I love...

Well I love Bookhound of course and all my family, I'd better say that first, and the cats, best not forget them, but can I own up now and get this out of the way?
J'adore Torvill & Dean.
There I've said it now and I feel a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I should probably explain for anyone who has been living on Planet Pluto for the last umpteen years that Torvill & Dean were the UK's most successful ice dance partnership of all time and a recent TV programme on Bolero and the 1984 gold medal win in Sarajevo brought it all back. The tension of the competition, the unveiling of the new routine, the music and then the return to Nottingham and discovering those very costumes in the Nottingham museum and somehow I miss it all.
Even the Kayaker watched with interest and we figure he may have subliminally absorbed it first time round at the age of eleven months because I was sure to have made everyone watch it...except the Gamekeeper who we hadn't even invented then.
Plus, don't Jane and Chris (we are on first name terms)  look sort of preserved in time now? Must be the ice, they haven't aged a bit.
Here in the UK we had got unusually accustomed to ice skating success over the years with John Curry and then Robin Cousins (and I expect we claimed Sonja Heine was half British) and I've decided this is what used to keep us jolly through dismal Winters in the olden days.
Ice skating success conquered all our failures on the ski slopes and the bobsleigh runs back then, helped us forget those staggering interest rates and inflation.
The thrill of the Figures component and then the Set Dance and then the big build up to the Free Dance. Nation on the edge of their skates and apparently 24 million of us watched Bolero when it happened.
Talking of ice, knitting is back to normal after the excitement of the dovegreyreader patent pending Hot Water Bottle Cover for Canada, which has arrived and I'm assured is working its magic.
This took exactly 100gms of Noro Kureyon 100% wool (shade 170) bought here and I loved loved loved it. This week's knitting output confined to a concerted effort on the baby llama jumper (wool from...not jumper for) which I must get finished ready for the Summer (bound to need it). To be frank I'm still in a terrible state about Janice cutting the wrong cuff of her Fair Isle heirloom a few Saturdays ago so I'm concentrating very hard.
I needed it like a hole in the head but couldn't resist a greatly reduced offer from Colinette for the wool to knit a sort of scarf-shawl-stole-wrap thing. As I wound the skeins of hair thin Parisienne kid mohair along with the more substantial cotton Banyan it occurred to me that, as in not appearing on stage with children and animals, I might soon be having similar thoughts about knitting with baby Angora goats.
Meanwhile I've been also been watching all the old Torvill & Dean routines  and then had to decide which was my favourite, Let's Face the Music ? Mack & Mabel?
Difficult to choose but in the end it was this one (treat yourself to half a minute's worth, it's magic) and even if at the time we might have been paying 15% interest rates and foregoing holidays to pay the mortgage and the electricity bills (no government bail outs then ) Winter suddenly feels jolly again and it's nearly March 4th and that can only mean one thing, the dovegreyreader scribbles third birthday and we have a nice surprise lined up, more tomorrow.