Knitting and other things

 

Knitting and other things

We had a busy day on Saturday, when our youngest daughter and her family came to see us. They were supposed to have come before Christmas, but other things got in the way, and we had to postpone their visit. It seemed strange to see the children eating chocolate Santas and reindeer in February, but why not?

Jack wanted to learn how to knit and picked it up quickly. Apparently, he was sitting up in bed knitting on Sunday morning!

I also wanted to introduce him to French knitting, but the wool/yarn I had was quite thin and difficult to loop over the pegs, and I couldn’t get it started, so I left that for another day.

 A French knitting spool is a simple loom with three or four pegs, and produces a thin tube of knitting, which can be used in a variety of ways, to make small mats, for example.

The one I had as a child was a cotton reel with four nails hammered into it!

Often, looms with more than four pegs are used to create socks, or hats, called tuques, or fingerless gloves. Some looms may have as many as a hundred pegs. Knitting produced from the larger looms is known as spool knitting. Bizarrely, to me, anyway, spool knitting was historically used to produce reins for horses.

This form of knitting originated over four hundred years ago. During the First World War, French or spool knitting was used as occupational therapy for wounded soldiers in hospital, to practise and maintain fine motor control.

As usual, I over-catered, so we had much food left over. Bethan always arrives bearing gifts, and had brought a challah loaf and rolls and some delicacies, so there was no chance of us starving. She also gave me a beautiful bouquet.

Herschel is quite a florist and always tries his paw at flower arranging, pulling out some stems and laying them on the worktop. He did that for a couple of days, then, satisfied with his work, followed other pursuits.

We had a lovely day. I did very little, not finding movement very easy at present, and felt rather guilty that Barry, Bethan and Robert were doing all the fetching and carrying. They were happy to help, or so they assured me!

The cats excelled themselves, loving the attention Charlie and Jack – and Robert! - gave them. They seem to appreciate company as much as the dogs do.

Jellicoe, as ever, was as interested in the food as the dogs were and swiped a Madeleine before we could stop him and galloped off with it, with Gilbert in hot pursuit. Gilbert got the lion’s or, rather, the cat’s share, his poorly paw not hampering him one iota.

Sunday was a very quiet day, all the animals, four and two-legged ‘relaxing.’

We are still eating our way through the supplies, and I haven’t had to think about meal preparation since Saturday. 

Friday Flash 55 The bride

It's time for Friday Flash 55. To join in write a story in 55 words (no more, no less) then tell Mr. Knowitall by leaving a comment on his own Flash 55 post today.

 She stepped gracefully from the carriage and posed for photos, one hand on the horse's harness. Moving forwards she was abruptly halted. The horse had stood on her train and ripped off her headdress. As she stooped to retrieve it he snatched a mouthful from her bouquet then nudged her over.

Were these bad omens?

A bouquet of flowers

It is always delightful to receive flowers. When we were courting (I love the romanticism of that old expression!) Barry sometimes greeted me with a beautiful bouquet. Ours was a long-distance romance as he was in the army and I was at college so our times together were infrequent and marked by long separations. Though naturally I couldn't have foreseen it this pattern was a sound preparation for our marriage as Barry spent much time away from home, either because he was working long hours late into the night in various UK locations or was physically in another country – this continued and became more evident after he retired from the army at the grand old age of 32!
I know of husbands who give their wives flowers on a regular basis – Friday evenings, for example, as well as the more usual birthdays and wedding anniversaries. It's a charming idea but I wonder if it becomes a habit that is barely noticed and perhaps not fully appreciated. I love to receive flowers but for me they are all the more special when they are given spontaneously. Even so, the traditional floral gifts marking a baby's birth were wholly acceptable. I know of one husband (not mine) who realised that it was customary to give something to a newly-delivered mother. He decided he wanted to find something different to the usual posy, thought long and hard and proudly presented his wife, the exhausted mother of his first child, with a set of saucepans! If she had been less weary she might well have set about him with them.
Barry frequently came home from long days in London on the last train. (Occasionally, he fell asleep and missed his stop!) He would pass the flower sellers near the railway station and often bought flowers from them. One night he arrived home happily bearing a large bunch. It had been a miserably dark and rainy evening and he felt sorry for the flower seller who simply wanted to rid himself of his stock and go home. Barry gave him all his loose change. They were lovely flowers though I cannot now recall what they were. I unwrapped them to arrange them in a vase and as I did so all the heads fell off! However, it was the thought that counted and made me smile – and not the thought that I might be pleased but that the flower seller had had a happy ending to his day thanks to my husband's kind heart.