The Grandmother was so delighted to be going to a wool shop with her daughter and the Littlest Latte that she went a bit insane.
"Oooh look at that! And that! And that!" exclaimed The Grandmother happily, buying me patterns for items I had never thought of knitting.
"I could knit you one of these," I said wickedly. This is exactly the type of hat my mother likes - warming for the ears, colourful, and embarrassing.
(See how the little girl is staring into space, trying to find a mental place where she can ignore what she is wearing on her head?)
"Yes! Yes please!" replied The Grandmother.
So this would be the right time to tell you my First Date story, where I went into Dewsbury with a bloke named Simon to have a coffee and look at the shops.
(Anyone who has ever been to Dewsbury will be able to confirm that it is Not Paris.)
As we strode awkwardly along the bookshelves in Smiths (the romance!), I saw a telltale woolly sight on the other side of the shelves.
It was a snood.
It was cerise.
It stopped, dead, and moved a little from side to side in panic. Then it plunged out of sight.
If it had been attached to a person, for example, say, my mother, you might have imagined that it had realised it was not meant to be so close to The Date of the Century and had hidden behind the bookshelves, with its owner moving quickly away with her knees bent so as not to be detected.
The date did not go well. But the snood story has lived on as one of those family stories that you have to be a blood relation to ever understand.
Let's knit my mother a hat. And then maybe put the pattern away for another day, maybe eight, maybe ten years in the future, when I can put the hat to use on any dates the Little Lattes might plan.
