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It’s the time of year when I most need easy, portable and social knitting. The kind of stuff that doesn’t get messed up once I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine and am talking and not necessarily paying attention. With all the christmas parties, pre-christmas catch up drinks and all the rest of it, I need plain socks.

This doesn’t mean I need boring socks. Oh no. The fun yarns come out when the need arises for plain knitting. Enter Yarntini. A dyer with my calling card if ever there was such a thing.

Look!

It’s me. So me. When I pulled out these socks at my brother’s wedding, my younger cousin said to me ‘You’re knitting? At a wedding?’ Hell yes. It’s my brother’s wedding, the meal is over and I have a glass of wine and my family around me. I’ll do what I like! And I knitted merrily on the first of these two socks for the evening (except for when I was dancing with my nephew!).

There’s a fair bit of Christmas knitting going on but these are not Christmas gifts. These are for me. The yarn came to me via RoseRed last year when we shared the fruits of the Yarntini club over the course of a few months. I love this one. It’s called Mint Fizz.

Really there’s nothing new left to say about plain socks which is why you let the yarn choice do the singing of praises for you. Who doesn’t love a bit of self striping yarn? Round and around in pleasing circles, I’m always reminded of the Yarn Harlot’s line from Knitting Rules where she talks about the simple pleasure of self striping yarns. ‘Perhaps I’m just dim enough to get a kick out the colour changes’ she says, or words to that effect. I know she definitely says dim.

I don’t know about you but I feel a bit dim after a few drinks so there’s plenty of pleasure to be had from pretty colour changes when the work itself is frightfully boring. (They’re knit on 2.75mm dps, 64 stitch cuffs, knit top down, with an eye of partridge heel and toes bound off at 28 stitches, for those who care for the fine print.)

But then who needs thrills a minute in their knitting when the real action is taking place with your friends or family over a drink or two? All I ever need is my fingers kept busy and the quiet certainty in the back of my mind that a) the socks will be fine and b) I’m multi-tasking.

That said, these are a bit loose on me. That’s the main reflection I’ve got. I’ve started a new pair in another Yarntini colour (Alice saw the yarn and asked if it was ‘for Alice?’) and I’m going to knit them at a finer gauge, see if that helps.

Speaking of Alice, she’s been here most of the weekend. We took her shopping for seedlings. How grown up does she look pushing along a little trolley?

She’s wearing an old beaded necklace that kicks around in the car (ever since she left it there) and which she wears when she wants to look pretty. Personally I think she doesn’t need the adornment but then I’m not two-going-on-three. Maybe that demographic is all about wearing their beads to the garden centre?

Bells

On the weekend, I was finally able to wear my beautiful Estonian Lilac Leaf Shawl to my brother’s wedding. The day was, as predicted, incredibly hot with a fierce dry wind but I was determined to wear the shawl come what may, even if only for a while. Thankfully at the venue we were in a sheltered garden under shady trees so having it draped around my shoulders wasn’t unbearable. (As an aside, the day after the wedding dawned cold and wet. Would have been a much better day for a shawl!)

I had planned to have a fun photo shoot at the venue in the two hours between the ceremony and the reception but once I had a glass of champagne in my hand and was chatting with family, I completely forgot. Thankfully, we grabbed a few shots hurriedly at my house before we left.

Here’s one with my gorgeous nephew Willem. He scrubbed up beautifully and looked so handsome in his shirt and tie. We loved that we matched with my blue dress and his blue tie.

Later in the evening, I got to dance with him – something we’d both been talking about for weeks. He’s a real groover and for a while we got the dance floor to ourselves. What a special moment. He’s so grown up. At seven, he’s not such a little boy any more. He was the only child at the wedding and handled the night beautifully.

I didn’t actually try the shawl on with my dress until the moment it came to get ready to go and so I was thrilled to find that the smokey grey really did go well with it. I wore silvery grey shoes, a grey flower in my hair and carried a small grey bag. It came together well. I bought the dress months ago from a shop in Braidwood called Hoola Hoop. A shop that sells American imported classic 1950s outfits for both men and women. It’s a Heartbreaker dress, as noted elsewhere by WebGoddess. I felt very much like I was in an outfit from Mad Men .

In March I’ll be going to another family wedding (Sean’s brother) so I’ve got my outfit good to go well ahead of time. No need to make my fingers ache with a looming deadline then!).

Bells