Sunday, September 2, 2007

Dish Rag Tag........I'm it!


Funny....I discovered an entry I had written and forgot to post! It made me think about my many friends. I am very blessed in my friendships. A couple of weeks ago when I was at a talk at our LYS about Andean Knitting, I realized that I had made many new friends there. It was reminiscent of "Cheers", remember when the door would open and everyone at the bar would shout "Norm!"? Now when I walk into the yarn shop, I always recognize most of the faces sitting around the table knitting, and many of those faces have become friends. I love that!





I am playing Dish Rag Tag(see http://yarnmiracle.com/ for explanation) this summer.....I just got the "baton" last week, the box crammed with goodies from my team mate in Washington. I think the most fun was the anticipation, waiting for the box to be delivered to me, reading all my teams posts about the race and what they got in the box when it was their turn. I got mine on Wednesday evening but I couldn't start knitting my dish rag right away. I had been commissioned to create a piece, a gourd, for a wedding present. A friend of mine's daughter is getting married this weekend and he wanted to give her one of my pieces. I had to have it done Wednesday night! The same day my Dish Rag Tag box arrived! I got the piece done, it turned out fabulous....he loved it. I hope his daughter likes it too. Anyway, late that night, I made myself a sandwich and took it to bed with me along with my knitting. Even though I knitted a quick swatch and checked my gauge, the dish rag I started was too big! Ripped it out, cast on fewer stitches, and...the same thing. Rippit again, cast on again, and by then it was midnight. I fell asleep, dreamed of a dish rag that kept growing larger and larger......every time I measured it, it was larger than before! I woke up frazzled, because this is a race after all and I was trying to get the dishrag knitted up so I could mail the box on to the next person before the post office closed on Thursday. No such luck....I did have to work at my "real"job after all (how else can I afford yarn and art supplies???!!) During lunch hour, while I was knitting on my dishrag, I realized the reason it was larger than it really needed to be, and the reason I kept ripping it out the night before, was because I was so tired, I had miscalculated the number of stitches I needed to cast on! I was working with multiples of four but was so tired that I couldn't even remember what 4 x 9 equalled!!!!! So, my dishrag is about 11" square. The rules stated it needed to be at least 9" square....at least I won't be disqualified due to size!!!!!!! I got it to the post office Friday morning. It should arrive Tuesday at its next stop. I hope my teammate likes her "goodies". I won't tell you what I included for her so that I don't spoil the surprise for her. GO SKANKS WITH HANKS!!!!