A Veritable Tower of Restraint

Oh, stop giggling! I'm not totally lacking in self-control, even if I am quite severely lacking in the desire to exercise it. This time, though, I really did demonstrate admirable restraint. The fact that it may not last is surely not relevent. See, I walked to Ben Franklin on my lunch hour yesterday (did I mention that location is one thing I love about my job?) in order to buy one of these:

By the way, the Tangled Yoke Cardigan is buring a hole in my knitting bag through which all previously started projects are bound to fall so that I might begin to knit it. I don't see how this can possibly be my fault. Anyway.

I got to the store and found that there was some Anny Blatt angora yarn on sale. Not just on sale. ON SALE. Regularly $21.75 for a 116 yard ball; now $5 for that same 116 yards of bunny goodness. They had pink and black and rich bluey purple and all manner of wonderful colors and still, this is all that followed me home:

Yes, I'm all right and no, I wasn't knocked unconcsious in the yarn store, or felled by a stray water buffalo or coated in locusts at an inopportune moment or even thrown out of the store for petting all the fuzz off the really soft yarns before I could complete my purchase. I just...wasn't quite sure what I would make with that much angora, and I ended up buying what I thought would work for a pair of really wonderful bunny mittens. Since then, I've shaken myself briskly and had a good laugh over the notion that I would actually need to have a plan in order to buy practically free angora and I'm hoping there's still some left when I go back tomorrow. But it does create a few issues in terms of what to make.

I thought about a sweater, naturally--imagine all that soft bunniness next to the skin all day. Mmmmm. (Okay, stop imagining it--you're drooling on the keyboard.) Probem is, angora in my past has proven itself to be nothing so much as a delicate flower, inclined to pill and felt at the merest hint of a stern expression, never mind a cross word, and I'm worried that I would either wear it once and have a felted, pilly bookmark for life, or be afraid to wear it at all.

A cardigan? Well...maybe. But again, it's kind of delicate. I worry that the harsh outside air molecules might bully it, hurt its feelings, generally cause problems. I worry even more that I absolutely hate handwashing and blocking with a passion and garments worn as outerwear seem to have a nasty tendency of needing that sort of thing occasionally.

Scarf? Too done, too easy--and not something I actually ever wear. I know, a knitter who shuns scarves. Don't think it's not a burden.

I pondered (in a moment of insanity brought on by the stroking of angora in a warm room) an angora bra--just briefly. Okay, so quit looking at me like that. There was a whole section in IK on knitted lingerie not that long ago so, while I might be insane, I at least have company (worse, I have company with the power to publish. The mind boggles.). Thing is, I believe that my employers would have a problem with my petting my own boobs all day, even if I did point out the bunny wonder of the garment covering them, so that's right out.

Vest? I don't wear vests at all...I think I was tramatized by the Annie Hall era of clothing, where everyone who was anyone wore layers and layers of menswear, with a mans vest pulled over a long shirt over skinny leggings. It wasn't a good thing. It really wasn't a good thing on me--I was overweight back then, and layers of clothes really did nothing for me at all. I looked like a chubby little man. A cranky, chubby little man, because the other kids made fun of me. No. No vests.

Hats? Ditto. (the "don't wear 'em" part, not the Annie Hall thing.) I hate having hat hair, even if it's angora hat hair. It's quite enough to have weirdly wavey hair at this stage of my life when it always used to be straight...add in standing straight out in the manner of one recently electrocuted and, well. You see how this mightn't end well.

But the darned angora is calling me in a hairy little siren song, and it seems that the pair of mittens or gloves I have loosely in mind just isn't going to feed that particular beast. What to do? A hundred pairs of mittens doesn't seem practical...any ideas out there? Anyone? I mean, besides send it all to you? (nice try, though.)

Don't worry if you can't think of anything, either. I may just spread it all out on the bed and roll around on it....and that would be okay.

Speaking of rolling around, Miss spent some time rolling around in the nip yesterday:

I was kind enough to brush all the bits of nip and grass off her before I took this so that she at least looks slightly respectable, if stoned. If you're wondering about the one eye, it is in fact half brown and half green. This does contribute a bit to her looking like she's completely wasted....but in this case, she really was.

Knit on, friends, and don't forget to help me figure I'm going to make with the angora that I'll buy with or without justification anyway. Not that I know myself well or anything.