About Me

My photo
Ten years into widowhood, after one year of incredible happiness and nearly 14 years of single blessedness. Retired, and mostly enjoying it. Still knitting. [Zen]tangling.again after a brief hiatus.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Have you heard the one about...

...the minister, the priest, and the rabbi? Well, last night was even better. Dallas Stake hosted a fireside that turned out to be not just for the singles. This is the information that I received via email through the singles:

The Interfaith Council Meeting sponsored by the Dallas Texas Mission ... will be asking President Smith (Dallas Texas Mission President), a Rabbi, and a Moslem, what the Abrahamic Covenant means to them.

It was superb. We had people of all colors and faiths, including a Sikh gentleman in his distinctive turban. But mostly, we were People of the Book. I can’t wait to tell my Muslim friend when I get to my building this morning. You better believe that I put my name on their mailing list, because next time we are discussing Moses, and we will be meeting in a synagogue.

[Maybe there will be halvah for dessert?]

In knitting news, I added another inch or two on the scarf for my friend, thought a little about the facings on Autumn Asters, and resisted the temptation to think about Firstborn’s socks or doll sweaters. This morning I knitted the left facing, and il me plaĆ®t beaucoups [I like it big muches, as one of my girls used to say].

The right facing is protesting like a kid who doesn’t want to get up for early morning seminary. I think this might be the first, and only, design flaw in the pattern. The buttonholes, as viewed from the outside of the sweater, are horizontal: two stitches wide and one stitch high. The buttonholes on the facing are circular, formed by a YO [yarnover]; they are essentially one stitch wide and one stitch high. At this writing, I am about halfway along the purl row that stabilizes the YO’s. I think I will tink back and work a double YO, wherein I wrap the yarn twice around the needle and then drop one of the loops on the next row, to see if that sufficiently enlarges the hole without totally messing up the rest of the facing. It’s either that, or I work the bits between the buttonholes in sections for two rows before rejoining them, which to my way of thinking would be excessively fiddly.

There is fiddly, which I generally don’t mind [i.e., cables, bobbles, nupps], and then there is excessively fiddly [i.e., weaving in at least four more ends when I thought I was done with that nonsense].

My friend Joy asked at Knit Night last week why I hadn’t just knit the sweater in the round, using steeks, and then cut it apart after stabilizing the fabric alongside the to-be-cut edges. If I knit this again, that’s probably what I’ll do. I ain’t afraid of no steeks! But on this sweater, I have followed the pattern almost exactly, and the pattern says work it flat. Sometimes I’m a thinking knitter, and sometimes I am content to be a sheep.

Time to stop typing, gather up my stuff, and start getting ready for work. This is shaping up to be an I’m driving morning, and I can already see that there won’t be time to pin out and block the sweater before I go. Close, but no [bubblegum] cigar.

There is Nutella in my pantry, and there are whole-grain bagels in the fridge. Can life get better?

2 comments:

Kristen said...

That fireside sounds like it would have been worth a plane ticket to fly to Texas. I love that kind of stuff.

Jenni said...

But rumor has it that you are driving in so that you can stop by the house and see me to celebrate my b-day since we couldn't get all the family together last week. What better reason that this to miss out on seeing your train friends.