Crunch Berries

Over the weekend, the Smallies, the pooch and I headed up to Whidbey Island, where we all went feral for a couple of days.  The kids climbed rocks, played in the mud and skipped stones.  The dog dove headlong into a bramble patch in search of a cottontail rabbit.  Said rodent was actually behind her (I'm pretty sure laughing) at the time. 

And I worked on my Kingscot:

My sister, who is also plotting to take over the world, insists that the job can be done (get this!) without any knitting!  Bless her little feeble-minded heart!  She, like so many others, has no clue of the power we wield.  If only I could turn her to the dark side.  But Susie is the sort of woman who has "people for that", and sees herself as more the idea-generating sort.  The boring details, such as actual execution, are left to her people.  I'm sure I don't need to tell you that her people are often me.

Susie watched me work a bobble on the cardigan front, with what I hallucinated to be interest.  I instinctively tried to teach her the technique, until I realized that she was looking at me with the kind of disdain usually reserved for mildew specimens.  "What?" I demanded.  "Nothing," she said.  "But those things look just like Crunch Berries."

I fear the New World Order under Susie's regime.
 

Bed of Roses

Once upon a time, I bought a bunch of my favorite yarn on sale.  This was not an unusual occurrence, except that the yarn in question was not only my favorite kind, it was also an extremely unfortunate color:

And by "unfortunate", I mean so ugly as to cause Scottish Terriers to fall instantly asleep to avoid looking at it.  Don't get me wrong: I'm no pink-hater.  I like a good pink better than the next guy, and I will go to some fairly respectable lengths of denial to include pink in my stash, especially when it's on sale.  But I just couldn't find a permanent place in my heart for seven skeins of Pepto Bubble Gum.

I shut my eyes and held on to the seven skeins of Pepto, knowing that one day a pattern would come along which called for my favorite yarn, and probably on a day when I lacked the wherewithal to dash out and buy anything new. 

Sure enough, I revisited a pattern-in-waiting this morning by happenstance, and was consumed by the urge to cast on for it immediately.  Being a confirmed cheapass responsible guardian of fiscal resources, I remembered the poor little skeins of Pepto, waiting patiently in the stash.  The color was even worse than I recalled, but it only encouraged me to press on with my Cunning Plan.

Real knitters know that acid-based dyes are the best way to go for changing the color of woolen string.  I even have plans to get me summa that one day, when I grow up.  But today is not that day (tomorrow is not looking good, either), so I headed straight to the Kool-Aid aisle in the discount store across the street from the dentist where my kids were in adjoining recliners this morning.  For reasons defying all explanation, K Mart was all out of Kool-Aid today, except for Lemonade, which would not have been much help to my Pepto Gum yarn.  Unphased, I grabbed some Rit, reasoning that a complete disaster with it would still not be worse than the color I was starting with.

Since the whole pursuit had "Knitting Gods, Smite Here" written all over it, I decided to go for broke and try kettle dyeing for the first time, while I was at it.

The result?  Even knitters have to catch a break now and then, even if it's only a game of odds: 

The unfortunate Pepto Bubble is magically transformed to a Bed of Roses.  And how smug am I that I held on to that poor pink yarn?  Little bit. 

Lesson?  Ugly Yarn + Cheap Dye + Pressing Need to Cast On = Acts of desperation where three wrongs can make a right.

Cover me: I'm going in...

 

Acts of Mercy

The trip to Lindsay's skating competition went just great.  Right up to the point where I realized that the athlete I was rooting for was in the throes of the Stomach Flu.  How, you may ask, did I know?  Well, I didn't really, until I came down with it myself.  But more about that later.  What I want to tell you is that my kid is Tough.  She tossed her cookies, straightened her hairdo, and then skated a first place program.  Then she changed outfits as fast as possible (not all that fast when you are trying not to toss more cookies) and skated a second place program.  Then she collected some medals, smiled for some photos, and tossed her cookies again.  Is there any more helpless feeling in the world than holding some barfy kid in your arms and trying to make them feel better?  On the floor of the skating rink bathroom? 

So I put her in the car, after an agonizing afternoon, during which Lindsay had to decide which was worse:  A.  Forefitting her third event, thereby removing herself from the running for a special artistry award she might have won, or  B.  Sticking it out and tempting the Skating Gods, who are known to punish skaters with stomach flu by inflicting public displays of, well, symptoms.  She ultimately chose A, which turned out to be for the best.  Turns out that a plastic shopping bag from the pro shop will hold way more symptoms than you would think (at least until the nearest rest stop), and my wee heroine survived the two-hour car ride home.  We consoled ourselves with the knowledge that we both learned something:  Lindsay learned what her absolute physical limits are, and I learned that when your kid has a virulent bug and you tell yourself that the dread of catching it is worse than actually catching it, that's a load of crap. 

And In case things weren't gnarly enough, we got home to find that Phillip had the stomach flu, too.  So I told myself that it was only the power of suggestion, and the abnormally high gross-out factor that were making me feel icky as I lay motionless on the bathroom floor that night.  Have I mentioned that my powers of denial are epic?  This is after every CC of liquid in my body has left it with a velocity that is nearly ballistic, and in every direction.  That's right, Gentle Readers:  I'm here to tell you that it's actually possible to vomit out of your eyes.

So Lindsay, Phillip and I are all on our lips in the floor, leaving no one but poor Campbell to tend to the dead and dying.  Campbell, in case you are wondering (and still reading this), had the bug a week ago, and so has been declared immune.  Maybe the worst thing about the stomach flu is that when you have it, you are a complete pariah.  No one in their right mind will come near you, and if there are three sufferers, you might as well just lock all the doors and wait for the undertaker.  Even if your only caregiver is an eight-year-old.  Don't bother calling in the cavalry, because they ain't-a-comin.  Just suffer there on the floor and pray for morning.

But morning, of course, does eventually come.  And when it did, I began to realize that my family and I were not going to be the first casualties of Cholera in the USA in decades.  I'm definitely better than I was, and so are the other two.  Nobody is ready to eat anything more complicated than paste, you understand, but I think we'll pull through.  And Cam seems not to have been marked for life.  By this episode.

Naturally, the first thing I wanted to do when I could sit up was knit.  Here is the knee sock I told you about.  And while I'm on the subject of barf (really? can't just move on?) this poor thing is really suffering.  Check out the bizarre calf "shaping".  Probably okay if your calf has a tumor.  And my groovy hand painted yarn is totally pooling, there at the ankle.  Why, you may ask, do I continue to beat such an obviously dead horse?  Because I clearly don't know any better.  This is my first knee sock, and I keep thinking that something will change if I just press on.  I used what seemed to be a very cool pattern.  But it is only a program of numbers generators, which does exactly as it is supposed to do, not a knitting shaman, for heaven's sake.  I probably entered the wrong guage into the formula or something.  It seems to need negative ease.  And by that I mean it's just way too freakin huge around, though the length seems oddly accurate.  I would have held out to the very end, in order to measure and re-calculate all the areas where things have gone so obviously wrong.  But I'm going to run out of yarn (not surprising, having knitted a grain silo-cozy), which can only mean one thing.  Frog City.  

I am going to measure the bulging calf thing, though, before I hook it up to the ball winder and let 'er rip.  Seems like the least I could do for the poor thing.

If you know the magic formula for the amount of negative ease required for a knee sock at 9 stitches to the inch, kindly weigh in?  I guarantee contact with this blog post to be non-infectious.