April 27, 2010

Pants on Fire

You know what I was thinking last night?  That if there's one thing  I can't stand, one thing that just puts me over the top, it's a liar. 

I can handle greed,  we've all got that in us somewhere, even if we can't admit it. I mean, look in your yarn closet and try and tell me that you don't think that impulse could get out of hand. I can understand sloth, and I get, and we have have all been guilty of being short tempered or having a weak moment where one has thought  unkind thoughts about someone, or briefly wished that they were set upon by an overlarge and rare pack of infuriated killer bees.  (I'm sure none of us have thought about buying the bees or releasing them into the person's home, I'm talking about those vague moments where if there just were bees, and they had to sting someone, that it would be okay if the universe just randomly picked the human who's pissing me off or sort of deserves it.  Just saying.)  I can have (some) compassion for fits of passion, for thoughtlessness, for anger, jealousy, impatience, truculence, stinginess, ruthlessness -  I don't even (usually) have a hard time with  noisy, obnoxious, fanatic or  erratic people. (In small doses.  Very small actually. Maybe only moments, but that's still something.)

It's really just lying that makes me nuts.  Nothing like someone standing in front of you, betraying all the trust that you put in them, or making up something that hurts you to serve them.  It takes me from 0 to 60 in two seconds.
Yup, liars.  The bottom of the barrel, the lowest of the low... and that's why I'm just about nuts this morning. 

I LIED TO MYSELF. 

I cast off Kiama last night even though I knew darn well it wasn't long enough.  Not nearly long enough.  The voice of honesty said "That's not long enough" and I said, "Shut your pie hole, we're getting a new sweater in the morning" and the voice of honesty said "We're not. That's too short." and I cast it off anyway.

Oh, sure.  I measured, but I did that thing with the measuring tape that makes something that's 13 inches look like 15.  I tugged and scootched it.  Then I LIED TO MYSELF AGAIN.   Even stretched it was only 14 inches, but did I cop to the fact that it was too damn short?  No sir.  I told myself (get this.  You're going to love it.)  I told myself it WOULD BE LONGER WHEN I WAS STANDING UP.

Then, when it was all cast off and I tried it on and it was too short, I actually had the audacity to pretend to be shocked, then ... and I can't believe that I even thought this.  After 37 years of knitting... instead of saying this is too damn short and you know it,  I said MAYBE IT WILL BLOCK OUT.

I know. Nothing ever blocks out that way. Things only block longer when they're already too long- not when you really need it too.

So I tossed it in the bathtub, blocked the crap out of it and not so much of a millimetre of length was gained, and now it's wet and I have to wait for it to dry to fix it, and I'm going to have to add at least one of the balls of yarn that are left over - because I have THREE, and that should have been a tip off, and...

I just really hate liars.

Posted by Stephanie at April 27, 2010 11:53 AM