I'm Melting!

After the ballgame was over, and my grandfather had received his "haircut" from my brother and I, he would put on his hat, and announce that he was going to the bowling alley, and off he would go. I never asked, but it didn't make sense to me that my 75 year old grandfather was actually bowling, could he lift a bowling ball? Later, it finally hit me - my grandfather wasn't going to the bowling alley - he was going to the track. My mother told me that the hat was all part of the ritual - the lucky hat. And, if his luck went bad, he would throw the hat on floor, and buy a new hat. The hat would sometimes lie on the floor for days, until my grandmother picked it up, because there was no way he was going to touch the unlucky hat again.

And that, my friends, is how I'm feeling about my pink lace sampler scarf. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of my woeful lack of progress - the batteries are dead in my camera. But, last week, the first pattern we attempted in class came from some stupid German book with stupid patterns with stupid stitches for just plain stupid people. I have to have that attitude, because this smart person CANNOT DO THIS PATTERN!!!!! It starts on the wrong side, and has this crazy stitch that I've dubbed the Martini stitch - as it is shaken and stirred. It starts out kind of looking like a ssk, but then the stitches are then put back on the left needle, and purled through the back of the stitch. And, of course, there is patterning on both the right side and the wrong side. I got to row five in class, and I just could not get the right number of stitches on the needle, ironically following the easiest row in the pattern (in a 10 stitch repeat, 7 of the stitches are knit on row 4). So, I ripped back to the beginning, and I tried again . . . and again . . . and again. I knit without the t.v., I knit in total silence. I knit not hung over, until, sometime on Sunday, the darn thing ended up on the floor at work, and like my grandfather's hat, never to be touched again. I've tried to pick it up, but I go to pick it up, and it's like the Wicked Witch of the West and the ruby slippers - my fingers are singed, and I recoil in horror.

It's kind of like, I dated this guy for a awhile, and I knew that he had been in a movie. He told me over and over again, don't watch the movie. I didn't listen, I rented to movie. It was so bad that I could not get it out of the VCR. I don't know if it was because I was too embarrassed to return it to the video store, I was so embarrassed that I had been seen in public with it's star . . . I don't know. But, I dumped the guy, and I could not get the tape out of the VCR. Finally, my roommate had an intervention. We dropped the tape in the night box, cancelled my credit so I wouldn't be charged the late fees, and I never went back to that video store again. Extreme, I know - but I tell this story to let you know just how serious this problem is . . . I think the pink scarf is doomed . . .