A Story without a Moral.
What’s this a picture of? My friend Abby’s feet. In the socks that I knit her for her birthday. The second project I’ve knitted, and the second pair of socks I’ve knitted.
When I’m not posting, you can be pretty sure I’m sick or busy. Usually busy. I spent the last month frantically knitting these socks. Based upon the expectations I had from my previous (and first) pair of socks, I had assumed that I could knit these socks in two weeks, if needed. Well, it was needed, but it took me twice as long as I expected.
It wasn’t because I decided to dye all the yarn with Kool-Aid.
It wasn’t because I knitted tulips into the heels.
It wasn’t even because she had feet longer than the pattern, and so I had to rip out one of the already-completed white toes, and add two more color stripes to the pattern.
No, the problem was that the pink socks were knit out of a relatively thick yarn, and the striped socks were knit out of a relatively thin yarn. So I had to cast on 32 stitches for the pink socks, and 64 stitches for the striped socks. In other words, the striped socks had twice as many stitches as the pink socks, so of course they took twice as long!
Because of this minor miscalculation, the birthday present was about two weeks late, even knitting in every spare moment I had. I use the phrase “spare moment” rather loosely, because I wasn’t ruling out things like eating, or breathing, or making a chocolate-mocha cheesecake as her birthday cake. But I did have to stay up to 11 o’clock the night before I went to her house, still trying to finish the toe to the last sock. Which I didn’t. So I had to finish it up the next morning, right up to the minute I walked out the door. And I was an hour or so late. And I hadn’t really finished them, because after her excitement wore off a little, I had to weave in a few loose ends. And there were tension-holes at the heel I never did fix, which is kind of embarrassing. You can see them if you know where to look, and if you don’t know where to look, I’m not going to tell you.
You may be thinking that you see a moral to this story, but you would be wrong. Because there. is. no. moral. I’m sure of it. I know it. I’m positive. No moral at all.
Except “Chocolate-mocha cheesecakes cover a multitude of sins, including late birthday presents.” That might be a moral.
Anyone want the recipe?
Posted in Knitting | 3 Comments »
April 29th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
[…] _uacct = “UA-1202685-1”; urchinTracker(); Map of the Ethereal Land The Ethereal Voice Front Page – Politics – Money – Knowledge – Art – Food – Fun Masthead About A Story without a Moral. By Tatterdemalion | April 29, 2007 – 9:09 pm Posted in Category: Art What’s this a picture of? My friend Abby’s feet. In the socks that I knit her for her birthday. The second project I’ve knitted, and the second pair of socks I’ve knitted. When I’m not posting, you can be pretty sure I’m sick or busy. Usually busy. I spent the last month frantically knitting these socks. Click Here to continue reading. […]
May 9th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Trust me. Even without the cheesecake, any sins you may have committed (none of which involve unnoticable tension holes that only a perfectionist knitter would notice, anyway) wouldn’t have been noticed in my utter delight.
Notice I’m not complaining about the cheesecake, though! 🙂
May 10th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Though this doesn’t change the thrust of your comment any, the “sins” I was trying to duck out of wasn’t the tension holes, but the starting-too-big-of-a-project-and-paying-for -it variety (it was, after all, two weeks later than your birthday!). I will never, ever, ever learn to bite off smile bites. My next project will be just as crazy or crazier.
So there is no moral.
But I’m glad you liked the cheesecake!