Proof

To show you how busy my fingers have been, and, because if you're my mom, you'll want to see how your new shirt is coming along and if you're not my mom, you probably aren't even reading this thing on a Saturday, so you won't be too bored.

Hard to tell size in a photo, but it's about four inches tall. Not bad for two evenings of work.

Oh, and for the knitters out there: I was happily knitting away and I didn't have a marker handy. So I grabbed a plastic bag (dog owners always have plastic bags), and tore off a corner, tied it in a knot and looped it over my needle. More obvious than a bit of yarn, which is my usual go-to stitch marker. Less likely to become knitted into the project.

Knitting Binge (and Purge)

There has been a project on my knitting needles for several months. I had torn it out and restarted once before, because my stoopid pattern was translated from the Norwegian, and I kept missing vital pieces of information in it, and I kept not-noticing that I was missing vital pieces of information until I was several inches into the sweater. My New Rule For Knitting Patterns: Avoid patterns that say "AT THE SAME TIME". If it's not clear enough without the all-caps, then it's not clear enough.

Anyway, last night I made a grand gesture and tore the whole thing out again. Streamers of used, crinkled yarn fell into my lap. I left the offensive pattern at my parents' house, and stomped off to find a new one.

"You're crabby tonight," said my mom.

Hours of toil had been reduced to nothing more than string in ten minutes. Perhaps it affected my mood.

We found a pattern written in English for a short-sleeved lacy top. And tonight, after one false start (too small for any life-sized human), I finally filled my needles up again with tidy rows of loops. I hunched over my yarn, and allowed the television to drone on in the background while I counted "purl two, knit one through the back loop, purl two", and created new fabric out of what had just been string the night before.

I barely noticed, as I passed slipped stitches over, that in the year since I've seen it "Bones" has become a piece of total crap. I almost didn't get misty when Jim and Pam found out what they found out tonight on the "Office". I didn't spend nearly as much energy as I usually do wanting to like "30 Rock". And while my needles slipped through silken skeins of yarn, I found British television on channel 2, which seems to make the same amount of sense whether you knit while you watch it or not. And so time passed. The dog whined for his walk. The doorbell rang, and a strung-out canvasser tried to convince me to trust her with my money. Someone called for Fabian Floyd (who doesn't live here) for the thousandth time. Bedtime came and went. And two rows became four rows, and my hands filled up with lace, and over an inch of fabric hung from my needles.

Look out. After months of dormancy, I'm on a full-fledged knitting binge.