The nation is divided, debate rages in the Guardian and I think it's time I declared and said it publicly

"Ann Widdecombe we love you chez dovegrey."

There, it's out and now perhaps I'll duck for there are sure to be stiletto heels at my throat or someone will try to smother me with a Paso Doble cloak , but I care not a wit and Esther Rantzen agrees with me

My apologies, this will mean nothing to anyone who doesn't follow the programme, and may seem ridiculous when we should be worrying about the polar ice cap melting and things, and my support is probably the work of the devil to any serious Strictly fans out there who will all be renting their sequins asunder, however I can but hope that cries for Ann to resign from Strictly are falling on deaf ears. It's obvious that the nation is sending a big message with the weekly phone vote and keeping her in the show for a reason, and we are all busy telling her as much on Facebook, because the criticism has indeed been cruel and unkind...all water off the proverbial to Ann and you can read a very revealing interview with her here

"One of the many canny things about Widdy is that, whatever unkind descriptions her critics come up with, she has already trumped them. She once said of herself: “I am toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight, a spinster – what the hell?”

At the first training session with her partner and dancing instructor, Anton Du Beke, she caught sight of them in a mirror. “He looked like a Greek athlete,” she reflects warmly. “And here was me like a sack of potatoes. It was hysterical.”

Ann Widdecombe for many years an MP, a trustworthy and serious politician of great integrity and one of the few I knew would come out of the expenses debacle unblemished. Now in her 60s and retired, very traditionally built and thus not benefiting from the best physique for a dancer, but there are local connections and Devon supports its own. Ann has continued to dance despite serious illness last  summer and the recent death of her brother, and she and her professional partner Anton du Beke are training in Newton Abbot near to Ann's Dartmoor home. There have been regular Ann & Anton sightings, not least a friend of mine who sat next to them in a coffee shop and is still cherishing the hand that Anton brushed accidentally as she then passed him the requested demerara.

We all pay our licence fee so are entitled to get what we require from our TV viewing and for us it's the hilarity and reality Ann brings to this spray-tan-glitter-fest each week (the programme hilarious in its own right.) Just five minutes of it in amongst an hour of proper cavorting, no harm done, no one has died (yet) other than of laughter. Might Ann's steely determination to enjoy what she is doing whilst not being phased by the surrounding bevvy of scantily-clad nymphs, plus her weekly repartee with the judges doubtless honed to perfection in the House of Commons, all actually be feeding into our current state of imposed national gloom and doom and giving us just the smile we need?
More jobs losses, more cuts in services, more misery promised and now student riots ... but at least Ann's still in Strictly we chime as we listen to the news, bring on the final and the show dance we say.

Of course for many it's excruciating and adding to their gloom, but for the rest of us it's a glimmer of entertainment of the highest order and hats off to Anton for being such a sport too; but perhaps more importantly it's someone saying if I can do this you can actually do anything. Personally I have nothing but admiration for the courage of a life-long single woman with a bosom that she herself calls her "upper circumference" for putting herself through it in a sort of graceful, court jester style and to her own set of rules, my back would have gone weeks ago.

And is it just me or is Ann looking a little more radiant each week?

So to assist with the tension (because a slough of despond beckons if Ann and Anton go) I have to knit like the blazes, tricoteuse-au-guillotine style, and this last few weeks that has been mostly fingerless gwubs...or gloves to the rest of the world, but gwubs here. Having turned many-a sock heel I thought it was time to move on around the available limbs and look at hands, at least master the art of the thumb, if not fingers eventually, but best not to be too ambitious. After a large number of false starts, there was much hacking around of different patterns off Ravelry before eventually coming up with a fingerless glove pattern that worked for me. I've also been a little ambitious and done the cables, which I have never really done before but thought that was another challenge to be met.

The timeline equation for the production of the first glove went something like this...
One episode of Strictly + one episode of Downton Abbey = glove succesfully knitted as far as thumb + one episode of Spooks = unpick a lot + one more episode of Strictly + Edwardian Farm  = one glove.
Is anyone else watching The Edwardian Farm? 
Filmed very near us here in the Tamar Valley last year, so we can't wait to see how they cope with the freezing temperatures and the snow.
But back to the gwubs and I have to tell you about a radical and life-changing discovery, though before I do that here's that first glove complete with all imperfections.

Now you may notice it sits alone and un-twinned, that's because I felt sure I had a whole skein of the beautifully soft Noro Kochoran wool stashed away, when I fact I haven't because I had forgotten that I'd knitted these.

Never mind.
I nipped over to Becs Clayton's gorgeous wool shop at Launceston just to look at the wool, because obviously I now need to be choosing wool for its glove-potential rather than its sock-potential, and there they were, some little friends who have transformed my glove-knitting life and things have speeded up no end... very short needles.

Once I got the hang of knitting un-peasant style, ie with no needle wedged on my stomach, I was away and have now managed one prototype pair of gloves which have gone off to Offspringette for rigorous trials. They came out different sizes, the cables are wonky because I lost track of in front or behind, something funny went on around the thumb on one of them but she loves them. Now I'm onto the more perfect pair in the left-over baby llama wool of which I have plenty.Thumbs surprisingly simple to do, if anyone's been frightened by the thought of a thumb all I can say is don't be, it sort of made itself.

So all a bit like Ann really, far from perfect but trying my best and I know at least one person who is enjoying the fruits of my endeavours.