Lies I Tell

Ms. Knitingale likes to fancy herself an honest person but, really, her readership is smarter than that--or, if not smarter, perhaps more observant and certainly less motivated towards denial.

No..... probably smarter.

It's already obvious that I tell such lies as "I have a little bit of yarn" without mentioning that "little bit" in this context means much the same as it does in this one: "I have eaten a little bit of chocolate in my lifetime." In fact, "little bit" and I have a long and sordid relationship. For instance, "I'm going to sit down and knit for a little bit" or "I'm only going to spend a little bit of money at the fiber festival" or even "I'm a little bit nervous about my nursing school application." None of this comes as any surprise to you, my beloved readers. But of course, there's more. The cats know.

See, I'm a pushover of the first order. Mr. K laughed out loud (not unkindly...I hope) when he watched me let Ed in for the umpteenth time since I came home two hours ago, while saying "Ed, that's it. I'm not letting you in again today. If you go out again, you're staying out until bedtime." Which, in truth means that when he cries pitifully at the back deck in the rain, I will come and rescue him and feel like a horrid cat mommy because he has approximately 4 droplets of water on him...to go with his self-congratulatory smirk. He gets the same one when I tell him he can't have any of the chicken. He knows the truth. I rather suspect the LYS owner has the same look on her face when I tell her I really can't buy any more yarn for fear of my craft room exploding into the yard in a cloud of wool. I don't know, though. I'm not usually looking at her at this point, because I'm busy selecting.....er...feeling the balls of yarn. Yes, feeling. That's it.

It wouldn't totally suprise me if Mr. K looks the same way when I say I'm going to start cooking more healthily. He knows that will last until I pass the cheese and sour cream in the grocery store and start fantasizing most UNHEALTHILY about Mexican casserole with 120% of the fat and calories of the original. He might even look like that when I say that we really need to buckle down and get some repairs done around the house....because he knows that the quickest way to short-circuit that is to ask me about the socks I'm making. "Really? You want to see? Sure! See, it's a pattern of alternating boxes and some are like this and...oh, I should fix this...hang on....we can get started in just a few minutes...." It might be fair to say that I am powerless over my addictions, but more or less okay with that most of the time.

Speaking of them, though (my addictions, not cheese and sour cream), I imagine that you are not surprised at all to learn that the supposed-to-be-beaded sock is no more. I was telling the truth as I saw it at the time, really...and I actually do love the pattern quite a bit. I'll do it again with something else, I'm sure. But I wasn't loving the purple/turquoise combo I was using and each row was starting to feel like a slog through lime jello wearing ski boots and the yarn in the sock yarn drawer was starting to get that exact same "Ed in the rain" look that means I'm about to succumb. It was this one:

See? It's doing it again! Don't tell me you can't see that look! It really was unrelenting. I'm already halfway down the leg of a pattern called "Tilting Blocks" from the Fleece Artist sock people (I got it with a purchase of yarn that I most definitely wasn't going to buy) and the jello and ski boots have been replaced with a warm knife and butter. Love it to pieces. For now, anyway. Are you as amazed as I am that I ever finish ANYTHING? I don't know what's going on lately....I don't usually have this much trouble with sock committment. I suspect, though, that it has much to do with a neurotic habit I have of saving my favorite, most exciting yarn for later and thus trying to make myself knit with something that does not, at that moment, excite me. I blame my mother, a chicken pot pie, and a plate of decidely slimey canned spinach. I still don't eat canned spinach....and pot pies are dicey, given how nauseated I was by the time I got to that certain one. Don't even get me started on the green peppers. (Hi, my name is Flo and I'm a veggiephobe.)

On a completely different subject (and largely because I am such a dork that I feel compelled to give an example of what I believe to be even GREATER dorkiness), have they been advertising that new Nature Valley cereal where you live? It's flakes and stuff, and it has "pieces of real granola bar in it." Sounds okay....but, when I was a kid, granola bars were the latest and greatest thing. They were made of....cereal. Cereal that had been compressed into bar form so that we could all experience the joy of granola, even if were bowl, milk, and spoon deprived. So now they're cutting them up and stirring them in with flakes to make cereal. But...isn't granola...already a cereal?

See, there are bigger dorks than I am.