OH, LORD

Well, okay. Let’s start on a positive note. I finished the Lotus Pink Bobbles. It’s really nice. It’s drying in my bathroom, even as we speak. (It is to be hoped that the cat is not sitting on it. He did that once with another drying knitted item and dyed himself blue for a week. A Lotus Pink cat could be a little disturbing.) The sizing up of the hat worked pretty well. I may have become just a touch carried away, but I am happy with the fit. (Perhaps the old head is not quite as large as I had led myself to believe. A tape measure would settle all this, but why be conventional?) It is pleasantly oversized, without being so big that it slides down over my eyes.

And so, you ask, all agog at my finishing prowess, what of the mittens? Did I, like a good little person, start the second? Well… no. You see, I tried on the first again, and I was no longer sure that I liked the size. I made the child’s large size, as my hands are on the slender side. (First the big head, now the slender hands. The mental image you all must have of me is like something out of an alien movie. And not a good one. Not like, oh, I resemble Sigourney Weaver. More like, oh, I resemble a circus freak. Oh, dear. I swear I am a normal-looking human being. Okay, back to the accursed mitten.) So I made the child’s large size, rather than the women’s size. The mitten fits… but the proportion, narrow and long, seems off. Maybe the extra width would have just been nice wiggle room for the fingers. Dang. Now I have to figure out my motivations here: do I want to rip out the mitten so that I can make it again and have it be perfect, or do I want to rip out the mitten and think of an excuse to make something non-paired with the yarn? This is not good. I am definitely banned from making socks.

KNITTING PROPS

And now, a little crowing. Just a little. I promise. I wore the first sweater to work today. The seed stitch pullover. I decided last night that it was work-appropriate when paired with a nice pair of black wool trousers. And today, someone complimented me on it. Here’s how it all went. I had just been to check out the sweater in the mirror in the bathroom, as I was at that stage in the day at which I thought that wearing the sweater was a big mistake and that I looked like some sort of hayseed in my homemade knitwear. Moseying back to the work station, a co-worker said that she really liked the sweater. Just out of the blue. Not like I was rabbiting on about how I was a knitter and this was one of my creations and wasn’t it just too fabulous, leading to a dutiful, positive reply. Nope. I was just walking on by. At this point, I was so startled that I must confess that my response was, “Really?!?” Co-worker seemed perplexed by my perplexity. Poor woman; she had no idea what she was getting herself into with her off-hand comment. In any case, I recovered sufficiently to thank her in what I tell myself was a graceful fashion. I also confided that I had knit the sweater, and co-worker seemed duly impressed.

And there it is. The crowing is done.

IN WHICH WE PEER INTO OUR CRYSTAL BALL

So, what does the future hold? I don’t have to work this weekend (as far as I know) so some knitting should be done. Will I sort out the mitten crisis? I don’t really know, but it’s not looking good. I think I might need to throw the mitten into the depths of my knitting basket, to be pondered at a later date. So what will I work on? Fate, she is a cruel mistress, and she may be leading me to swatch the Cash Iroha. Life is so hard.