Monday/Tuesday: I'm officially back in training for the fall semester, which really isn’t all that different from being out of school for the summer, except for rushing last-minute to do my reading the night before class.
Though Monday night’s last-minute reading did have the most thrilling typo I’ve ever seen:
Did you see it? Did it make you giggle and repeat "whore community" over and over again? Or are you not a ten year old?
Wednesday: A small group of friends came over, and yeah, my friends can be on the noisy side, and there was a fair amount of drinking and talking about sex on the back porch, but the elderly gentleman that leaned out his bathroom window to shout “Take it inside, folks” really could have been nicer about it. As could the person that left a remarkably similar note the next morning, signed vaguely – and somewhat menacingly – “Your neighbors.”
Which neighbors? The same crotchety neighbor? Different neighbors? Every other person in the building? I’m getting a little paranoid now.
I freely admit, being noisy on the porch at 11:30 on a Wednesday night is high on the Asshole Things Your Neighbors Can Do list. However, it's not as if I've had raucous gatherings before, and as soon as I realized what jerks we were being, we went inside.
Seriously, doesn’t it take more than one incident before you write a snotty note? Even if you’re a crotchety old man? And especially if you’re a crotchety old man whose penis Your Neighbors have seen because you can’t be bothered to shut your bathroom window at night?
Thursday: In retrospect, I really didn’t need to stay up (even inside and quietly) until almost 3 in the morning. And those last few drinks were entirely unnecessary. And given how rancidly hungover I felt all day during our all-day corporate outing, fried chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes for dinner after was a spectacularly bad idea.
I know all of this now, not due to a sudden maturation of my common sense, but thanks to the violent pooping.
In between all the pooping, knitting was actually accomplished. Sort of. I’m back on the Jaywalker bandwagon, now for the third time. Lorna’s Laces in “Clay” pooled horribly, so I gave up after four inches. A later attempt in Opal yarn also got ripped out after four inches, not due to unattractive pooling, just to my own ineptitude.
I figured self-striping yarn wouldn’t pool. And all evidence to the contrary, I’m not a completely inept knitter. I might as well try again, right? With the super-cute “Girly Stripe” yarn from Stash? The yarn that did this to me when I was winding up the skein? The yarn that clearly does not want to be anything other than a huge wretched knot?
I even knit a stupid gauge swatch before starting:
And things were going really, really well through the first few pattern rows. But then I kind of stopped paying attention, bunged up the zig-zagging completely and needed to rip it back.
Drastic measures were in order, but I couldn’t bear the thought of reknitting all that 2x2 ribbing. Lord, do I hate that 2x2 ribbing. So rather than ripping it all the way out and starting over, I ripped it back just to the ribbing, then spent two hours performing microscopic fiddly knitting surgery to ensure I had all 76 stitches picked back up, facing in the right direction. Wow, does that yarn split like a motherfucker.
When I wasn’t busy blowing past double decreases or forgetting to knit through the front and back loop at the end of each needle, I did teach a coworker to knit during the office outing. And I didn’t mention poking crotches or spreading labia at all. Maybe this Knit-Out teaching gig will work out ok.
There may even be a few converts among my coworkers – two of them had that look in their eyes: very, very focused, slightly glazed and kind of gleeful all at the same time.
I’m thinking about dropping off some leftover Cascade at their desks, as gateway yarn.
Because as they say, “The first one’s free.”
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