That’s what we officially call the week between Christmas and New Year in our house. Growing up, it always seemed a time of playing with new toys, reading new books and visiting aged great aunts, but also a time of sometimes intense boredom while the adults held cheese and wine parties or dragged us around the sales looking for a new fridge or the like.
I’m not a parent yet, so have unrealised potential to bore my children half to death (mwahahaha), but I still usually find that funny bit, inbetween, a bit of a no man’s land. Having been self employed for the past few years, it previously seemed a time for sorting out accounts, clearing my desktop, reflecting on the year past and making some goals for the next one. While I have still done all of this (well, minus the accounts – 30 days and counting…), this year I have also been going out to work as well. Blimey, doesn’t that make that funny bit, inbetween, fly! Of course, I had worked over Christmas and New Year before, I wasn’t some lady of leisure before, but had clearly forgotten the hustle and bustle of sale time!
I always like to make something new over the holiday period; something that is small enough to be started and finished within about a week; something that I will use or wear myself. A treat. This year I chose Susan Crawford and Jane Waller’s Sunday Pictorial Beret from A Stitch in Time volume 2. I knitted it while watching Christmas telly, visiting my parents and other relatives, and on car and train journeys while listening to Andy Williams, Michael Buble, Elvis and Phil Spector (yes, I know he’s not a nice man, but his Christmas album is still ace).
The Christmas Pictorial Beret, as I called it, turned out beautifully, is ravelled here, and I’ll tell you all the knitty gritty in another post. It’s just finished blocking and I’ve yet to wear it, but it fit my criteria perfectly. I love making something new, something that just rounds off the year and closes the book, yet opens up new possibilities too.
Happy New Year, all!