Grey.

A gloomy grey Christmas Eve. It began with a windy morning and finished with heavy rain.

I've had a relaxed day. I cooked some spiced red cabbage, with onions, bacon, apple, honey and cider vinegar to have with our Christmas dinner. It freezes well so I was able to make an enormous family sized saucepanful. One other necessary job was to replace the insulation on the external pipe that leads the condensation water from the heating system into the drainpipe. I'd fitted insulation on the small elbow when it had frozen up and shut down the heating back along when we had snowy weather. I must have secured the insulation with tape because I suddenly noticed yesterday that it was no longer there. Rain must have unglued the tape and strong winds blown the insulation away. This time I secured the neatly mitred and folded grey insulation with a couple of strong cable ties. There's nothing worse than finding the heating off in freezing weather. Actually there are lots of worse things but you know what I mean.

Somehow despite all my good intentions I still hadn't finished a couple of felt tree decorations so I cracked on with that. One done and the other half-way there.

Presents have been wrapped using paper and tags bought last January and materials from my large box of saved paper, bags, ribbon etc. I like to make presents look as beautiful as possible with the materials I have. I'm still using a cone of thin gold ribbon that I rescued nearly 30 years ago. I was out walking in London pushing Vytas (or Linas) in my lovely Silver Cross pram in London when I came across this ribbon in the street. It was wrapped around a lamp post/ street sign so I assumed it had been blown along from a florist's. There was so much ribbon it was a shame to waste it so I untangled as much as I could, snapped it by hand (no easy task) and have been using it ever since.

Just for fun I've begun knitting a pair of mittens with the multi-coloured wool though it's hard to handle four needles with Speedy sprawled across my lap.