Let’s start at the very beginning….
Desperation and despair set in this week…….well as one knows, I do love a little melodrama in my life, dear Reader. Jerry and I looked at six houses and not one had any merit! Too small, too much to do, too damp, too far from the station, the list went on and on…..I felt positively more and more like Goldilocks with each house we entered! Jerry and I weren’t nearly so fussy when we bought the beloved cottage! The damp farmhouse with huge garden and 2ft of water in the cellar looked ever more promising until a call from the agent revealed that someone had signed and sealed the letting agreement the day after we had been to see it for a second viewing. Downcast, I sulked for a day or so muttering under my breath that Jerry had ruined my chances of living the good life forever. Remember what I said about a little melodrama, dear Reader…. Jerry took it all on the chin, adding rather bluntly that the farmhouse could only ever have been my dream house if it had been gutted and had had hideous amounts of money thrown at it. Something which, as it was a rental property, was unlikely to happen. Of course, he was absolutely right which left me infuriated and more sulking ensued.
Thinking that I could not sulk forever, I turned my attentions back to my list of Margot’s New Year resolutions. I have been remiss of late and far too focused on house hunting to sink my teeth into anything else. With only 4 months until the Big Move, I was worried that I might not have mastered all the requisite country skills needed to wow my new villagey neighbours. How would I ever be adopted into the bosom of the countryside WI, if I couldn’t complete no.18 on the list: Knit a tea cosy?
With that notion firmly planted in my mind, I recalled that at the start of the year, one of my favourite Tweeters, the lovely @Twickermum blogged about the relaxing properties of knitting….’meditative properties’ no less! Well, surely that could take my mind off house hunting for a while and have me skipping all the way to my first WI meeting in the village hall? Killing two birds with one stone as one would say. I even had all the crafty implements for this one squirreled away. Dear Mamma added a beginner’s knitting kit (for 8 years old and up) to my Christmas stocking last year and I hid it under the bed, in the full knowledge that if it stayed there long enough, I could avoid having to make something with it. Knitting has been my arch crafty nemesis for some time. I am hopeless at it and what makes it all the more awful is that, my dear Mamma is an amazing knitter. Her creations have been worn by many in the family and even friends of mine who have had babies. From berets to christening shawls, Mamma can knit anything! Just in case one was wondering, knitting skills are not genetic and the ability to turn long thin noodles of yarn into garments has not been passed down to the next generation. It would be fair to say that Mamma has long despaired of my lack of craftiness and has tried many times to teach me but it would seem that I am rather a lost cause. Disappointing. Especially as Primrose has been dying to learn how to knit. Casting these negative thoughts aside, armed with a knitting pattern, stitch instruction booklet and some wool, I set about facing the woolly enemy. Sitting in bed with yarn all around me, gesturing and ranting loudly at something ridiculous on the television over the click clacking of knitting needles, Jerry commented on my rather striking resemblance to Madame Defarge from Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. I bet she didn’t struggle with knit one, purl one, otherwise the names of impending deaths would never have been encoded in her knitting. After a few hours, some swearing, more ranting at the television and at Jerry for making me drop stitches, the result was rather…..well…..let’s just say I could do with some more practice.
Oh dear….
Not sure I got much further than one side of the wretched cosy before I became purposefully distracted (momentarily of course, I really was trying to take this knitting thing seriously…) by a questionnaire in The Telegraph……no prizes for guessing why! Are you a Good or a Leadbetter? Attempting the Good Life quiz, I realised, even before I got to the second question, that perhaps I was going to have to work a lot harder on my transformation from townie to country bumpkin. Turns out (most unsurprisingly) that I am still mostly Margot. Well, dear Reader, one can lead a horse to water….. It would appear that Primrose had been thinking the same thing and had little faith in my ‘Good’ly abilities, especially once she had seen my failed beginnings of a tea cosy. This is perhaps her best picture of me yet!
Take a look at that industrial sized G&T! P knows her mother well!
Must dash, dear Reader…..off to change into my maxi-dress and turban before dinner. Knitting my tea cosy will just have to wait. That G&T is calling to me!
