Mossy Cottage Knits

Battah, battah, battah!

MaryB, Debra, any other baseball fans out there—The Mysterious K is officially no longer a Safeco Field virgin! On Wednesday, she went with a friend to a game between the Mariners and the Twins. Oh, wait, what’s that? Why, it’s an emphatic (and slightly painful) poke from a little TMK sitting on my shoulder reminding me I’m supposed to tell you they sat Right Behind Home Plate. Apparently that’s important.

TMK’s enthusiastic description of the game when she got home sounded something like, “Blah blah blah strike blah blah blah out blah blah blah stupid umpire blah blah blah pitcher blah blah blah blah homebase blah blah blah blah batter blah blah blah blah Edgar Martinez!!” Don't tell her, but I found the story of The Little Boy and his Licorice much more interesting. Apparently you don’t need a Bionicle, Transformer, G-I Joe, or Pokemon to entertain you if you are the proud possessor of a piece of licorice. The little boy of the story sat in front of TMK and spent the game doing all the creative and disgusting things with his stick of licorice that little boys do, including waving it furiously around, curling it on his head and wearing it as a hat, eating some of it, dropping it, picking it up, eating some more, sticking it up his nose, eating some more, and waving it around again, all punctuated by long, lingering looks of intense desire directed at The Hot Chocolate Guy, The Popcorn Guy, The Hotdog Guy, The Soda Guy, The Pretzel Guy... Maybe it’s just me, but the little boy sounded vastly more entertaining than the game. (Of course, this comes from someone who is relatively new to baseball, and even thought until recently that the "seventh inning stretch" was an inning that was played reeeeeaaaalllly slowly. Imagine my surprise when I found it was when people stood up, stretched, and rubbed their numb bums—all of which was revealed to me when I was at my first game and had to ask TMK why everyone was standing up. This gets a good belly laugh out of TMK whenever she remembers it—or tells it, which she likes to do uh-lot.)

Knitting Knews
I’ve reached the top part of the Baby Norgi. Since the reindeer with the crooked legs and the only microscopically more attractive trees have been banished, I had to choose between leaving the top part plain or repeating one of the existing motifs. I had had puh-lenty of knitting round after round of plain yellow stockinette lower down in the sweater, thank you very much, so I decided to go with a motif and chose to repeat the rows of little green diamonds with one row of yellow in between. Much to my frustration, the row of yellow, specifically the one stitch that was supposed to separate a lower diamond from its corresponding upper diamond, got sucked into the fabric and essentially disappeared. The result? I now have a little sweater that looks like a cross between a beginner’s Norwegian sweater and a jester’s costume. Picture on Monday. (And I know I promised a picture of the felted clogs today. My bad, but in my defense, I was under the weather the one night when the the clogs, the digital camera, and I were all in the same vicinity. Fer sher next week. Thank you to Dear Reader Lisa from Ontario about the suggestion to try Lopi!)