Be Careful What You Wish For

I distinctly remember saying to someone, once, just a few years ago, "I love knitting so much. Gosh, I love knitting. I love knitting so much I wish I could just knit and knit all day, every day, and never do anything else but knit."

Those words, spoken from innocence, have been looping in my brain for the past few weeks, because some evil eavesdropping genie granted my damned wish. I have in fact been knitting and knitting all day, every day, and not doing anything else but knitting. I have a new furrow in my brow that bears a striking resemblance to a US 0 dpn; and one night I was getting ready for bed when I noticed this on my chest and upper arms:



I appear to have broken out in lace charting symbols.

My doctor, who doesn't knit (he prefers Mountmellick embroidery) is stupified. I hoped he'd have some cream to clear it up, but apparently there are no other verified cases in the annals of medicine. Isn't that special? Any minute I expect a tap on the door and speedy private transport to an isolation ward at the Mayo Clinic.

Which might be nice. I could get a lot of knitting done in between probes or CAT scans or whatever horrid nosy things they'll do to me in the name of science. (I saw E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial five times. I know what those scientific probe people are like.)

In other words, I have a lot of knitting to do and I have been doing a lot of knitting. Would you like to see it? I'd like to show it to you.

But I can't, because it's almost all knitting for things that other people want to publish in their books and magazines. And those people get justifiably peevish if their designers offer unauthorized sneak previews. And then they don't want to use your work, and then they don't pay you, and then you are forced to live on the cold, mean streets without money for food or yarn.

No yarn!

Which makes it difficult, suddenly, to blog about my knitting.

But I was determined to find a way, and so I took some pictures of a sock I'm working on and asked the publisher if I could, pretty please, show it to you. Just to prove that I haven't given up and joined the macramé achievers. And since I am the publisher, I said yes, but only after I agreed to engage in behavior so vile and degrading you can't even see it on the Internet without paying a stiff recurring membership fee that is billed discreetly to your account as "SARAH PALIN 2012."

(I only mention this so you'll understand how much I love you.)

Here is the sock.



It's going to be in three colors of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, two of which you can see here.

(If you think I've been knitting with an awful lot of Lorna's Laces lately, you're what they refer to in my neck of the piney woods as darn tootin'.)

The inspiration was Victorian wallpaper, which I will have you know is not the only thing that inspires me, although after this and this you might well wonder.

(I wondered. I wondered aloud to Beth Casey, who owns Lorna's Laces. "Beth," I asked, "What is it with me and the Victorian wallpaper?" "Sweetie," she replied, "you're very, very gay." So I checked, and she's right, I am.)

But there's no wallpaper in my apartment. Which raises another question, but I have to stop typing now and go put more Calamine Lotion on my yarn overs.