Hey sailor

Attention: This photograph was carefully staged. First I stood in this position, then the tank top was arranged (by Megan, who reminded me that this was absolutely not going to work if I couldn’t concentrate and advised me that the tank top may not be the right size.) to cover my rack in an artful way, then I held my breath. If I breathe, move or attempt to live a life in any sort of way that is not desperately centred around keeping my rack covered, It is not covered.
harlot(Yes the picture is a little fuzzy, Megan’s focussing ability leaves a little to be desired, although in this case I’m ok with you all being a little sketchy on the details, Well, honestly it isn’t you. It’s some sweaty guy named Buzzy in a trailer park somewhere with a high-speed hookup, a 12 pack of Miller and….well, let’s just leave it at that)
Since I am exactly the kind of careless woman who is going to breathe, move or drink coffee, and since this is exactly the kind of tank top that is then going to then dump my breasts into public view, A Plan has been formulated. I’m going to frog back to the solid bit before the cups start, do a little more solid stuff so that the vee doesn’t plunge quite to mid thigh and then stop decreasing sooner and make wider straps.
If that doesn’t help enough, then as Jenifleur pointed out, at least I may have found a way to make more yarn money. (Actually, I find it sort of reassuring that I may have found something that I will not do to get yarn. Who knew?)
Tuesdays are for spinning was observed with the spinning of the third bobbin, and the plying of the first (be still my heart) 300 metres of yarn for the G4 project. All hail the mighty spinster, for she has made three ply and did not utter foul words , imbue the yarn with bitter invective or abandon said G4 project and claim that she was never going to spin for a stupid gansey anyway. I am in love with the finished yarn.
300g4
Total hours spent on G4: 23
farmsocks
The Dublin Bay Socks (DBS) are continuing their exciting tour of Toronto. Last night they enjoyed the pleasures of Riverdale Farm. The socks didn’t say much about the farm, but I know they had a good time because this morning they were already bugging me about where we were going today. Like I don’t get enough pressure.

Who’s that hussy?

Well look at this. It’s an almost finished Mango tank. Theoretically speaking, all it needs is ribbon, lucet cord or crocheted lace. I say “theoretically” because last night, when I was sort of putting it on to measure the strap length, I got a little bit of a surprise.
hussy
The surprise is that this tank top is er, a little revealing. So revealing in fact that I can’t believe that I worried about whether or not the slit in the bottom would show my belly. My belly, my friends is the least of the problem, or problems (plural). The rather shocking development would be that this tank top shows so much of the rack that while I am wearing it, I look for all the world like the only hooker in Toronto wearing finely crafted, hand-knit tart clothes. (Am I really the only woman in the world to perpetually misjudge the size of her breasts? How, after so many years of living together can I still be shocked to find them there? How I ask you, How? I’m forever putting on clothes and looking in the mirror and thinking “Holy crap! Where did those come from!)
That’s it….Stephanie, the knitting prostitute. Standing on a street corner, knitting socks with the rack spilling out of a bright orange mesh tank top. (With an always sophisticated quick release lace up front even). What was I thinking?
Joe thinks that perhaps I am being overly conservative. I think Joe may be trying to get me to dress like a Parkdale Crack Ho. We’ll see. I’m going to put it on and wear it around the house. If I continue to be appalled when I see myself by accident in the mirror, or my 15 year old reminds me that we don’t wear “slut clothes” in this house…..well. A trip to the frog pond may be in my future.
Ryan, the Dublin Bay socks saw “Amazing Caves” at the Cinesphere yesterday. They are having such a good summer so far.

Go VOTE

Today is a federal election in Canada, when we will be choosing out new Prime Minister (or choosing the one we already have all over again). Go Vote. Remember too, that there is a big change in how politics is funded in Canada this year. Up until now the political parties were funded according to the number of ridings they won. This means that smaller parties, (like the NDP) who might have had quite a bit of the popular vote that won few ridings received far less funding. This means that the big parties get the money and stay big, and the small parties get small money and stay small. For the first time this year, your vote is worth
1.75
$1.75
That’s right my friend, when you vote, you hand $1.75 to the NDP (or you know…whichever one you vote for). This means that even if your party doesn’t win, or doesn’t win many ridings, they are now funded according to what you actually voted for. Get it?
This means, (for example) that if you happened to be a hippy, feminist, knitting, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-same sex marriage, recycling vegetarian…. They can’t give your $1.75 vote money to help Steven Harper promote ideals, morals and approaches you don’t agree with, just because he won in your riding.
This means that your vote would support Jack Layton, (or you know…whoever) even if he doesn’t win. Vote your heart. Save the world.
PS. Here is a picture of the almost finished mango tank. Let’s not talk about how close I am in case it spontaneously combusts. The Canadians among you will note that it is Orange. You will wonder if this is a hint. You will have to guess.
tankalmost
What do you guys think about just crocheting a tie for the tank out of the yarn? There doesn’t appear to be a ribbon in Toronto that matches it.
PS # 2 Hey Ryan…Your Dublin Bay socks (in progress) got a trip to the Pride Parade yesterday. They had a good time. The socks would like to apologize to the guy who was standing underneath Sam and the Super-Soaker. Sam had a good time too.

