The ??? Post

I'm doing penance for having gone a whole month without sticking so much as a comma into blog territory.  What I offer up in contrition is a free scarf pattern, listed here.  Thanks be to a sister who not only knows who Franklin Habit is, but just might love his hilariously informative "Stitches in Time" column as much as I do.

Not that I've been idle.  These much-abused hands have done their share of casting on, casting off, ripping, re-casting-off, cursing, ripping, and repeating.  Also I think I might be running low on sewing thread.  Behold, reversible aprons...

 And Holden shawlette.

And what have said much-abused hands learned from these adventures that have kept them from the blogsphere?  For starters, if you're going to order patterned fabric on a whim, be prepared to scale down your apron at a moment's notice.  There's a reason why the water lilies number has a narrower "skirt" than retro pink flowers does: it has nothing to do with planning.

Also, is it possible that most knitters out there pull their stitches tighter than a miser's purse?  I could've sworn Holden called for 440 yards of sport-weight yarn.  So why, using 2 skeins of approximately 230 yards of yarn each, recommended to me at Knit 'n Purl, did I manage to come up an entire pattern repeat short?  By the way, that picot edge was brutal, and not to be attempted if you don't have at least 100 yards left over.  Did anybody else start thinking about that high school geography lesson about the effect of coastlines on the measurement of borders?  Or the math lesson about area vs volume?  Um...never mind.

Which sort of roundaboutly brings me to one of my other observations of the day.  It occurred to me during my morning walk that at almost 30 and with most of my student loans paid off, I am probably old enough and financially secure enough to qualify as eccentric, meaning it's now perfectly acceptable for me to wrap a hand-knit lace scarf around my shoulders and comb the waves like a historical relic.  Not that I planned to do that for long.  It happens to be not just Memorial Day weekend at the beach, but Biker Weekend.  Which I take to mean that the best use of my time just might involve reworking lace patterns and watching food porn.  Or, less hunger-inducing, the SVU/NCIS marathon on USA.  Though that will probably bring on dreams of helping Stabler and Benson solve the rape and murder of a female naval officer that somehow involves a US-size-7 circular knitting needle, all while rocking an Abby-esque outfit and writing about the whole thing on McGee's typewriter.  Hey, I never said my dreams made sense, but they can be quite entertaining.  And on that note it's probably time to finish my tea and get cracking.  And hopefully not mix up ssk and psso in my head ever again.  Damn left-leaning decreases.  Get off my lawn!