I'm taking the knitting!

Thanks for all your thoughts yesterday on the do i or don't i issue of taking my knitting to dinner.

Just to clarify: it's not a dinner party at someone's home. It's a dinner with a large group in a restaurant. You know the deal - large group on a Friday night and we'll all already have been out for cocktails. I'm brain dead at the best of times on a Friday night and my conversational skills are at an all time low. I am very much looking forward to the dinner. I just know my social limitations!

I had a bit of a trial run last night. A non-knitter friend and I went to dinner at a Belgian Beer Cafe. She had to leave part way through to go and get a spray tan (yes, really!) and while waiting for her, I pulled out my sock-in-progress, sipped Belgian beer and kept working.

She returned. I kept knitting. She thought nothing of it. She knows a little of my obsession, having sat next to me at work for last six months or so.

The bar staff hovered around at various points in the evening, making gags like, 'hey, can you make me a jumper?' (I told one lovely but annoyingly persistent Mexican guy it was more of a commitment than I was willing to make to him.)

So all in all, it went well. I guess my apprehension about knitting at the dinner tonight was really based on the fact that although I do knit in public, I only do it at SnB or at work (where I don't care what people think) and around non-knitters I know well.

Never at a restaurant in a large group of people I don't know so well.

And yes, Debsnm, you are so right. The number of times I find myself wishing I had taken my knitting and didn't means it's absolutely worth at least taking it with me. Like the day last month when Canberra experienced horrendous, late summer hail and thunderstorms which meant the traffic the next day was held up by debris all over the road, water damage etc.

That's 90 minutes of knitting time I'm never getting back. Groan.

Right, that's it. I've decided. The socks are going in the bag with me.

Anyone else feel like taking knitting everywhere with you is a security blanket kind of thing?

I want to hear knitting around other people stories!!

Bells