Punkin' Guts, etc.

It is this sort of a kicked back day here at Chez Knitingale:


(Can you get more relaxed than this cat?) It’s been drizzly and gray, so even Ed has gotten into the swing of indoor living, having thoroughly exhausted all sock-loving and slobbering possibilities:




I, however, amaze myself by being a tad more energetic. Truth is, I love the end of daylight savings time, that wonderful “fall back” weekend when I get a whole extra hour—which never sounds like much but always feels like the day just stretches on and on. (See what you’re missing down there in Arizona, Suburbaknit? For those not in the know, Arizona and Hawaii don’t observe Daylight Savings Time. Which I think is kind of funny….don’t mess with Arizona or Hawaii, man. If they don’t like your dumb idea, they just won’t do it. So there.)

Anyhow, I woke up filled with zest and zeal and….okay, no. I have never in my life awakened with such items and in fact, outside of lemons and soap, I’m not entirely sure what zest might be. I suspect it may be related to those aggressively cheery women in some customer service jobs who sound pleasant and look crazed and you always have the vague urge to make certain they don’t have access to any sharp objects. You know the ones. So what did I wake up with……well, a cat on my legs, for certain. And, once I’d yawned and found my fleece pants on the floor and brushed the majority of the cat hair off of them, I discovered within me the desire to rearrange (read “play with yarn”, because that’s really quite a lot closer to the truth). I pulled some books and pots and other goodies off the bakers rack in the living room (the TV and fire room, really—this house has two living rooms which still quite puzzles me….is it in case I don’t like a couple of my guests? That way I can give them their own living room and only talk to them on the way through to the bathroom?), dusted it off (dust bunnies? Not so much. They were eaten by the dust gorillas.), and then loaded it up with yarn and needles and patterns. What do you think?


If I didn’t know that most of you are knitters, I might actually try to get away with saying that this was all my yarn. And, I don’t doubt, most non-knitters would not only fall for it but might actually think that this seems like an awful lot of yarn. But we know better, don’t we? You’re not falling for it, and I have too much respect for your intelligence to even attempt it (not to mention the friends who read this and would hesitate not a millisecond in giving me away, should I drag out such a contemptible lie). So no, it’s but a fraction. But it does open up some space in my upstairs stash closet (which was becoming a bit….snug, shall we say?) while making a lovely decoration downstairs (you can’t beat decorating with yarn). So far, Mr. K hasn’t really made the connection between the slow movement of yarn downstairs and the inevitable takeover of the house with it….so let’s not tell him, what do you say?

Then, I proceeded to perform a little surgery. Oh, don’t look so worried—I’m a medical professional. Here, the patient before the procedure:



And here, after an hour or so in the operating room with me, considerable profanity, and a couple of curious cats:

It looked quite a bit better in my head than it does in reality, but my heart was in the right place. Yeah, my knife wasn't....I won't even tell you how many toothpicks are carefully holding things in that really shouldn't have been cut out. I think you probably shouldn't pick me for your appendectomy. Or your pumpkinectomy, for that matter.

The worst part, though, besides the patient’s less than stellar outcome, was the aftermath. Thinking myself very clever, I had laid the patient down on layers and layers of newspaper. Proving myself to be very much NOT clever, I then gathered up all the guts and goop in the newspaper and picked it up to carry outside. Without considering the sogging potential to newspaper of approximately 2 pounds of pumpkin guts (or “punkin guts” as my mom used to say). You can see where this is going, can’t you? So could I but, sadly, not in time to prevent it. It was like a Sam Peckinpaw movie, all slow motion and angst as I suddenly felt the paper give way and watched the innards plummet stickily to the hardwood, splashing my socks, my jeans, my everything. Pumpkin seeds scattered all the way down the hall. The cats thought this was great fun. I was less enchanted. Did you know that it takes about n+1 (where n = the total # of clean dishtowels in the house) to clean 2 pounds of punkin guts off the hardwood? And that the average 41-year-old mind will forget the presence of said guts on the soles of her socks until she has walked over the newly cleaned space?

Yeah….I didn’t either……