my precious | debbidipity

Firstly, thanks to Alex for saying in her class newsletter that I hadn’t posted last week. Strange. I had deliberately done a post on Christmas morning as I have posted every Friday since the start of lockdown. On looking, for some strange reason it was still in drafts! I was sure I had checked, but it was written on the Friday, and sorry it was actually posted three days late.

We had a candlelit / moonlit dinner for two last night on New Year’s Eve. We had a choice of restaurants to go to: “Notre maison”, “Chez nous” or “En casa”. But in the end we decided not the Spanish, for a change, nor “Notre maison” as it’s just wrong (apparently!). Not quite up to normal standards, the staff kept getting distracted and the service was slow; not enough candles, so you could barely see what you were eating. We put a few comments in the suggestions box!

This was another first, being on our own on New Year’s Eve. Certainly since Miles was little we have always had a variety of friends to eat on New Year’s Eve. Most of the friends’ children were older, so it was easier to eat here so that Miles could go to bed when he was ready, although he was often still going when the rest of us were flagging. Initially a buffet, then for the last 15 years or so a sit-down meal round the dining table, usually with us only doing a main course, and others bringing a course with them. There have been up to about 15 some years, and occasionally only 6 or 8, so just the two of us was very odd. We missed you all. Next year?

We’d finished our main course before everyone would normally have arrived. But we sat watching the moon come up and talking and reminiscing about times gone by, with the just the Christmas lights and the table decoration lit.

We then went down the frosty street to take photos of the moon and the lit-up church, and the front of our house with the Christmas lights. Only one other person was out and about, he must have thought we were mad, standing in the cold taking photos in the dark. The cloud moved just after we came in, but we were too cold to go back out, so we took a few from the kitchen window. A blue moon?

A full moon over St. Mary’s Church, Broughton, at 20.20 on 31 December 2020

Back in front of the fire, I picked up my knitting. I had unpicked a few rows earlier in the week that I realised I’d done too many weeks ago, and it had been sitting there taunting me. I thought I could just finish it off before the year ended.

But, no. It got to the last little bit, and 3 / 4 needles and 8 stitches and not enough hands, needles slipping everywhere so I lost some stitches. It was so near midnight, I realised I would not get it finished, it would be better to sort it out in daylight.

At midnight we watched a twenty minute fantastic firework display from our bedroom window. The camera was downstairs, and we thought that the show would finish sooner than it did and didn’t want to miss any, so sorry, no photos.

The same problem with the knitting as with the other sock, but once I’d sorted out the dropped stitches, I realised that it would be easier to work with 2 / 3 needles. It kept it firmer, and stopped the unused needle falling out. I just had to make sure I knew whether I was working on needle two or needle one and three put together so I knew where to do the decreases.

Also I’d learnt from the other sock that it would work better to put the last four stitches from each needle on to their own safety pin, to turn it through to the “wrong” side, then put them back on the needles to knit together, one from each needle to cast off.