[SUMMARY: Even when I claim not to be talking about sex, there's a good chance I'm talking about sex.]
I will speak of relatively clean knitting... um, living rooms.
Note the utter lack of a sea of yarn right in front of the television. Note the freshly-vacuumed carpet. Note the healthful snacks† awaiting the Stupid Blanket Brigade.
I was going to move the knittliving room fibre to the Yarn Room, but decided, "Hell, if you're going to invite fibre geeks into your home, you may as well give them something to get geeked about." But do note the neat ziploc'd tidiness of it all.
Here is what Stupid Blanket looked like before the crew arrived. Note the number and position of stripes for comparison later on.
[SUMMARY: It takes a village AND the kind of preparation normally reserved for royal weddings to knit a Stupid Blanket.]
Here, Sarah takes a turn on Stupid Blanket. I'm *sure* Sarah and Red are laughing WITH Stupid Blanket rather than AT Stupid Blanket.
This is also where Sarah discovers just how tightly I knit (the blanket would be a queen-sized afghan if anybody but me was knitting it). This is also just about the time she learns just why Stupid Blanket is Stupid (through no fault of its own).
Kathryn claimed to be too novice a knitter, or the Stupid Blanket too important -- maybe a combination of the two (she wasn't taking any chances) -- for her to work on it. Kathryn had a happy, relaxed Sunday of knitting.
Here is Action Red:
Here is Executive Red:
If you can guess what we're watching by those last two lines, you can be in the secret club. If you can't, go right now to your local video store and check out Eddie Izzard's "Dressed to Kill."
After eight hours of wine, bitching, snacks, disbelief, pizza and total validation for the Marin angst over Stupid Blanket#, we accomplished this:‡
For those of you scoring at home, it's almost THREE INCHES of Stupid Blanket. In one afternoon. Of marathon Stupid Blanket knitting.§ I'd like to remind you here that it takes ten rows to the inch, 150 stitches to the row. This means we knit more than 4000 Stupid Stitches. It also means that for the first time since I started this debacle, there was *visible* progress over a single day.
[SUMMARY: Sarah and Kate are KnitGoddesses who deserve the rank of Conqueror of Stupid Blanket.]
Because of Red-and-Sarah-driven Blanket Magic, I was able to make some progress on Green Gables...
...and Big Baby...
...and even this Cleo Clutch from Spun Magazine, which you haven't seen before right now (the grand unveiling is less than climactic, isn't it?¶).
Bonus! Early-morning Cat for Scale. Please ignore the quantity of kitty litter tracked onto the chair. It's pretty much his chair and he can decorate it however he wants.
[SUMMARY: Much was accomplished. My spoiled cat has his own chair. What does a cat need with a recliner anyway?]
It should be noted (but you probably didn't, 'cause I didn't tell you to) that Megan-from-Work was also there. I'm sort of re-teaching Megan-from-Work to knit. I liked having Megan around. While she can count to four, unlike her KnitYoda^^, she can't count to SIXTY-four, so I felt ever-so-slightly better about my math skills.
[SUMMARY: Always revel in other people's shortcomings. It makes you look so much better by comparison. Yes, I'm rolling my eyes.]
And, yes, I stopped drinking for a couple of weeks (see footnotes) out of solidarity with my bestest drinking buddy, Kelley. Kelley has to be on some hellacious antibiotics for a couple of weeks to clear up a lingering ear infection††. She can't drink at all whilst under the thumb of medical science, so I offered to join her.
Among the other notes, you may have noted the prevalence of wine glasses in the photos above. Yes, I did have some wine yesterday. But I went to Jack's (you remember Jack -- he flipped me off at the Elks' poker party a few weeks back) 40th birthday Saturday night and didn't drink a drop of alcohol. Turns out Kelley didn't start her moratorium on adult beverages until Sunday, so I gave myself the excuse.
Besides, please note... STUPID BLANKET. Anaesthetic was *necessary*.
[SUMMARY. Alcohol tomorrow, alcohol yesterday, but never alcohol today‡‡.]
^FOOTNOTE (pointed): Nya-nya-ny-nya-nyahhhh
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): If you cater it, they will come.
#FOOTNOTE (we're number one!): It was put forth that 1) nobody should ever do a linen stitch baby blanket ever again, 2) linen stitching hurts your hands and 3) this was a bad week to stop drinking (any week with a Stupid Blanket is a bad week to stop drinking).
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): I so very don't get why the striping pattern changed. I started a new ball of yarn... well, see how it goes, very evenly, wide dark grey-wide dark blue-skinny light grey-wide light blue? And see that really skinny little dark blue? And see that really skinny little light blue that then goes into a wide band of what looks like the light grey? Then the skinny little light blue again? Then the wide band of light grey again? I started the new ball right in the middle of the skinny dark blue stripe. I could understand if the skinny dark blue stripe was the only anomaly, but the anomalies are taking over the pattern now.
Lie to me.
Tell me it just adds to the handmade look.
§FOOTNOTE (sexy curvy): It was such a turn-on to sit and knit on something I *wanted* to knit and know the Stupid Blanket was somehow magically getting done.
¶FOOTNOTE (paranormal paragraph): Seriously, if sex was as *meh* as that unveiling, I'd have fewer problems figuring out what to do with my time.
^^FOOTNOTE (toothy): That'd be me, in case I out-clevered myself.
††FOOTNOTE (heist, double-cross): I figured I'd better explain WHY antibiotics rather than leave it to the collective imagination of blogworld. I know where y'all can go without proper guidance.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (what the hell kind of double-double-cross is this?): Kate, do I get points for the obscure, round-about jam reference?
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