funk? What funk?

Nothin' relieves a funk like:



Swatching.

My husband, (who apparently like punishment) spend hours yesterday helping me figure out a lace pattern that had been kicking my butt for months.

Imagine, its the middle of the night in a hotel room in Asheville. You can't sleep, and all that's going through you mind is the new pattern you'd bought earlier that day. Your first attempt at lace, and its right there, just a few feet from you. Oh, and right next to your sleeping best friend that you don't want to wake up. In the pitch dark, you poke through the bags from that day's Stash Enrichment Expediton, feeling for the one hank that you rolled into a ball earlier. Once found, you slink off to the bathroom and settle on the floor, having turned the light on only after the door was shut. Your butt already going numb, you cast on, then start the pattern. Eleven rows in you see that there's a Serious Problem here. You rip back, cursing your bleary eyes and your stupidity at sitting on some nasty hotel bathroom floor. Then cast on again, only to realize that again there's something seriously wrong with the pile of snot that's supposed to resemble lace. Third time? Same thing. You give up and lay down in bed, still wide awake, and now royally pissed off. The hell with the Classic Elite Four Seasons and to hell with Sirdar. Who needs lace, anyway?

On that trip, I went down to the hotel computer and email those folks at Sirdar about the stupid instructions. I don't didn't know much about lace, but I do know one thing. If you need to have the same number of stitches at the end of 11 rows that you began with, you darned well better have the yo's and k4tog's equal out. They said everything was fine, and that I was just too dumb for lace (ok, maybe not those exact words, but some just like it). But! HaHa! Excel spreadsheets save everything

(If I knew how to add a shot of the kickin' spreadsheet he made for me to the blog, I would. Just imagine it, will ya?)

We shall see how it turns out, though.

On a side note, thanks for the advice with the old love. I responded back with all I wrote before, sans whining. Its just that after the train wreck that was my life when he knew me, the way things are now (mind-numbingly awesome) just seemed so...unreal on paper. But oh, heavens, I will take the cottage on the pond with the swans, and the sweet library job anyday over that world I left behind. And, as my friend Lisa (of the hotel room above, oddly enough) told me, "Consider this: At least you aren't stereotypically starving in a third world country. Or stereotypically Fran Drescher. How awful would that be?" Damn straight.

Hmmmm, did someone mention swans?



Mama and three cygnets, taken this morning on the way to Cummington. Not a bad life, here.