Ironic

Ironic: characterized by often poignant difference or incongruity between what is expected and what actually is; “madness, an ironic fate for such a clear thinker”; “it was ironical that the well-planned scheme failed so completely”

The irony is not lost on me that I have spent the last few days buried under an unexpected avalanche of knitters responding to my complaint that the number of knitters is frequently unexpected. (Side note to Alanis Morissette? That’s ironic. Rain on your wedding day is not, it just sucks.) I spent the weekend doing four things.

1. Celebrating Samantha’s 13th birthday. She’s officially a teenager and I, officially, now have no “children”… just three teenaged daughters. May the force be with me…and with her, actually. Adolescence is a rough gig.

2. Trying to get Police tickets for Joe and Ben and failing miserably. How fast do you have to be to nail those? I was on the internet, on the phone….still sold out before I could get a credit card number in there. Then they put up another show and that was sold out in a blinding flash too. How does anybody ever get anything from Ticketmaster? (This is actually a little ironic too, since we found out that the Police were coming to Toronto just after Joe watched them on the Grammys and said “If the Police ever come to Toronto there is no such thing as too much money for a ticket”. It would be more ironic if I were willing to pay anything (which I’m totally freaking not, there’s a limit to how much money I’ll give rich people ) to get them and still couldn’t buy any…but perfect examples of irony are very rare. ) Do you suppose Sting can be bribed for tickets with handknit socks? Don’t answer that. I’m knitting a bohus.

3. Reading every single comment on that previous post and trying to figure out our next move. After careful analysis (and calling Jayme-the-wonder-publicist to figure out what she’ll let me get away with) I’m starting to rough out a plan. Points I’m thinking over:

– Obviously, I underestimated the number and enthusiasm (there’s that irony again) for the idea of allowing knitters to represent, so I’m thinking that maybe the idea needs to be a little (lot) bigger? What if we did this (what I’m about to suggest) at every stop? What if this was the “Representing” tour? (Er, if we think this is a good idea then we’re going to have to find a way to break it to Storey Publishing. I think they thought this would be a book tour. Maybe we don’t tell them that we’ve completely co-opted it for our own purposes.) Might take some of the heat off of you who want to represent but can’t make it to NYC?

– Pre-Boarding. Jayme and I are both sort of worried about some of you enthusiasts who are coming a long way, so we’ve decided to do some pre-boarding, just like on a flight. On the off chance that we get more knitters than space, (Which I don’t think will be a problem but we’ll cross that bridge if we get there) I don’t want someone who made a crazy effort to get there to be left out, but I also don’t want to make a judgement call about who deserves a guaranteed spot and who doesn’t. Therefore, because you all have always been reasonable and thoughtful knittters, I’m proposing that you use your own best judgement and do the following.

If for any reason at all that seems fair to you (you have a disability, you are pregnant, you have a nursing baby with you, you are old, you have come a long way…. whatever, it’s your call…if honestly feel that it is not reasonable for you to take your chances in a first-come first served sort of thing, then all you need to do is email Jayme-the-wonder-publicist and she will guarantee you a spot, no questions asked. Fair enough?

Jayme can be reached at publicityATstoreyDOTcom

(You change the AT to @ and the DOT to . )

– Fire up the travelling socks, because dudes, nothing amuses me more than the idea of meeting in central park for a picture. My sock would love the company. I’m thinking we should do it here?

– Yarn Crawl. What we need here is a list of NYC yarn shops and a suggested 4 or 5 routes to all or some of them. Knitters can then choose a route that interests them and take it at their own pace. We’ll work on this. (I suggest, should you decide to do a yarn crawl that you do it in packs. Freaks out the muggles better.)

– A display of economic might. I’m not sure that asking the knitters attending the event to tell us what they have spent on yarn in the last year will do anything to convince the world that we are sane and important. (Plus, the money we spend on yarn is really only interesting to yarn shops, and that’s like preaching to the converted.) However, what about asking each person attending to give a volunteer at the door their estimated disposable income? (In the interest of privacy you could write it on a slip of paper or something) We add it all up…and whammo. You would have a number that really meant something to bookstores, banks, restaurants and other business’ who would like our collective business.

– Representing if you can’t come. What about finding a business or volunteer(s) who would be willing to receive knitted hats? (I have to admit that I also adore the idea of the worlds largest afghan, but realistically, managing that many squares is going to be the worlds largest pain in the arse. They need to be sewn up, they are always different sizes and fibres….too complex for this short a lead time.) Hats though, hats come finished, are useful in many sizes and fibres and can be donated to tons of wonderful causes afterwards. If every knitter who wanted to be there and wasn’t going to be able to make it to a later event, sent a hat….

– Who would we donate it to? Since knitters come in all kinds, a cause that we could all give to without political or religious thought is a must. A cause needs to be politics free, religion free and…because we’re messing with NYC here (or other towns as this ball gets rolling) I would love for it to give back to people who live in NYC.

Other ideas forthcoming. Volunteers will clearly be needed at some point. (Jayme’s got a twitch over her eye already.)

4. I knit on the bohus.

Bohusinter0220

Early trials and funny looking episodes have proven that the thing fits. Every so often I slide the body stitches onto more circular needles and put it on. While it is on I stand it front of the mirror and make completely inaccurate estimates about how much further I have to go and where the decreases should be. So far, this has not been a catastrophe. I could go on and on here about how well this project is going and how nothing bad has happened and I haven’t had to frog anything and it’s all just so easy, but that would be begging for a knitting goddess smackdown, which would probably be…you guessed it. Ironic.