There has been great excitement in our knitting club this week. We have been to Windsor Castle! Yes! Our little knitting club drew the staff of the Castle in the second round of the "Knit Wit Cup". Every year ten clubs vie for the prize of not only the most accomplished knitwear article but also general knowledge. In the one hundred year history of the cup no team has ever been invited to Windsor Castle before. We were very honoured therefore.
I have explained before that I am responsible for teas at the club, I am not a knitter myself, I leave that to my friend and house mate Mildred. However, I am not too bad on general knowledge and it is in that capacity that I am permitted to participate. The day dawned wet and miserable, but our spirits were high as we set off towards Windsor. We know that Her Majesty is a keen embroiderer and we could not help but wonder if her skills extended as far as knitting. There has been a post of "Lady Knitter" in the Royal Household since Norman times and we rather hoped that maybe she had imparted some of the fun of knitting to her royal mistress.
Naturally, Lady Dent-Uhr, our somewhat imperious President led the way, with Mrs Perleun, the Secretary tottering behind her. In fact of these two formidable ladies, it is Mrs P that has the greater claim to the noble line. She can trace her family back right to the Norman invasion of 1066 when Perleuns were chainmail knitters with William of Normandy's invading army. There is little love lost between these two ladies and Mrs P lost no time in informing our hostess, the charming Lady Aigne Kneesnow, President of the Royal Household club for Lady Knitters, of her ancestral credentials. "How interesting dear" said the royal lady. As put downs go it may not have been the wittiest, but it seemed to have an effect as Mrs P remained silent for some time afterwards. Apparently, despite its feminine title, the Royal club has as members both the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales. I am sure that they both look very good in the club "uniform" of a royal blue apron with the royal crest on the breast!
Over tea and the sweetest little shortbread biscuits that I would love to have the recipe for, we met our opponents. None appeared to be royal and most were women like ourselves, comfy cardigans, sensible shoes and spectacles on chains. We seated ourselves around a long table on which several balls of wool had been deposited. Lady Kneesnow explained that we would have fifteen minutes to knit and then the same period of general knowledge questions. With that she counted us down and off the others went knitting shawls (for elderly ladies in Greenland apparently) for the next quarter of an hour.
When the bell rang to signal the end of the first quarter I was very surprised to see that only Lady Dent-Uhr on our side had managed to complete a whole shawl. There were three finished for the opposition. We were really going to have to fly in the general knowledge section if we wanted to catch up. The first question was easy "who is the Patron of the National Competitive Knitting Clubs". The answer of course is her Majesty the Queen. After that they started to get quite technical but we held up our end and scraped a victory. Then it was back to the knitting.
Whilst the other ladies knitted faster than I have ever seen knitting done before; I went for a walk. I saw huge original paintings of monarch and their families, landscapes and a rather abstract one of the late Queen Mother. "I don't like that much" I said out loud and then, to my horror, a voice said "That's my mother". Turning around I saw bearing down on me the familiar small shape of................. I shall tell you who in my next episode. Let's leave it there for now.
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