Try, Try, Again....

Good Morning Everyone,

In between the string of curse words that usually plague my knitting process, comes the wise words of my Mimi, "anything worth doing, is worth doing right" and "patience is a virtue." There are a couple more adages that cross my lips and force my eyes to roll to the back of my head, but the one thing that knitting has taught me, is patience, which doesn't extend much past knitting. Enter Bernie....Life with Bernie has been eye opening to say the least, he's a source of boundless energy and endless curosity. It's like all he wants to know is, "what happens if I do this?" Yesterday I was blessed with the task of cleaning the bathroom, the kind that forces you to grab the ladder and the knee pads and get to it. The cobweb way up in the corner finally won, I couldn't stand it any longer, I pulled the thread and went into full Fall cleaning mode. The dangling carrot of course was, KNITTING TIME, or so I thought.

I'll set the scene, TONS of squeaky toys, chew toys, bones, and sticks loaded with bark from outside, PLENTY OF DISTRACTION. Bernie's recent obsession with shoes has been so annoying that I've put a baby gate up so he cannot grab my new Danskos the second he's feeling ignored. He was sadly on the other side of the gate from me as I was scrubbing away, the whining was nothing short of pathetic. His look of pure rejection was really just heart breaking, especially when his expression changed the moment he saw me. The tail wags, the ears lift and he looks like he's ready to say, I've missed you so much, please come pat me, it's been a long 5 minutes. Yes, I'm a sucker, 100%...I grabbed his toys, took down the gate and let him finally be the 2 feet away from me that brings him so much comfort. Win, win, right? I'm getting my work done and he's content with his babies, no more crying.

You know the feeling when something just seems too good to be true for a little too long? I grab the bag of garbage and head downstairs, hmmm where's Bernie? I couldn't help but notice that there was a line of yarn running from my Forestland sweater, panic sets in immediately. It continues across the landing, all the way down the staircase, through the hall and into the dining room. My once neat little cake of yarn now looks like a pile of yarn vomit, Bernie is in the kitchen. He hears my audible response and comes rushing in, very proud of his accomplishment. He gets greeted with a loud, "NO" and a whack on the butt which sends him into a state of shame and he slinks back to the kitchen, I storm upstairs to assess the damage. Two hours later, I've successfully wound my beautiful yarn back into a ball, I can finally resume knitting. Surprisingly, he didn't destoy any of the yarn, there were no knots or slobber, I guess I dodged a bullet, it certainly could have been a lot worse. I should have my sweater completed today, I'm inches away from finishing the sleeve. I'll save you from asking, the sweater was on my ottoman with the yarn perched on top. In my defense, Bernie has been known to dive head first into my knitting bag and grab my squishy yarn, keep away is so much fun....

With my Forestland nearing completion, I'll be able to focus on my Marsali cardigan!! The KAL gals met on Saturday, all 12 of us, it was AWESOME!! I was in left field right out of the gates, casting on the wrong number of stitches, thinking I had too long of a tail left over. I have no idea how I mistook 132 stitches for 163, but thankfully I caught my mistake before starting the seed stitch ribbing. I didn't even make it through the first row without screwing it up, I found 2 little knit stitches sitting comfortably together pretty much at the beginning of the row. Misery does love company, Suzi decided that she wanted to make a smaller size than what she'd cast on. She was positioned between Carrie and Sandy. They were trying to convince her to somehow decrease the number of stitches after the seed stitch ribbing and if you divide this by that, blah, blah, blah... I abruptly put an end to that conversation and said I would be UNWILLING to help her if she screwed it up because I had no idea what the hell those two were trying to tell her. Needless to say I convinced her to rip it out and cast on the correct number of stitches. Barb texted me a few hours later to tell me she'd cast on with the wrong size needles, I love Knit Alongs....

I hope this cold, rainy day finds you with a little extra knitting time, I'm getting ready to make more coffee, get comfy with my knitting and listen to the third book in the Outlander series. I'm patiently waiting for the next 2 Louise Penny books to become available on Libby, I'll likely get through the entire Outlander series. We will be meeting tomorrow evening from 6-7:30 for Stitch and Bitch, I hope you can join in the fun. Make it a great day and I'll see you soon!

Katy