Still life with citrus

This morning, in a desperate attempt to appease my children (it’s really only a matter of time until they are completely feral you know) I gave Sam the digital camera and my knitting and nominated her photographer for the day. Sam’s mission, to photograph the Mango tank top in a creative way.
The Rules.
It must be interesting. (Sam feels that this should be easy, considering that all I do is “stick it in a bush”, the kid has a point.)
There can be no nudity. (I really just gave her that rule to make her say “eeewwww”)
There can be no foul language or lewdness. (This is necessary since Sam is still young enough to think that anything involving the region of your body between your knees and your belly button is hysterically funny. Even just the word. As an example of just how far this goes, Science teachers for kids this age hate teaching the planets. There’s going to be no way to get around saying “Uranus”)
Without further ado….The Tank Top. A photographic essay by Sam.
tiedye
“Sunrise over Mango Lake”
face
“My friend Tanka”
Tanklemons
“Still life with citrus”
feet
”Feet”
A few technical notes, the tank top now measures 9.5 inches. This means that I probably only have to knit 436 more rows before it measures 10.5 and I can get to the interesting part. The bobbins in the picture are both full, which means that I have slipped even deeper into the hold of the G4 project, and now appear helpless in the face of the fleece. In order to regain control, I have *not* washed more fleece, so I should have to stop when I run out. I’m also thinking that when I finish the third bobbin and ply the stuff and find out that all of this work has only made 75 metres of yarn, that should pretty much shut me down.

Beaten on all fronts

Has it occurred to anybody but me that I could keep showing you the same picture of this tank and you would never know?
mangotank7
I need a total of 10.5 inches and I’m in the black hole. I knit and knit, and it’s 7 inches. So I knit for a while and I measure and it’s 7 inches. So then I count rows, it’s about 7 rows to an inch, so I knit 7 rows, then measure.
7 inches. That firmed up my theory, you don’t get that kind of consistency by accident. It’s not a freak of nature or an aberration of some kind. It’s a plot.
No way does a tank have fortitude like that, and the incidence of the number seven is very suspicious. It’s getting some kind of supernatural help. All the signs are there.
I decided to try stepping out on the tank, jealousy can be a powerful motivator. I went and got this…
cablecotton
and waved it around near the tank. Yeah that’s right. See that? It’s a cute little cotton and it’s got cables chick, so you might want to get your crap together or it’s the high road for you. There are other projects, and they are trying way harder than you. Suck it up and get yourself over the 7 inch line tanky-poo, cause Momma’s got a short attention span.
I had a bunch of phone stuff to do yesterday, so while I made my calls I carded.
cardg42
Then I sort of spun it all.
2ndbobbin
The suspense is killing me. I’m anxious to get three bobbins full so that I can ply a bunch and see what kind of yardage I’m getting. If I did that, I could do some sort of mathematical trick and figure out how much of the fleece it’s going to take. Yesterday I had this idea that if it turns out that there’s tons, maybe I’d give Ken enough handspun for a sweater, if he wants it.
Total G4 hours: 12
So far I think you would have to say that school vacation is not going very well.
The two littler girls wanted pets. I had this idea that I would hold that out…you know, as incentive for allowing me to have a couple of hours at the computer each day to try and earn a living to buy them food and pets. I figured that I would say things like “You girls are being so quiet…you are getting close to that hamster” or ” My goodness, now this is the kind of behaviour that gets a little girl a new fish”. It was going to be maternal bribery at it’s best. (If any of you are thinking that bribery isn’t a valid parenting tool, I ask you this. Would you go to work if they didn’t bribe you with money?)
The pet thing was going to work for me two ways, firstly, the aforementioned bribery system of good behaviour, and secondly, because once the pets were obtained (I was aiming for halfway through the summer) they would take hours of concern and care, further distracting the ladies from their mission to obstruct me and my plan to have gainful employment, and my sanity intact this summer.
By 5:30 yesterday Joe and I were in a pet shop with dazed and deflated looks on our faces buying a dwarf hamster and a fish and really having no idea how it all happened.
Score: The Ladies – 1, management – 0
sharkbaitmike
Meet “Sharkbait Oo-ha-ha” and well,
Megan has a thing for naming hamsters. She spends a lot of time thinking up exotic and creative names, names that are significant, names that are spiritually meaningful and create a real place in the world for the hamster. Megan feels a keen sense of responsibility for hamster naming. Her first hamster was named
“Pashmina-Oxnard”. The second one “Kierie” this one? This one is named….wait for it….
Mike.
(ever get the feeling you have no idea what’s going on?)

