Crank It Up

I'm closing in on the deadline for samples and patterns.  It's in 14 days.  I still have a vest and a half, and a hat to knit, and 3 patterns to reverse-engineer (finished samples and cryptic construction notes are all I have to work from:  NEVER DO THAT!).  Yeah, this calls for some intensity. 

I have been fantasizing about running away to the beach to get my work done.  I am thinking jealously of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, alone in the snowy woods, finishing her last book.  Her descriptions of the absolute solitude are haunting me.  The cacophony of my life stands in sharp contrast.  The closest thing to solitude available to me is the pocket of each night between the Smallies' bedtime and Phillip beginning to nag me that I should turn in because it's getting late.  That works out to about 3 hours:  just enough time to frog the latest disaster, but not knit back to where I should have been.  Or enough time to draw a new chart, but not find all the mistakes in it.  Or enough time to feel bad about not doing laundry, but not enough to convince myself of its priority.  Probably there isn't enough time in the world for that one. 

So what's a girl to do?  My vacation time and bank accounts are both about dry, so the beach runaway dream will have to wait.  I will find the minutes and seconds inside my days in which I can be knitting, thinking, writing and working toward the goal.  And I'll just have to crank it up.  Wish me luck.

Collateral Damage

It all began innocently enough.  I should be paying myself a nickel for every idea that begins with the words "I'll Just..." 
"I'll just turn all these silly little ideas into a book!" 
"I'll just take care of the housework in my spare time!" 
"I'll just reupholster all the living room furniture myself!"

I should know better, but clearly I do not:

"I'll just do a little rolled hem, using that color of green that I really don't like and then I will like it!"
 

Yeah.  This is the view from my lap yesterday morning.  Total Carnage.  The further I got from that Stupid Mallard Green Rolled Hem, the more I hated it.  To make things worse, the cast-on I chose (albeit, hastily - is there any other way?) was keeping the edge from rolling right.  The hurrier I went, the more I hated the innocent bystander that was this poor sweater vest.  I told myself "Time's a wastin and them sweaters don't knit theirselves!  Press on and it'll grow on you!  Deadline's A-Comin!"

I still hated that Stupid Mallard Green Rolled Hem.  It smirked at me; lying there and refusing to roll up in the jaunty way I had envisioned. 

"HA HA: I'm ugly and you don't have time to frog 6 inches of otherwise unoffending border just to get to me!" 

Okay, the mocking tone might have been my imagination, but by this time I did not like anything the sweater had to say to me.  It was time to toughen up and admit the truth to myself:  "You hate this thing, and neither time nor effort is going to endear it to you, so suck it up and fix the problem.  You know what you have to do."

Ever frogged from the bottom up?  If so, you already know what happened.  If not, imagine trying to untie a spider's web and wind it into a perfect center-pull skein.  There are things in this universe that are not meant to work in reverse:  Bananna peels, the digestive tract of a Scottish Terrier, and the IRS are all good example of things that really don't go backwards very well.  Add Stupid Mallard Green Rolled Hem to the list:

Do not be fooled by this picture into thinking it was a simple matter of pulling on one end of the string, like opening a bag of dog food.  It was Ghastly.  Every few stitches had to be cut, and then getting hold of the shrapnel to yank it free was only possible with the aid of tweezers.  It was enough to make me reassess my whole hatred of the Stupid Mallard Green Rolled Hem in the first place.  But having both reached and passed the point of no return (loosely defined as any time scissors make aggressive contact with knitting) there was nothing for it but to press on.

Ultimately, I prevailed.  The Stupid Mallard Green Rolled Hem has been usurped by the Way Less Stupid Mulled Wine Rolled Hem, to wit:

The new and improved version has the added bonus of not sporting the ugly-ass, non-rolling weirdo cast-on problem suffered by its predecessor.  No, this little gem curls up jauntily, proclaiming to all:  "I came.  I Frogged.  I emerged Victorious." 

Now I'll just... 
 

Busy

Got one or two things on my plate at the moment, all of which seem to have competing due dates.  First was Campbell's 7th birthday, which we spent the whole weekend celebrating:
 

Too bad he doesn't much like his new bike. 

Then I worked on this Knit Picks project, which is going to appear in the February 09 catalog:

And of course, there are book projects, which are always expanding to fit the time I have alloted for them...

This one is only 3 days behind schedule, so it's possible I may be gaining momentum, but just as likely that I am delusional from cold medicine. 

Did I mention that school has started?  That means that between my job at the hospital (germ pit) Phillip's teaching at the high school (bacterial cesspool + teenagers = gross), and the smallies at elementary school (only marginally more sanitary than landfill) our house becomes a miniature Calcutta every fall.  I can't believe any of us ever sees a well day, if exposure has anything to do with sickness.

So that's all the news that's fit to print, and some that really isn't.  I gotta buy more tissue.