Much better

Now that Monday is over, I'm feeling much better. That, and the fact that it has finally gotten cold. I'm very sensitive to my environment, and when the weather isn't "right" I get irritable and uncomfortable. Seriously. It really bothers me. I think it may have something to do with my seasonal affective disorder. My circadian rhythms are already screwed up. When the weather is acting like it's spring, it just screws me up even more. And don't even get me started about daylight savings time....

Okay, on to knitting. I still don't have a pic of the completed Knit Unto Others hat. However, I decided to suck it up and start a new hat. I have some Wintuck acrylic yarn in bright red. It's worsted weight, but it's a "hard" worsted--not soft and squishy--so I'm knitting it on size 10 circulars using the magic loop method. The pattern is something I saw at the Show and Share for the Windy City Knitters' Guild. You start with an odd number of stitches (number divisible by 4 plus 1 extra stitch), then knit 2, purl 2 around. When you get to the end of the round, you will need to purl 2, but there will be only one stitch left in the round. Therefore, the second purl will start the next round. The result is a diagonally striping rib. I started it last night at Stitch 'n Bitch, but I got off-count and ended up ripping it out and starting it over this morning. I know all I had to do is k2, p2, but I can never follow any sort of pattern when I'm at Stitch 'n Bitch, because I'm too busy yapping to pay attention to what I'm doing. When I realized I was off-count, I switched over to my shawl. I've done so many rows on that one, my fingers just do the pattern without me having to know what I'm doing.

The highlight of the Stitch 'n Bitch evening came at the very beginning. I was standing over one of the stitchers, admiring her fair isle baby jumper and saying how cute it was, when a guy from the chess group (there's a large group of mostly black men who play chess at the Border's cafe) comes over to tell me that, speaking of cute, I was looking pretty cute in the light blue top I was wearing. At first, I didn't realize he was talking to me, but after looking around, I noticed I was the only one wearing light blue. So I graciously said thank you and proceded to go about my business, going to get a cup of hot chocolate, and when I came back, a stitcher joined our group and handed me a chocolate truffle and said that the same man was waiting around to give it to me but he gave up when he found out that I was married! I guess at 31, I've still got it. I brought the truffle home to show my husband (in an attempt to shame him into buying me chocolates), but he was just concerned that I was taking candy from strangers (by the way, I am not going to eat the truffle [my mother taught me to never take candy from strangers, but I feel what's the harm as long as I don't eat it!], but I am going to keep the wrapper and tape it above my lab bench so I can look at it whenever I'm feeling old and unattractive). So, I said to hubby, "at least somebody finds me attractive," and stalked off to the bedroom. Ha! (our roommate witnessed the whole event by the way, and remarked that it had suddenly got very cold in the living room) If there is not a box of chocolates waiting for me when I get home tonight, someone's in trouble.

Speaking of Stitch 'n Bitch, I have a confession to make. Way back in the early summer, we had a knitalong for making chemocaps for Windy City headhuggers. I was in charge of sending them off to WCH. But, when I finally got around to searching for their address, I found that they wanted you to fill out a form for every hat you send in, including the type of yarn you used and wash instructions. Now, this was sufficiently after I had collected the hats that some of these people had dropped out of the group. I toyed with the idea of putting down what I thought the yarn was, but then I had this horrible vision of chemo patients coming down with the hives and dying because there was wool in the hat and they are allergic. So, I have been keeping these hats, wondering what I should do with them. Do you think it would be very terrible of me to send them to the Indiana Tornado victims? That way, they're still going to charity, but we're not giving hats of unknown fiber to sick people.