Friends Don't Let Friends

Okay, so you hear it *everywhere* in the knitting world. A crafter's co-op (which does, I think, free-trade or something positive and similar) even makes a greeting card with a wee knitted swatch riddled with non-yo holes to illustrate the point: DON'T drink and knit.

Well, babies, it had been a loooong drive from New York to Chicago, and it had rained for most of it. I spent most of my time in Ohio either looking at skies like this



or hoping that I would be able to see out my windshield soon. Downpour city. However, it did allow me to get this picture during a lull--my shutter speed and the car speed turned a blurred picture into something almost impressionistic, and I was absurdly pleased with the result.



So it wasn't the storm that fostered the need for wine. I'm a Midwestern-raised girl--I can handle storms.

Nope, it was getting to downtown Chicago to drop off Thing One's stuff that did me in.

Call me simplistic, but I rather think that if I get off on an exit for Lakeshore Drive, then I should BE on Lakeshore Drive. I should not have had to scoot across 40-billion grid-locked lanes in an obscenely short amount of time so that I could get to Lakeshore, which the exit promised I would be on, rather than ending up in Chinatown, which I am sure is lovely but was not at all where I wanted to go.

By the time I got through that nifty maneuver, I was more than ready for a good red.

My host cautioned it was rather strong, but I insisted that lightweight me (who's also dropped a bit of actual weight, for which my doctor will yell at me but oh well) who had not eaten since about 11:30 a.m could handle it, even though it was now 9:30 p.m.

And bwa ha ha--to prove it, I nimbly began to knit the wrong side row of the shawl. I was smugly pointing out that look, all my little purl stitches were there, were even, were undropped, were indeed a thing of beauty, and then I looked more closely.

I had just turned the shawl into a cowl.

Thankfully, I at least had the sense not to frog it out right then. Instead, with as much dignity as a tipsy knitter could muster, I set my work down and stepped away from it.

I thought I had salvaged the situation quite well, but when I came downstairs in the morning I found this:



Methinks my friend is a cheeky git.

Yes, Virginia...

You really can knit whilst stuck in a queue of tourist traffic at a tollbooth.



I mean, hey, c'mon, it's not like I was doing 60 or something. It was like, inch forward at 2 miles an hour, put foot on break, do another fifeteen purls, inch forward (you get the picture).

Although I was purling. I mean, you don't have to look at your work when you purl, so doing 60 and knitting...OMG.

It could WORK.

(Well, as long as you're not driving in Boston or Chicago, anyway...)

I Am Handcrafted, Hear Me Roar

Dearest Stitches,

We need to talk about you messing with my head. You all, I'm sure, as you sit there on the needles, gab endlessly about ways to make your life more amusing.

I can understand it must be boring to wait a couple of hundred stitches down and then a couple of hundred back to find out whether you're going to be knitted, purled ssk'd, dbl dec'd, k2tog'd or sl1 k2tog psso'd. (Well, except you two groups of three stitches at either end. You never change. I admire your stoicism and herewith exempt you from the rest of this diatribe.)

I empathize with boredom. Really. I do.

But for the love of lace, when I've got a section with a 103 stitches, with a marker after stitch 51, then I expect 52 stitches on the other side. I'm a simple knitter. I don't think that's asking for much.

I see no humor in you pretending, then, to have 51 stitches on the other side as well. Or 48, 47, 53 or 49. And the time you made the leap down to 32 was really, really not funny at all. You knew it was a row with a lot of yos. You knew how easy it is to muck those up, and you took advantage of my apprehensions.

But the worst of it? You didn't even bother to try and hide your sniggering. Not even after I discovered all of you were there after all. Sauciness is one thing, but that, my dear stitches, was the equivalent of a battle cry.

And I have never been one to back down from a battle.

So. I went back and redid myself, complete with Chris-given nickname. I'm no longer Heidi: Handcrafted Electronic Individual Designed for Infiltration.

I have become*



Heidihun: Handcrafted Electronic Individual Designed for Infiltration, HARM & ULTIMATE NULLIFICATION.

Ponder those last words, dearest stitches. Think what they could do to your happy dreams of becoming a beautiful shawl. I know how you long to be beautifully blocked, lovingly worn, and jealously admired. But if this rebellion continues, all those dreams will be for naught.

