Assorted Madness

With the newest installment in the story of "the scarf of doom".

I so appreciate all the support regarding what shall from know on be known as “the cinnamon roll debacle”. I still can’t believe I invested that much time in hockey pucks. Worse, I can’t believe that I crave cinnamon rolls enough—even after the way they’ve treated me—to want to try it again. I am, however, not completely nuts (it’s a matter of degrees, I’m fairly certain). This time I’m going to try one of the very kind and gentle suggestions and try frozen bread dough. At least it will feel at home in our house at night, right? Oh, and Lynn—I’m truly loving the idea of cinnamon rolls the size of polar bear paws. After all, I have a polar bear here for comparison, right?

(Mr. K vigorously denies being a polar bear, insisting that he only likes arctic conditions at night while sleeping under a pile of covers. However, I’ve felt his ice cold feet—which he invariably insists are really not cold at all-- when he comes to bed at night after working out in the shop, and I am not fooled.)

In between the ruination of otherwise innocent bread dough (which I’m sure had fantasies about being fragrant, fluffy bread before I got my grubby little mitts on it), there has been knitting. The Samus looks the same only with a second sleeve started—I won’t bore you with yet another photo of “unfinished green sweater”, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on that one. Then there’s the scarf. The dreadful, horrible, scarf that is all the more dreadful and horrible because I love the scarf at least as much as I hate knitting it and so I have to keep going. Take a look at this:

Yep, that’s a small scarf end with a loooooong tube coming off of it. And, try though I might, I simply cannot make it enjoyable to knit an 8 ½ foot tube that is all of 9 stitches around. (While I am, in fact, the rightful queen of hyperbole, in this instance I am telling the truth—each tube is supposed to be 90 inches long.) It’s especially frustrating when knitting in public (as I am wont to do on Mondays and Wednesdays when I have a long break between classes, but not long enough to make it worth going home). That’s when people come up to me in the student lounge to enquire as to what I might be making. And there’s just something about showing someone a 3 foot alpaca/wool tube connected to a rather indifferent looking rectangle of stockinette—something that looks sadly as if it were made by a well-intentioned third grader who had never seen anything knitted in her entire life prior to beginning this project-- that strips a person of her knitting dignity. Instead of holding up a beautiful and partially finished sweater while smiling modestly, I find myself saying things like “well, you see, there will be 5 more tubes like this one and you may not be able to picture it but the tubes will be 8 ½ feet long and I’ll braid them and….” This is the point where there’s a lot of glazed nodding and carefully edging away from the crazy lady with the red yarn. Maybe I need to come up with some other explanation for this project, seeing as how the real one isn’t working and seeing as how I am clearly too stubborn to simply give it up. One of these, perhaps?:

“Oh, it’s a cashmere leash for my pet alligator. He keeps eating the paper boys….little rascal…..” (note here—I’m assuming that the average muggle won’t know cashmere from alpaca…..and for some reason, the alligator in my imagination seemed to need cashmere. But the yarn is really alpaca and wool.)
“The holiday season isn’t nearly stressful enough for me, so I’m knitting a 90 foot red garland to wind around the tree. 10 times.”
“It’s a sock….do you think it looks too narrow? My mom DOES have really skinny legs….”
“Ever since I was a child, I’ve wanted a red, alpaca jumprope. Well, the time is finally here, Baby.”
“My husband said he wanted some new bungee cords for Christmas. And I thought, wouldn’t it be nice and festive to knit him some soft red ones?”
“My pencils keep getting lost in my backpack. I figure if I just stack them end to end in this little sleeve…..”
“I’m giving my husband a new extension cord for Christmas, and this was the best way I could think of to wrap it.”
“My cousin thinks her pet snake has been looking chilly since he shed his skin.”
“It was going to be a bracelet but I can’t remember how to cast off. Now I have to keep going until I run out of yarn."
“My friend asked for a little coat for her wiener dog…..but I may have gotten the proportions a tad bit off.”
“I’m starting a new charity—knitting dredlocks for bald Rastafarians.”
“I’ve been very concerned about the birds getting cold feet when sitting on the power lines outside.”
"It's a purse. Be honest--do you think the handle is too long?"

I found this picture today in the news:

The caption says that the locals do parade the sheep (as well as other animals) through town annually (it’s in Madrid) to protest the urbanization of the city and the consequent loss of farmland. Mr. K thinks they’re actually running away from a herd of knitters just off camera. Which I think is just plain silly. For one thing, sheep love knitters. I'm sure they do. And besides, everyone knows knitters don’t come in herds. We come in skeins. Duh.