2 and 34

Just when I was starting to feel confident about my deadline, Mandy mentioned she was 34 weeks along. 34 weeks? That means I only have six more weeks, AT BEST. Two wedges in six weeks. Green took exactly two weeks, so in theory, I am good. But I am not certain anyone told the baby. I will have to be very monogamous if I am going to get this thing done in time. 

Considering I am still on row one of my latest symptom of startitis, it doesn't sound like too much of a hardship. 

Today, it is all about hoping a baby can read a calendar. 

Fourth time was the charm

Last week, while I was waiting on court, I cast on something new. (Yes, I probably do have a problem, which can be discussed in a later post.) Long-tail cast on, 166 stitches, shouldn't be too difficult, right? Famous last words. 

I ran out of tail at about 145 stitches. Yank out, pull out more tail. Take 2. 

I forget what the problem was with Take 2, except that I am pretty sure my tail was plenty long, and it was unrelated to the tail. 

Take 3. I ran out of tail at 120 stitches. Bloody hell! How did my tail get shorter? I started in exactly the same spot? Yank. By this time, my obvious distress and swearing at my knitting was leading to chuckles in the hallway. "You do this for relaxation, right?"

Take 4, I was finally about to successfully cast on 166 stitches. I recounted, and was able start Row 1. Only took a week. 

Today, it is all about the correlation between swearing and relaxation. 

Killing Me Swiftly

Last night, I needed to wind a new hank of yarn.  My swift is in storage, and I didn't want to bother with doing laps around a couple chairs. So I carefully laid out the hank, and started balling the yarn, convinced that if I was simply careful, I could get by. 

Famous last words.

This mess was a speedy result. As I wound more yarn, the mess grew. Hour after hour, I detangled and wound the yarn. Really, I could have walked to my mothers basement and back and spent less hours than detangling my yarn. 

I felt even more silly when I realized  that my swift was home after all. 

Today, it is all about the tangles. 

I am not leaving til I am done with yellow

Knittervention last night every other Monday, I harden my heart at pouty little boys, and leave a half hour before their bedtime to knit on a bar. ( Doodlebug has taken to crying because I am not there to tuck him into bed. What the hell? It isn't like he appreciates the other twenty eight days of the month that I do!)

Mandy was sick yesterday, so it was prime baby blanket time. She has seen me knitting it, but I don't know if she has figured out that it is for her.   She has entered her third trimester, so I was s woman on a mission. I was not going to leave until I finished yellow and was ready to start green. 

Success! 

Today, it is all about being green. 

Back to school

My baby boys started school this past week. Two adorably feisty boys headed off the first and third grade. They both dutifully remembered their first week job: they found out their teachers' favorite colors.  Purple and green. (Last year was green and purple, ironically enough.). 

That was when I realized that I had to start on Christmas Teacher Mitts. Is it that time of year already? The past twelve months I have been busy making baby baby blankets and last year's teacher's mitts. Now that I am 75% finished with ANOTHER baby blanket, it is time to start the teachers mitts again. Thank God I only have two children, or Christmas could get ugly. 

As it is, I still feel a little bit like I am knitting for others more than myself. When can I knit on my pretty lace shawls?  Mommmmm! It's not faaaaiiirrr! I want to knit for myself!

Hopefully, no one else I know will get pregnant. At least for a while. Christmas comes rather predictably, and my children will be in school for quite a while., so no hope for reprieve there. 

Today, it is all about the knitting selfishness. And that is only if you ignore the fact that my Sweetie's hoodie is six years in progress. 

The Perpetual Overestimator

I kill myself. I always overestimate the amount of knitting that I can complete during a finite amount of time. Only Sunday, I was grabbing yellow AND green, honestly convinced that in the two hours of Knittervention, I would finish orange, and make a decent dent in yellow. I didn't really believe that I would need green, but that I might need it within a few days to a week, and should grab green while I was there. 

The reality was that even though I knit consistently during those two hours, 

Still orange. Almost done with orange, less than ten rows to go, but still orange. 

Today, it is all about the endless orange.