Nobody Panic.

I don’t want to alarm anyone, please…continue sitting quietly at your computer. Panicking now is not going to help anyone. It is not going to be easier if we all lose our heads. I’ve been strategically ignoring it myself. You know when something is sneaking up on you, and you try not to think about it because whether you think about it or not, there’s nothing you can do about it so you might as well not think about it and try to be happy until it happens anyway?
This is like that. This is a harrowing time, and only the wily are going to get out of it unscathed. If I let my fear show, I’m going down for sure. I need my wits about me, my inventiveness unleashed and my good humour fortified. I’m just going to stay calm, make extra coffee and plan to make the most of my morning…for tomorrow…tomorrow…everything changes. Tomorrow, I will be tested.
Today, my friends and comrades, is the last day of school.
Let’s speak no more of this, but hold me and all the other mothers you know in your hearts tomorrow, and wish them patience. Especially wish strength for mothers like me, who work from home and are going to have annoying, demanding, whiney people who want more from you than you can give in their offices for the next few months….just like all you people who have to drive to work.
Tuesdays are for spinning, and day one of the Great Gargantuan Gansey Gambol (hereafter referred to as “G4”) began with…well, a realization that even though I am acutely aware that this is a very big project, I had no idea that it was going to be this big. So far, I’ve washed some fleece, (2 hours, because lock washing is stupid slow…anybody got a better way that preserves lock structure and doesn’t involve a crockpot? Or…anybody got a crockpot?) but not enough fleece that I’ve made a dent in the rubbermaid container the fleece is in. (It’s bottomless. I take fleece out…nothing changes. It’s some sort of perpetual bin of fleece). I dragged the fleece out to the backyard to dry, then brought my carding stuff out.
cardingg4
I had to sit with my laptop and work in the backyard because the fleece stealing grey squirrel is back. I was hoping that maybe he was dead. (Before you get all harsh on me, I’m not wishing the squirrel ill. I’m just saying that if he were very, very old, and had lived a happy, happy squirrel life of bird chasing and fleece stealing and had passed away…you know, out of old age, that I would be ok with that.) I sat in the back defending the fleece from said vicious squirrel, who has redoubled his efforts. I really think that the fact that he and the fleece are almost the same colour is driving him out of his mind. I maintain that he believes that he is not “stealing” the fleece, but “rescuing” a family member.
carderG4
I carded (1 hour, defending fleece 2 hours ), and used all that I carded spinning. This raises a point, I think I need a friend with a drum carder, or I need to work with the children on their carding skills. Yeah man, maybe that’s what we do with the summer vacation, Mommies little sweat shop. (Hey Girls… who wants some M&Ms?)
sampleG4
I also spun a quick sample and navajo plied it, so that I could see what I thought.
What I thought was that I could spin a little thicker, or accept in my heart that I will be knitting this sweater until long after Joe is dead. The sample is fingering weight. There’s just no way I can do that, that’s beyond love. This sample figures out to about 8 stitches to the inch, so a gansey for Joe would come in with me casting at least 400 stitches around, not allowing for whatever pattern I settle on. That’s … well, let’s just say that I think I’d be a few jalapenos short of a zippy salsa by the time I finished it. I need thicker yarn or a smaller husband. I’m going to aim for a DK weight. (spinning the sample, setting the twist and washing it, measuring the WPI, as well as contemplating the possibilities that this yarn offers: 1 hour)
From the sample I also decided that it’s definitely going to be a 3 ply. I desperately wanted a two ply, since it’s easier to make, but there’s no point in doing this unless I’m going to do it right, and a three ply shows up patterned stitches better. Somewhere, everyone from my spinning class just fell of their chairs. Yes, I know I’ve said in the past that I’d rather quietly lick my kitchen floor clean than make 3 ply. I know. I’m trying to demonstrate some freakin’ personal growth here.
Finally, I spun. (2 hours)
spinG4
This is almost one bobbin full, I’ll spin three of these before I begin to ply. I have absolutely no idea how much this is, or how much I will need. (Might want to start figuring that out eh? Information gleaned from this site suggests that I am far from done. I am not actually going to write the number here, since demoralizing myself this early in the process helps no one.
Number of hours spent making G4: 8
Off I go. I’m going to go to the bathroom by myself and finish a whole cup of coffee without having to re-warm it, and I might even haul off and have an uninterrupted phone conversation. After all, there’s 75 days until the first day of School.

