A Half-blind Planaria

I would give you a visual, but my camera is yodeling that the batteries need to be recharged or replaced. They seem to be good for about one shot these days, and woe be unto me if I do not post that shot while it is still fresh.

Anyway, that’s what the doll skirt currently resembles. Click here if you do not remember planaria from your high school biology class. [I liked to suck them up in the pipette and whoosh them out into the water. I am personally responsible for dozens of cases of planaria vertigo in late 1967 or early 1968.]

I call it a half-blind planaria because of the single remaining split stitch marker, which is threaded through the first decrease on the last decrease round. It looks like a googly eye, parked there a little over an inch below where the stitches increase dramatically and the DP’s warp the fabric.

I have finished all the decreases down the thigh and calf, have doubled the stitches to form the ruffle, and have transferred them all to size 0 DP’s (that’s not a possessive; that’s a contraction, for you grammarians out there) and am on my third round of ruffle. A hand-wound sphere smaller than a golf ball, is all that’s left of the first cake of yarn.

This yarn is a joy to knit. The pattern is clever. And I am thankful to be knitting it for a doll, and not for myself or one of my daughters. If this were a human-sized skirt and I had not lengthened it dramatically, I would be soldiering along over 464 stitches at this point, and I would probably be taking my own name in vain.

I had a blast at Knit Night last night. There were only three of us; the local knitting guild had their meeting as well. I folded my tents around 8:30 and went over to Joann’s, where I did not find suitable ribbon for the lacing up the back of the skirt. I also did not find flesh-toned shirring elastic (elastic thread). I shall have to be creative about this. I’m thinking that a trip to The French Knot (a needlepoint shop just up the road) is in order on Saturday. That’s where I found the skinny silk-blend yarn to stitch up my Sunrise Circle Jacket last year. I’m not sure what to do about the elastic situation. Twenty-four years ago I could go to Spindletop in Dallas and buy a rainbow assortment of elastic thread for sweater cuffs and hat ribbing. I bought some in aqua or turquoise and used it when I made the dress of hand-dyed hand-spun wool at a class I took from the Spinners and Weavers Guild, circa 1986.

Poor Fourthborn! She loved the color of that dress, but she didn’t like to wear it. This was, of course, before she realized and could articulate that she is sensitive to wool. [This is the child who, at three or four, could touch fabric and tell silk from faux, and who announced after rubbing a snippet of fabric from some bridesmaid gowns I was making, “It’s pretty, Mommy. It’s pretty, but it’s not rubby.”]

Smart kid.

The April issue of the Ensign arrived at work yesterday. I took it out of the plastic sleeve and put it up in my cubby and completely forgot about it in favor of knitting through lunch. According to the cover, there are several articles on having the courage to marry. I wonder if any of them address the issues of those of us who are single-again? If so, I may be rolling up the magazine and beating some of the brethren about the head and shoulders at the next dance. Meanwhile, I need to finish getting ready for work. I have cereal in my cubby at work, and I could start reading those articles while eating my breakfast this morning.