This evening, since it’s Thursday, was my usual knitting group night at a local coffee shop. But tonight, since it’s the last one before Christmas, we all decided to do a gift swap. We set a price limit and agreed in advance that it would be nice gifts (because sometimes the White Elephant gift swap tends to be weird or wacky things, sort of like the hand-shaped jello mold I ended up with at Monday’s choral party), and since we’re a knitting group, it was easy to assume that there would be some knitting-related items amid the mix.

There were nine of us who gathered with gifts to swap this evening. It went pretty smoothly in the beginning, with everyone opening their present and everyone oohing and aahing. There were bags full of gorgeous yarn, boxes with pattern books and knitting fiction, packages stuffed with chocolate and other goodies. So there was a minimum of stealing as we completed the first round…until the very first person to open a gift was allowed to steal a present. And that’s when the fun began. With a lot of laughter, and people pretending to hide their presents so no one would steal them, and people talking up other people’s presents to get them to take *those*, we spent the next half hour or so doing a massive gift swapping. Luckily we had set a limit to three owners per gift, or this would have gone on all night. At any rate, eventually one of the knitters finally took the last gift, and we were done, with the gift swap declared a rousing success. Although next year we have all decided that since the gifts that were in highest demand were the ones that all had a common theme, next year’s gift swap will involve yarn and chocolate. Because few things make knitters happier than yarn or chocolate.

Tis the season for Holidailies!