I had a knitting disaster yesterday. I am working on the black scarf for my friend at the coffee place. It has to be perfect, since she is paying $50 for it. She wants to ends to be tapered, so I have to use the pattern I made up with knit two together and then yarn over. I worked on it about 3 hours, and had about 4 feet or more finished. I noticed that where I had added a new skein, I had dropped a stitch, the scarf was narrower in the middle, and thought that I really needed to go back the eight inches or so, so I took it off the needles and unraveled, and then very calmly tried to find the stiches to put back on the needles. You know where this is going.
This is very furry black yarn called Fun Fur. The black, I swear, is silkier and fluffier than all the other colors I have worked with and I really like it better than any other yarn. I could NOT see the stiches to put them on the needle. I tried to calm down. Tried again and failed. Row after row, trying to catch 25 stitches and finding it impossible. I was feeling a breakdown coming on. I called to George, who tried to help me by holding the piece up to a light, so I could see the stiches. I almost made it that time, but there was one stitch that was not on the needle and had unraveled three rows down. I was upset. I decided that I had to unravel the whole piece, and George had to help, since it caught at both edges each time we went around.
Now I wanted to cry. I thought of my mom, and a child's hat that she was working on, edged in eyelash yarn, and how she had to unravel it and she said, "I almost bawled." At 95 years old, we are still "almost" crying over yarn. So...I held my tears, but I told George NOT to kid around, since this was serious and I was almost hysterical. He caught the drift right away and shut up, knowing full well that I was all the way hysterical.
Next problem was seeing the two strands of yarn all over the living room floor as we tried to roll it up without getting tangled. I wanted to cry again. I got it all back into three balls of yarn, put each in a plastic bag and started over. The yarnover stitch is very hard to see, so you better not drop a stitch...I am doing it all over again, the same way, but I am being much more careful since I have now learned yet another lesson the hard way. The really frustrating part is that I have knit so many scarves and this has never happened before. Black! Black is impossible to see the stiches, and that is the difference.
Smoothie: Time for a smoothie. George got the blender up from the basement and I made a banana smoothie...just the thing to make the knitting blues go away.
Happy Sunday morning.
Banana and Pear Smoothie Serves 1 or 2 if you're feeling generous.
1 large ripe banana
1 medium pear
1/4 cup apple juice
1/2 cup low fat plain yoghurt
1/2 cup skim milk or soy milk
1/2 t. vanilla
(I add one packet of Nutrasweet)
1. Peel and roughly chop the banana and pear
2. Add the banana, pear and apple juice to the blender. Blend until smooth
3. Add the yoghurt, milk and vanilla and blend for a further 30 seconds.
4. Serve chilled
