On the one hand, I'm feeling very happy. Mr Deplume and I are going away for the weekend with friends. It should be a lot of fun. We'll take pictures and shop and eat and have a great time. The kids will be having fun watching movies and eating out with Grandma and Grandpa. 


But on the other hand, my friend is suffering, and I cannot help. Her brother was killed and all I want to do is be there for her (even though she lives three states away). Also thousands of people in Haiti are grieving their loved ones, and again, there's nothing I can do. I can hand some money to an organization who is helping, and pray, but it still feels like it's not enough. 


Back in another part of my brain, I'm trying to find a knitting project that excites me. I'd prefer one that involves that alpaca yarn I bough last year. I've been searching for weeks, and cannot find anything I want to make. Why I'm so obsessed with finding the perfect pattern defies reason. 


My brain is a difficult place to live sometimes. derr. Maybe the trip will clear my head. Let's hope. 

Can I fix it?

I am calling on you experts and fearless folks alike to tell me what to do. I've been working on this flingin' flangin' "afghan" for far too long (well over a year). Entrelac is only fun for the first 100 squares or so. After that, it's more tedious than stockinette, and slower, too. I think the project is pretty in any case, and would love to see it finished some day, so I've been working on it again lately. I got through an entire row of squares the other night and decided to switch to a longer needle so I could see how wide it's shaping up to be, and I found this:

You see, there are not supposed to be cube-corner-shaped bits on blankets. I screwed up, by adding a square jutting out from what should have been the right edge of the work. For those of you not well-versed in entrelac, there should be alternating diagonal squares and triangles that create smooth edges up the sides of the piece. I've illustrated it thusly:

And of course I didn't notice this until after I had completed an entire row, consisting of hours of work. I know I could rip back and reknit the whole thing properly, but I know myself. If I start frogging this baby, I'm never going to re-knit. Too mind-numbing.

So my question is this: Would it work for me to snip the yarn, unravel just that square, and bind up the eight live stitches somehow so that the work can go on without undoing all of this? If so, where is the best place in the square to break the yarn? Then again, I might have screwed up something earlier, too, if I managed to attach the errant square on two sides, which should not have really been possible.

In the immortal words of Winnie the Pooh, Oh bother.

Ranty Ranterson updates her blog.

Disclaimer: My apologies to those who are not into running, barefooting, or semantics. Feel free to move along and wait for the next post. I promise there will be new knitting content in the very near future.

On to my rant of the day

I just read this on a well-known running message board, in a forum geared toward experienced runners, most of who wear normal running shoes:

I checked out barefoot forum, but it seems to be populated predominantly with hard-core BF runners! I'm not there...yet. Some poster got repeatedly chastised for referring to running in VFFs as barefoot running.

Just for make sure for myself, I checked out the dictionary for a definition:
bare·foot (bârft) adv. & adj. With nothing on the feet.

I grow weary of the lack of clarity when people claim to BFR when really they just aren't in big clumpy running shoes. How is it so hard for people to get over that fact that they aren't really running barefoot if they are wearing shoes? Even when the shoes have visible toes. Running in minimalist shoes is a great thing-- but even little shoes are still shoes. It is not a value judgment to say that one is wearing shoes. It is a fact.

It reminds me of the first of The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz,"1. Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean." I know that Ruiz was speaking more metaphorically, but its wisdom holds true here, too. Why is it so hard for people to just speak the truth? Live the truth? Most agree that's important in the big picture. Isn't that big picture made up of a zillion small moments? It seems to me that if we work on being true in each little experience, the big truths will be easier to come by.

Here ends Norm's Tuesday tirade.

P.S. I'll probably come back and edit this post in the very near future. I feel like I'm on to something here but am communicating it poorly.