Knit Sisters

While I was confined by illness to my home, I spent most of my time blowing my nose daintily into a lace handkerchief, cursing the Three Fates (not to mention the the Nine Tastes, the Five Spices, the Four Tops, and the Seven Deadly Sins…only to arrive at last at the conclusion that I temporarily hated everybody), and swilling DayQuil like a sailor on leave, but I also managed to come to the end of time:

It was far less apocalyptic than one might have imagined.

For those who are interested, the specs:
1) Just over six skeins of Malabrigo (worsted weight) in color Scarlet. So in other words, seven skeins. Those two amounts being equivalent when you get down to brass tacks. Right. So. Moving on.

2) One skein Malabrigo in color Velvet Grapes. As the contrast color, Velvet Grapes was perfect. And I’ve got a lot of it left.

3) Pattern: My own, with heavy assists from Fiona Ellis and Ann Budd. My most heartfelt thanks, ladies! Couldn’t have done it without you!

4) Needles: US size 7 32″ circular and 16″ circular Addi Natura. Renewed my love of bamboo knitting needles, my collection of which had fallen into benign desuetude.

5) A couple of episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, the entire first season of The Muppet Show, a disappointing viewing of the remarkably dull and shallow Marie Antoinette, and several hours of fine conversation.

Et voilà! Time Out of Mind.

And lo, when the sweater was finished, she began to feel better and therefore far less surly and she went forth into the world, singing and dancing and telling all who would listen of her virtual resurrection!

Fortunately, this recovery occurred in time to spend most of a day with the lovely and witty Em, the kind and talented Marc, their youngest daughter, and her tartufo:

This last-minute save did not entirely make up for missing out on much of the weekend, but it made me a whale of a lot happier than not seeing them at all.

Naturally, Miss A. was part of the proceedings:

What does a girl have to do to get a drink around here?

Alex kept a watchful eye over our smallest diner and her tartufo:

Hey, kid, you gonna eat that?

At some point shortly after this photo was snapped, Alex announced, with a note of alarm in his voice, “We have lost one-quarter of the tartufo! We have lost one-quarter of the tartufo!”

After a frantic search, the AWOL tartufo quarter was discovered wedged into a crack in the banquette, melting inexorably into a sticky, lubricious puddle between the two segments. It was unclear how this could ever be cleaned up.

Unless the restauranteur owns dogs.

And on that note, our dinner and our day out came to an end. Marc, Em, and the girls set off on their long car trip home and Alex and I—unused to the vigorous physicality and relentless inquisitiveness of small children—lapsed immediately into a coma.

We can only hope, for the sake of Marc and Em’s sanity, that the girls, buckled into their car seats and stuffed with carbohydrates, followed suit shortly thereafter.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 11:35 am and is filed under Heavy sweaters, Time out of mind. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.