On a roll

Yesterday turned out to be pretty darned good here in Harlotville. Our daughters brought home report cards that made me a satisfied and delighted mother, (although I haven’t seen the teenagers yet…)We went for a bike ride to buy beautiful fresh fruits and veggies (and wine) in the Village, then returned home, moments before the rain. I love getting home minutes before the rain, I mean we were outside for over an hour. It could have rained on us, but the planet chose not to. I feel respected. Then it rained enough that for sure I’m getting out of dragging the hose around the yard to water the garden. Today I am cherished by the earth. (This is what you get for having a godless heathen union anniversary on the solstice, and knitting with glorious orange yarn, Co-operation)
While I was feeling pretty good about getting to skip the bi-weekly rousing game of “hose wrestling”, my brother called (I swear he was giddy. Absolutely giddy) to tell me that he had sold his house. He and my darling and lucky sister in law sold the thing for an obscene amount of money and it was only on the market for three hours. Perfect. (This is especially good since the preparations for putting the house on the market and dealing with “open houses” and stuff was driving him so crazy that he was going to make us all nuts)
Joe called to tell me that due to a string of bizarre and unlikely events, he had gotten some crazy expensive piece of super cool recording equipment practically free, and then said he was coming home early because it was our anniversary. (Aw…he remembered. This is especially significant. Joe doesn’t remember squat. Last year I found out what he was doing about my birthday. He knows that my birthday is “when it’s warm” so as soon as it starts to get warm , he waits until one evening when I’m asleep and then checks my drivers license. Touching, isn’t it?)
Dinner was lovely, the children polite. The wine good and the knitting? Well let me tell you. That Amy is a smart girl.
mangomaking
Amy said that I should try a blunter needle with the splitty yarn.
I’ve used Microspun, and can testify that I had better results with it by trying out different needles. Blunter needles seem to handle splitty yarns better by sliding past each individual strand instead of gouging right into the middle like pointy needles do.
This was the exact opposite of my plan. I had this theory that a really sharp needle would…well I don’t know. Frighten the stitches? Scoop them up? I’ve got a preference for sharp needles and I always think that if something isn’t going well it’s because my needles aren’t sharp enough. I went and got a blunter circular and lo and behold, what Amy says is completely true. All hail the mighty Amy….blog saviour for the day.
(psst…Amy…got any ideas about speeding up the laundry?)
And Rams? The blasphemy of circulars, (though I agree with all the points made by Rana (including irrational predjudice) is because I knit like this:
stephMy right needle is tucked under my arm and my right hand pivots, throwing the yarn without holding the needle. It’s a really, really fast way to knit.
This can’t work with a circular.
Rams also asks why, since I wanted more modesty with the tank, I’m not knitting it in the round. Executive decision. It turns out that the tank isn’t sewn up at all in the front, the ribbon is just threaded through the lace pattern. Seemed to me that I could just thread it through a little lower, depending the modesty of the moment. This was of course before it dawned on me that this means that all that stands between me and public nudity is one ribbon. Normally, this wouldn’t be that high risk, but I live with Joe. There’s no way he’s not going to spend the whole summer pulling that ribbon. It’s going to be beyond his ability to control himself, so I may just add a stitch or two. In any case i thought that knitting it back and forth would give me choices.
All in all, it was a very good day. So good in fact, that Joe and I bought a lottery ticket. Hey, we’re on a roll.

Excuses, excuses.

