Mossy Cottage Knits

Bunny Attack!

In my last entry I wrote how on my journey south to my car in the morning, I inevitably drift helplessly north to my little vegetable garden first. And in the evening, despite my attempts to head directly to my door, I drift right past the door to the garden for another peek. Which is why Friday, as soon as I arrived home, I discovered this:

Discovered what, you ask? It’s a vegetable bed; we know you have a vegetable bed; you’ve told us so ad nauseum. Not the bed; the stuff in the bed. See, when I left in the morning, other than the baby veggies, the only other thing in the bed was the decorative stake in the upper-right-hand corner. Everything else? New. Not of my purchasing. Not of my installing. My garden had been guerrilla cute-ed!

By process of elimination, I have narrowed the gardening-guerrilla list to one of two fellow knitters, initials GB or LK. Anyone want to confess? Hmm?

Whoever you are, however you thought this might affect me, it so did. I gaped, I stared, I touched, I doubted my eyes, I may possibly have hopped the bunnies across the dirt going “boing, boing, boing,” and finally…I cried. Not a lot, but there was definite ocular leakage. Thank you for this wonderful RAOK that I am enjoying so much.

I’m still plugging away on the Good-Enough Gansey which is, however, rapidly becoming the Merely Tolerable Gansey. I’m still determined to finish it, though, as evidenced by a particularly bulldoggish, stubborn set to my jaw whenever I work on it. I’m thisclose to finishing the body, which was knit in the round and then split for the back and the front. The front is done, the back was 1” away from being done but some froggage happened last night. It played out thusly:

I'm knitting, knitting, knitting, feeling bulldoggish, accomplished, smug, excited about almost being done with the hard part.

I lift the sweater up to enjoy my handiwork. My stomach drops as I see a mistake.

I remind myself that the mistake is on the back, that it wouldn't be noticeable by someone who stared at the sweater for even a good hour, that this is the Good-Enough Gansey and that mistakes are allowed, tolerated, encouraged, even desirable.

Convinced, I pick up the needles and start off again, confident, reassured, committed to the idea of knitting an imperfect sweater.

This renewed enthusiasm and idealism lasts for all of 20 stitches, however, at which point I start to knit more and more slowly, and then more slowly, my shoulders sag, and the bulldog set to my jaw vanishes. Finally, I stop knitting altogether, and drop the sweater despondently in my lap as I realize that good enough doesn't cut it. I lose the mental battle, and a measurable amount of frogging quickly follows. It now remains to be seen whether the bulldog or the frog will win.

Posted by Ryan at May 11, 2009 11:57 AM