When an “Oh-Look-Shiny” person binds off, in pattern…

This was one of those days. The computer at work was misbehaving again. Or, more precisely, not behaving at all. I could access one of the programs I needed, and I could email, and I could create a document, but I could not save it where my attorney would expect to find it so he might add his electronic signature to it.

Most of the people in my office were audibly frustrated. On any given day, intermittent sighs rise and fall throughout my part of the office. Today my cubicle sounded as if I were surrounded by ocean breezes. Punctuated with the occasional cough. And the more than occasional childbirth word.

I, however, was relatively content. Every few minutes I checked to see if the system was up again. In between those reality checks, I knit. I finished the gusset at the back of the neck on the ruana, and then I began binding off the inside edge. You would not think this a particularly difficult proposition. And you would be right, except for the fact that my little breaks to test the system, or to read a post on a knitting blog, kept interfering with my ability to count stitches.

I determined, early on, that a normal bind-off would be too tight. So I tried inserting an extra loop after every two bound off stitches, something like unto a Russian bind-off. Too floppy. Picked it back and tried it every three stitches for a few inches. Still too loose. Tried it after every four stitches. Too tight. So I wound up doing 4-loop-3-loop, etc., and it worked pretty well, except for the part where I had to stop every three stitches and look at the previous bit to see if I needed to add another stitch before making the loop.

I’ve taken calculus, folks, and I was reasonably good at it. You’d think I could count to three, then four, then three again. (Maybe what was lacking was a football game in the background.)

I wonder what my coworkers would have thought, had I started counting out loud? Especially since I had to switch back to 2-loop-2 to make a nice curve around the edge of the shawl collar? I got all the way up the first inside edge, and all the way around the collar, before the system was restored around 2:00p.m., which left me three hours in which to do a day’s work. Which I did, at least the most important parts.

After dinner, I bound off the other inside edge and spent an hour or more tying the fringe into tassels. It fits, it’s gorgeous, Beloved likes it (and would like me to knit him a gunslinger poncho like Clint Eastwood wore in all those spaghetti westerns, but I told him no dice), and it’s done. Next up is the fake vest for Beloved’s sweater, and then it’s back to selfish knitting for awhile.