Here’s all I’ve got done on the Mango tank.
mangotank
Dissapointed? Yeah…me too. I think I knit pretty fast and yet, well, this one is slow. Without further ado I give you the list of excuses reasons why I have not made much progress on the tank.
1. The pattern has you cast on the fronts and back all together. This means that while the progress may seem slow, there are no other pieces to knit when this is done. This is mystically both encouraging and crushing at the same time.
2. I am knitting it back and forth on a circular. It is not an especially good circular, because I don’t like working on circulars and therefore, do not invest heavily in them. Yes, it has been pointed out to me that if I were to invest in better circulars I might like them more. Yes, I feel the burning sting of irony.
3. This amount of tank has been knit two and a half times, due to my own stupidity. The lace instruction got the better of me (You know…the pattern calls this “crochet stitch” and that should have been a tip off, crochet and I have an unstable relationship) and the first attempt looked like this…
mangomistake
At this point, two things occurred to me more or less simultaneously. First, I noticed that my lace looked nothing like the lace in the pattern, and I decided that although I was open to the possibility that this was to be a happy accident, I hated it. Secondly, I realized that although I had knit a swatch for the “rack” part, I had not swatched the lace and was undoubtedly being punished for not sacrificing to the muse of knitting, so in an attempt to release myself from her wrath I went back and did that. I screwed around with it until I had grasped the meaning of the instruction, and got something that looked like the picture.
mangoswatch
If you look closely at the swatch you can see that I tried different stuff every inch or so until I had it worked out. We will not be discussing the instruction that gave me trouble, as now that I’ve come to my senses it’s obscenely simple.
I ripped back the tank, refraining from unladylike language the whole time.
4. What is it about my personality that says “Hey! I know…this yarn has a reputation for splitting up like J-lo, but I think that I’ll choose a project that requires tons of stitch manipulation. You know, lots of K2tog, and psso….yeah, that’s a good idea. Even thought this yarn has lots of fine qualities, let’s pick its one failing and capitalize on it. Sign me up.”
5. Since this yarn (used in this stitch pattern) is irresponsible and needs to be watched every minute to see if I am knitting all the plies of every stitch, I can’t work on it while reading e-mail. This cuts down on the amount of time that it’s getting.
6. I was zooming along when I discovered a mistake. The attempt to fix my mistake by dropping down the offending section and reknitting it back up with dpns was by all accounts, a miserable failure. Due to some kind of wandering K2tog action, this strategy was doomed from the start, yet I tried anyway. Here we see me with 4 needles, being used more or less at once with 3 strands of yarn. There are no words. (Did I mention that this did not work?)
fixingmango
This time when I frogged the work back halfway I may have dipped my foot briefly into the pool of self-pity. Three days and I’ve got one days work done. Today isn’t looking good for the poor tank either, as I’m celebrating the anniversary of my godless heathen union with this man…
joe
This man is the funniest, gentlest, smartest man who ever lived with this much wool. He’s entertaining, patient and kind, has never, even once suggested that I should have less yarn, maintains that living with a crazy woman and three daughters is a privilege and I’m still having a blast with him every day.
By the way Joe? Nice *rack*, baby.