Can you imagine it? Stop and listen. Yes. There it is. The soft sound of frogs, ripping harmfully back to where you lie trembling on the needles.

Think of becoming, once again, one long, hugely boring piece of string, wound back into a ball. No pretty patterns. No beautiful shape. No admiration of your subtle colors.

Just...ultimate nullification.

There there, dear stitches. No sniffling. We don't want you felting together, now do we? Have you all taken a deep breath? Are we all on the same page? Can we count sensibly now?

Good. We'll begin R15 of the current chart, then. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Your knitter

*Source : http://cyborg.namedecoder.com/ (both text & picture are the property of cyborg.namedecoder.com)

What's in a name?

Okay, so I spend some time on Facebook. Just a bit. Honest. (Though ironically I spend less time on it now that I have a month off work. I'm too busy. We won't ponder the implications of that just now, all right?)

Anyway, for the longest time, I was good and did NO quizzes. None, none, none. I was there to check in on family members, to reconnect with old high school classmates I would have never heard from again otherwise--like that. I certainly was not there to be cheeky or (dare I say it) smartassical, and most DEFINITELY not there to mess about with applications. I had loftier reasons for being.

But, but...but then...this cool application started showing up on my friends' pages.

Decode your robot name

Source : http://cyborg.namedecoder.com/ (both text & picture are the property of cyborg.namedecoder.com)

Jeralyn got J.E.R.A.L.Y.N.: Journeying Electronic Replicant Assembled for Logical Yelling and Nullification.

(Logical Yelling. I mean, who doesn't want to yell in a logical manner? Seriously. Rather a rare talent, that.)

Chris was C.H.R.I.S.: Cybernetic Humanoid Responsible for Infiltration and Sabotage.

(Knew there was a reason he's always running amok with a camera and going off on those "adventures" of his.)

Fiona got to be F.I.O.N.A.: Functional Individual Optimized for Nocturnal Assassination.

(Note to self: Never sneak up on Fi whilst she is sleeping, thinking one is being clever. One wouldn't be.)

Deanna is D.E.A.N.N.A.: Digital Electronic Assassination and Nocturnal Nullification Android.

(I'm so not letting Dee hook up with Fi for a glass of wine. Who knows what those two would get up to?)

Josiah ended up with J.O.S.I.A.H: Journeying Operational Sabotage & Immediate Assassination Humanoid.

(Clearly need to vet the Thing's movie watching habits. Delusions of grandeur there.)

But delusions of grandeur and dangerousness aside, how cool were those? How could I not want to find out my cool name as well?

Besides, my name is Heidi. I was seriously curious what in the world they could come up with for H. Hardwired? Hefty? Hell-bent? Heinous? Oh, maybe Heroic? (Hmm--probably not...)

So, I did it.

Heidi has decoded his/her robot name

HEIDI, Your robot name is :H.E.I.D.I.: Handcrafted Electronic Individual Designed for Infiltration

Source : http://cyborg.namedecoder.com/

Handcrafted? Handcrafted?!?! How perfect is that for little bistickual me?

Ohhh, and infiltration as well! I pictured myself with Tunisian crochet hook in one hand, a hip pocket of dpns at the ready and a set of circs (long ones) tucked into my back pocket. (Yeah, babies, that's me--fully armed. Who needs a bo staff, throwing stars, or nunchucks?)

Holding a Knit-Lite aloft and glowing in my free hand, I would scour the world, sneaking into patterns and mastering their secrets. Color work while carrying 50 strands of yarn in a manner that would make Debbie Bliss' head spin? I'd laugh. The trickiest Tunisian? Casual, airy sigh. Lace that would make most people lie down on the dirt-covered floor of an arena and wait for a monster truck to roll over them? Piece of cake for a Handcrafted Infiltrator such as moi. It's what I'm Designed for, after all.

And once I'd infiltrated the patterns successfully, what next? Why, LYSs, of course.

Maranacook's locally hand-painted sock yarn, Purl Diva's beaded silk, Korner Knitters' scrumptious alpaca, Halcyon's unbelievable wools...

They wouldn't stand a chance. (Insert gleeful mwah ha ha here.)

Overall, I've decided that my name--which always made me feel as if I should be on a Swiss mountaintop, cheerfully gamboling along after goats until one of the little blighters did a hard right while I went blithely on ahead and dropped into 50-billion miles deep crevasse--perhaps isn't so bad after all.