: 6 (+2, one of them the biggest bit of knitting for this Christmas, yay)
Net progress this week - 0 (hmmnn...)