Last night was our Christmas get-together for my knitting group. We meet up once a month, taking it in turns to host, and we all bring something to eat. We start off with a nice meal, trying to stay fairly healthy since one of our members was diagnosed with diabetes type 1 (sometimes we fall off the wagon a bit and have naughty desserts such as meringue or strawberry mousse cake!), and then drink copious amounts of tea and knit or crochet amongst lots of chat and laughter. It's the one night out I always look forward to, as we just get on really well in so many ways. I feel I've gained several friends, rather than just 'knitting buddies'.
Last year we decided to do a Secret Santa and that was so much fun that we did it again this year. I loved seeing how different the presents were - F. was given a book about sock knitting as she's just discovered how much fun it is to knit socks, S. received a display box with balls of yarn inside and a note on the back 'break in case of emergency'. There was a knitted Christmas decoration for new member C., J. was given a vintage needle gauge in a lovely knitted bag, and I knitted fingerless gloves for H. And H. knitted me this fabulous pink tractor.
A week to go till Christmas and there is still so much to be done. Parcels to be sent, knitting deadlines to be met. One year I'm going to take the whole of December off and just enjoy preparing for Christmas. The tree is up though, the house is decorated and the kids come home every afternoon telling me what film they've watched at school. And although I would love to have a house that looks like it's walked straight off the pages from an interior decoration magazine, I'm secretly very proud that so many of our decorations are handmade. With all that lack of time that I moan about every year, I'm obviously still doing something right somewhere along the lines.
