Begin Again

The trouble with mindless knitting is that while it seems completely plausible to knit in garter stitch for a million effin’ rows without the use of brain power, it is not entirely the best idea.  And for the most part should not be attempted.  Unless of course you don’t care if you looked down at your work and noticed that your stitch count was off by one and you slipped a stitch about 20 rows down.  siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

That wasn’t exactly the expression I let out a week ago when I made this discovery.  There was an f and a lot of u’s and then I tucked my knitting under a load of laundry that needed folding.  You know…for safe keeping?  The thing is that I’m the type of knitter that will not let this go lightly.  I can’t.  I will forever be reminded of the failures of mindless knitting every time I would wear this shawl.  So, I began to talk myself into tinking back down to a place where I knew my stitch count was correct and where I didn’t have slipped stitches glaring at me with evil slipped stitchy eyes.

Then a thought occurred to me.  A bigger thought than I am brave enough to share with you.  But this is a safe place, so here it goes: I’m going to reknit the whole damn thing.  Ya.  I’m sorry if you’re scared about this.  I’m scared too.  No one likes to go back to square one.  No one wants to go back.  But I’m not happy with the size of the shawl.  I feel like it’s too small and even though I’m about 20 rows from finishing (yes, really I’m that fucking close and I’m talking about ripping it all out), I still have half my skein of yarn left.  So, I’m frogging this project, going up a needle size and this time I’ll try to remain conscious while endlessly knitting in garter stitch.

hairy situations

I’m going to preface this blog by saying that I thought today was Wednesday.  It’s really Tuesday.  I’m aware that this is trite.  I don’t care, it pisses me off anyways.

I need to suck it up and buy a damn ball winder already.  I’m a lazy asshole that doesn’t like going to the yarn store to use their ball winder.  Also I’m afraid that if I go there, I won’t leave without buying something.  Besides, I have my own method and it involves kitchen utensils and an overturned chair, seriously.  This works every time without tangling the yarn and it creates a really solid center-pull ball.  Yesterday I tried to cut corners.  I should never try to cut corners, because this is what happens:

But I’m stubborn and I still won’t buy a ball winder.

There are some things that I dread about being single.  Take for instance the fact that I will now have to shave my legs and pits, go to the gym, brush my hair, wear things that match, look presentable.  These things are all trite too, but it still pisses me off.  In actuality, I will probably not change any of the ways that I do things for myself.  Because that’s just how I roll: mismatching, hairy, and damn proud of it.

Also I don’t know if I want to finish this beanie.  On one hand, I really want to see how it turns out and I think J would still like it.  On the other hand, it might be too soon.

I suppose I can just put it in the WIP pile for later.  It’s warming up anyways (I write this as it’s hailing outside), so it wouldn’t be of much use to anyone until months from now.

I don’t intend to make this blog about my so-called personal life.  My personal life is dull and boring and, well, personal.  But it’s hard to go through life-altering situations without at least mentioning it in passing.

So, it’s Tuesday and I’m going to avoid the gym like the plague, untangle my yarn and finish winding it into a ball.  It’s a glamorous life.

I’m ba-ack!

It’s been a while since I’ve left to work in the land of spices.  And if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from all of my experiences over there it’s this: never, and I mean never, put your itty bitty wooden needles anywhere you’re likely to plant your behind.   This is the sad result of my fat, sloppy, inconsiderate ass:

That’s a bad ass!  Bad!  Maybe I should install one of those cameras back there for future accident prevention.

Sigh.  Suffice it to say, that I didn’t finish those socks.  But in all honesty, who really thought I was going to have those done?  Really.  I would really like to know which one of you fools actually thought I would be coming back with a completed pair of knitted socks?  Well, it doesn’t matter, because I was right in the middle of debating whether I should start over or not.  You see, the pattern is written for average size people with average size feet.  So here I am, with my child-size feet, adjusting the number of blocks thinking it will work better for me that way.  And it mostly did, until I got to the heel and it started to feel as though if I pulled any harder, I was going to rip the sock in half.  Maybe my foot was swollen from the Chennai heat?  Maybe my heel is just big-boned?  Maybe I have fat Korean heels along with fat Korean calves?  Either way, I need to stop pretending that just because my feet can fit into kid’s dinosaur galoshes with no problem, doesn’t mean that they’re dainty.  Therefore, yarn ramen: