When good intentions happen to good people

These little angora booties are from the very tasty Last Minute Knitted Gifts, a book full of absolutely beautiful items in it for the knitting. So soft and cute and soothing and wee.

How are your teeth? Hurting? Yeah. I thought they might be. Here, let me help you out with that. You don't want to go through your whole day with painful teeth.

Aaaaaaargh! My eyes! Your eyes! Ooof! It's a trade-off, the teeth for the eyes. Not sure which is worse. But, man that is unpleasant to look at.

Allow me to explain/defend/ask for your support and pity.

First of all, the yarn is not that bright in real life. Really. I'd tell you if it was. It's a perfectly reasonable shade of... that color.

Second, my local yarn store does not carry angora. They may physically push you over if you've got a good yarn combination in your hands, but they draw the line at selling you yarn made of bunny. Aren't gonna do it. They will sell you this incredibly soft and fuzzy synthetic yarn as a substitute. Perfectly ok by me. I've got no stake in knitting with angora. Fine.

Nice lady working at the yarn store: You will have to double this up, but that won't be a problem. Just use both ends of the ball of yarn at the same time, hold the two strands together, and knit them like they were one strand of yarn. Oh, also! While you're knitting, be sure to keep the ball of yarn in a very small Ziploc bag. Very small. Like snack-size. Otherwise you're gonna have a huge, tangled mess on your hands. You don't want that, and I don't want that. You'll hate me.

Me: Ok.

Gratitude for still standing upright at the end of this exchange? Enormous! Giant, flapping red flags being waved right in front of my face? Ignored!

Me (at home, later that afternoon): La la la. Let me get a little Ziploc bag. I'm gonna make some booties! (I look in the cupboard. Gallon-sized only. Too big.) Huh! Well. I'm not going to leave the house in this situation, because that would be excessive. What can I use instead? What oh what? Hey! My PIC gave me these cute zip-top nylon bags. One of them is quite small. That should do just fine!

It was a tight squeeze, but the lady did say "very small". There was a little concern at this point that the yarn might get caught in the zipper while I was knitting, but the concern was overshadowed by how cute those booties were gonna be. Cute!

So, you know what? The yarn getting caught in that zipper was so the least of my problems. I wish that had been my biggest problem.

For this pattern, it's pretty imperative that you be able to see your stitches on the needle as you're knitting. You know, like this is a stitch. Let me put my needle in there. Not, is that a stitch or is that just fuzz? Or, is that both strands of yarn or just one? Or is it just fuzz?!

I won't curse at this time. I'll allow you to imagine the most colorful string of expletives you can, and then insert them here. Because right here is where those go. I can tell you that very clearly. I am quite sure this space right here is not fuzz, so you can put your curse words here with confidence.

{sigh}

So, this is pretty much a disaster for the reasons I've alluded to. I now have the wrong number of stitches on my needle, and there's this crazy thing you have to do in the pattern where you can't just cheat. I would rip the whole thing out and start over -- maybe not doubling the yarn -- but the store lady made the tangling-up seem like such a nightmare, I'm afraid to try to pull it out. Waaah. Life is hard.

Hey! This seems like the perfect time for some fresh-squeezed, life-lemons lemonade! Anyone need a tiny, tiny square of fuschia-ish fuzz? It's quite soft.