I desperately miss Christmastime in the UK, but this was a nice surprise to see when I went grocery shopping today.

First and only shawl/kerchief of 2019, modelled by my 8yo daughter. This was also my first time making it up as I went rather than starting with a pattern. Hoping to knit some more in 2020.

It’s been a couple of months since my last drawing. Was a nice way to spend a bit of the evening.

> It is no small thing that, although many centuries have passed since the Scriptures were made known, there has been continuing agreement regarding the obedience which is owed them.

John Calvin, _Institutes of the Christian Religion_

It’s been a very rough few days, complete with a couple of days where I just didn’t write anything. Hoping to try and make up some ground this evening while my wife reads the Mistborn Trilogy.

It’s been a really stressful week that’s resulted in only managing to get a total of a thousand words over the last three days. What happened???

Somehow, I’ve actually managed to write over 10k words so far this month. I’ve never made it this far in NaNoWriMo before.

Wednesdays are my days for studying. I really miss working through the BCUK course and I hope to start the second year of it next year. In the meantime, I’m _finally_ getting a chance to work through Calvin’s Institutes as well as a book on leadership that I was meant to be going through with a couple of the pastors at [Trinity Church Everton](https://trinitychurcheverton.org).

Something I was expecting to happen so early in writing for NaNoWriMo this year was to actually experience the characters taking control of things. I actually put work into the plot and an outline and then my characters decided that it needed to happen differently.

It feels pretty good to have reached this point in my word count.