I've Been Hubble'd

I've been told I look like Barbra Streisand. That's ok, I just wish I could carry a tune, but Songbird I ain't. Anyway, we all know the movie The Way We Were, and aside from that bittersweet, sigh, tissuebox moment at that end of the movie when she brushes Robert Redford's hair off his forehead and says, "Your girl is lovely, Hubble," (an aside - what kind of a name is Hubble anyway? Have you ever met a Hubble?) what do we all remember - the song, of course. If we had the chance to do it all again - would we? could we?

The flyermaker's daughter is starting NYU in the fall, and she's a bit nervous about the four strangers who she's been thrown in with in her dorm. I reminisced with her about my Penn State roomies. My first roommate, who grew up in Sunbury, PA, graduated with all of 20 people, and asked to see my horns when she first met me. My roommate Debbie who had a killer rabbit named Milky who I swear must have been an extra in Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail. The apartment I shared with four other girls, one bathroom, and the one roommate who always had sex in the bathroom while we waited in line in the hallway, towels in hand. Sweet NYU freshman asked, "why would she want to have sex in the bathroom? Didn't she have her own room?" I started to answer, about that big ol' tub with the feet on the bottom . . . but, ah, innocence. Anyway, I started to think what it would be like if I could do it all over again.

One thing I know I would do different is this:



What possessed me to dye my hair black? And, not only did we dye my hair, we dyed my earlobes. I had black earlobes for weeks, weeks. Shocked aren't you, from the pictures - doesn't it look like we took care? I guess we should have read the label, and noticed that black hair dye is TAR, and it's PERMANENT.

And my knitting - what would I take back? Easy -- my Noro Silk Garden Suit From Hell!!!!

It's supposed to look like this:



I was enthralled -- I had two birthday gift certificates, which just covered the 20 skeins. I quickly cast on -- on 7's, the recommended needle size in the pattern. Swatching, swatching, swatching -- I should have been suspicious then - to get on gauge I had to go down to 3's. Ok, so I cast on. Knit knit knit. It was clearly too small, and I was on gauge. So, I ripped, and added six stitches -- the short rows which you will see in a minute are on a six stitch repeat. I persevered:



So, what's supposed to happen is you knit the bottom of the back, around the short rows, to the side panel. Then, you sew the two back edges together, pick up stitches across the top of that bottom edge, and knit the back panel:



I finished the fronts, and I'm still convinced it's too small. I know I still have to pick up the buttonband, but I've compared it to clothes I wear, and it's too short, and seems too narrow. But, determined, I plugged away, finished one sleeve, and I'm almost done the other:



But, look carefully - that sleeve isn't going to go in that armhole. It just looks all f-k'd up!

So, I've reached the crucial moment - actually, I've probably already passed the crucial moment several times, but like many times in my life, I remained in denial:

To rip or not to rip? To run the risk of living with the proverbial black earlobes again. Oh, and by the way, not only did I hide my ears with hideous big earrings, the hair looked like crap for months and months. Whenever you get a bad haircut, everyone says, it will grow (after they tell you that it looks good, and then the next week, it's not so bad, and then finally, they admit that you got butchered). This suit is such a BAD HAIRCUT.

So, what I'm thinking of doing is casting on the skirt -- how badly could that go, and then making a different top, something like this cardigan in the new Noro book:



Cut my losses, not my hair? Any thoughts friends? There's a reason why there are no Hubble's out there - the name just sucks, and who would name someone after a character who would rather be with the lovely girl than K-K-Katie? Fellow knitters, this pattern may just be a Hubble. How many Noro suits do you see walking around out there?

Help please!