Attention Gloria Steinem

I’m sort of ticked off.
Remember the tank I just knit? The blue one ( yeah sorry, that doesn’t help much) the ribbed one with the cable up the front? The one where I spent several hours of my life fixing the ribbing with a stinking crochet hook because I had screwed it up? You know, how I was (despite my education, ability and experience) apparently unable to correctly execute a ribbing pattern? I had to drop down 17 stitches correct their orientation and ladder them back up again. All because I wasn’t paying attention to the pattern. Thought I was, but I guess I just sort of faded to black there for a minute and knit something that bore no relationship to the pattern. Oh well, there’s nine hours of my life I’ll never get back, but I have only myself to blame.
Well get a load of this. Sitting here this morning, again with the trusty cup(s) of coffee and reading my e-mail. There is one there from Fibertraditions, from a lovely knitter named Linda. Now it just so happens that Linda is knitting the same tank top, and when she got to the armhole armscye her ribbing was all screwed up. Clearly Linda has better self-esteem than I do, because instead of beginning a shame spiral of self doubt and degradation….Linda checked the Vogue Knitting Corrections webpage, and lo and behold…
The pattern is wrong.
It’s not me…it’s them! Them, them, them! For the rest of this post I will be attempting to ignore the fact that this error cost me nine hours of my life. I will have you know though, that I have not forgotten this, and that I am merely putting aside my bitterness and resentment for another day.
Here’s where I’d like you to pay attention. Here is a page of errata for knitting books. Here is errata from another magazine, here is another, and another. I have put this many to make it clear that I’m not picking on anybody. There is obviously a lot of error in knitting patterns.
(We will also spent the rest of this post ignoring that despite the fact that there is tons of errors in knitting patterns, and despite my belief that I am a decent knitter, when there is something wrong with my knitting I instinctively blame myself …)
This is what makes me mad, a search of Fine Woodworking, revealed that there is apparently ONE ERROR they would like you to know about, not in that issue, in the history of the magazine. This magazine has no error corrections on their site, and this one has one correction for the last year.
Given that these magazines also supply patterns, charts and complex materials lists, am I the only one who thinks it’s odd that they have such a lower number of errors? Without giving in to my natural tendency toward conspiracy theories, do you think that it’s possible that it has anything at all to do with the fact that most of the knitting magazines are bought by women and most of the woodworking magazines are bought by men? Note again that I am not picking on knitting suppliers…the issue is widespread and besides, I don’t think it is their fault. I think…(deep breath) I think it’s our fault.
If one of Joe’s electronics magazines cost him hours in a frustrating error, he would never buy it again. I confirmed this with him. No way…”my time is worth something” he said. I would appear that the magazines that he reads know this, since this quote was found in their writers guidelines.
“Double and triple check your facts…Publishing corrections in subsequent issues will not recover missed opportunities, hurt feelings, or damaged reputations.”
You betcha. Joe’s time is worth something. There is no way that magazine expects that he would continue to buy their schematics and patterns if they are error riddled. He simply wouldn’t stand for it.
Now me….I’ve been buying error riddled knitting magazines and books for years. Something which is really, really my fault, since I’ve never even complained. Nine hours of my life….gone, and not only do I not say a word, I blame myself for not checking to see if the pattern was wrong before I started, and I have every intention of buying it again, and again and I still love them. I’ve also bought lots of excellent books and magazines, with no errors at all. There’s lots of great vendors out there, and this rant is in no way directed at them.
Since Gloria Steinem is unlikely to address this knitting pattern issue any time soon (what with women still owning less property, making less money and holding less political world power than men) I think I’ll settle for dropping the magazine a polite note, (before I buy my next copy – ’cause you know I will) just to let them know that I care, and my time is worth something.
(PS. the mango tank is fine …no mistakes)
(PS again…I just finished reading Carol Shields “Unless“. That could explain a lot about this post, It could get anyone going)

I hear, and I obey.

This morning I got my trusty cup(s) of coffee and sat down to tally the votes. At first I was surprised by the results, but then it made perfect sense.
projectsurvey
I got more votes for a “write in” than I did for any of my own ideas. (This proves what I have suspected for some time, that the people who read this blog are considerably smarter than I am. I will remember this, and be very careful about mocking you in any way).
If I am to do as the blog directs, then your plan for me is for some kind of “Combo deal”. My plan (in as much as I am ever able to execute any plan, it’s not really my strong suit) is as follows:
-I will begin the mango tank, for the gratification of the blog, the glorification of Claudia’s yarn and the celebration of the short Toronto summer.
(For those of you who were asking, it’s in Vogue Knitting Spring/summer ’04)
-I will begin Joe’s sweater, washing, carding and spinning on Tuesdays, with the goal of having the yarn ready for cooler weather knitting, at which point I will begin the gansey. For the record, I am not knitting the gansey in the link from yesterday, it was just sort of an educational linky kind of thing. The gansey I will knit will be invented as I go. While I spin the yarn I will prepare myself emotionally for knitting a sweater of that size.
-I will begin the shawl after the tank, accepting that it may move slowly on account of the rather deranged “spin-as-I-go” issues.
-I will continue to ignore works in progress at my usual rate.
Overall, the only shocker of the whole polling process (results accurate + or – 5%, 19 times out of 20) is that little 1% that voted for entrelac socks.
I know, I know, the first impulse is to find Aubergine and beat him to within an inch of his life. But that would be wrong.
Besides, we all know that I didn’t choose to give up on the entrelac socks (Do I look like a quitter to you?) I told you, they were stolen, lost in a fire, eaten by a large bird, misplaced. It was painful for me.
Terrilee was concerned that the poor little boring cardie was not even mentioned once. Not once in almost 80 comments did anyone care for it’s fate. I share Terrilees concern that the meek, the mild, the incredibly soul-joy sucking cardie was blindly trampled in the rush to choose something better. It’s a sad commentary on our society when an ordinary little cardie, whose only crime is not being a rack enhancing mango tank can slip through the cracks. I pitied it, I felt shame and I knit.
boringc2
Forgive me.
(and pass the mango!)