For the record

Someday a bunch of knitters are going to be sitting around, and they’re going to have a conversation that goes like this.

"Hey, remember Stephanie Pearl-McPhee? What was her blog… Yarn Whore?"

"Yarn Harlot.  Sure, I remember her."

"What ever happened to her?"

"Dude,  you don’t know? She disappeared."

"Really? Like actually?"

"Totally. Her family get’s postcards from Belize or something.  It was that Christmas, the one where she tried felting like… five pairs of slippers or something, and she had this flipped out idea where she would do it in a bathtub with a plunger or something.  It was even like, a mini plunger – it was totally stupid.  Anyway, it turned out that the felting didn’t go that badly really, or it was really stupid, but she switched to a bucket or something and that was easier… the police report wasn’t that clear.  Anyway, the pairs all had to be done separately because they were linting on each other, or at least they think that was the problem.  Her neighbours heard someone screaming "%^&*(&^%$ING LINT" at the top of their lungs.  Assumed it was her.

"Well, I always thought she was kind of like that anyway."

"Exactly.  So she’s felting with this plunger in the bucket in the bathtub and it’s going pretty well, but she has to do one pair at a time right? So it’s … it’s hours of pounding these slippers in the bathtub, and finally, the whole thing gives her this spasm right between the shoulderblades, just from the plunging, and then I heard that she tried to finish them in the front loader… but something went wrong, I don’t know what. Neighbours report hearing something about "overflowing suds" and something else about a "Sir Washie"  whatever that was.

"So, what, then nobody ever heard from her again?"

"No, no.  She was totally fine after that – or at least as fine as any knitter/mother of three is in the days before Christmas, you know?"

"Totally.  Last year I was nuts. Cookie incident. You never know what’ll take you down."

"Exactly.  So then everything is pretty good and she’s working on some kind of plan and I think she thought she needed different soap or something? I dunno. Really fuzzy details.  All anyone knows is that somebody asked her if she was doing meringues this year, and then I think they were out of beer, and she still had the felting injury between the shoulderblades, and maybe there was even something about a carpenter coming the morning of the 22nd?  By all reports she totally had it together until there was just too much and then she wigged out and took off."

"What was the last straw?"

"Apparently four days before Christmas she couldn’t find her clog pattern."

"That would do it."

"I know."