Friday, October 2, 2009

Friday Fragments


This is the first time I have written a Friday fragments post on a Friday! I've had Monday editions, and maybe a few other days' editions too; I'm not sure, but the concept was created by Mrs. 4444 over at Half Past Kissin' Time. It's a place for all those partial post ideas that never turned into whole posts. Check her out!

First Fragment:

I big puffy heart my Knit Night knitters! (Hi!) Last night I took in instructions for a new project I’m working on. The book is from England and I just didn’t understand this wording for shaping the sleeves, both of which are knit identically:

Dec 1 st at each end of next 9 rows (ok), then on every foll alt row until 33 sts rem (huh?), then on foll 4 rows (ok), ending with WS facing for next row. 25 st.

The way I understood this, even after reading it over and over, and even aloud once, was that one side of the sleeve would be different from the other. And both sleeves would be identical, so I couldn’t even interpret the directions to mean that I was knitting a right sleeve and a left sleeve.

But I read it aloud to my knitting group, and within just seconds, they understood the directions. The at each end wording applies to all of the decrease rows, not just the first 9 and the last 4. OK!

Maybe my problem is that I’m an English teacher by training, and I parse every word to near-death, or, more likely, I’m just slow when it comes to interpreting instructions…

Second fragment:

Dh has been out of town all week. Yesterday I heard shrieking in the basement, and thought, RATS! My cat has brought in another bird. It sounded like a bluejay. So I closed the door at the top of the basement stairs, opened the door from the basement to the outdoors, and warned dh to check for a bird when he got home. (He usually works in his basement office.)

When this cat adopted us twelve years ago, we put a cat door in the basement door to the back yard. A friend warned us that we would have every creature in the neighborhood in our basement, and I laughed at the idea. Really, would chipmunks, squirrels, and birds learn to use a cat door???

Well, no they wouldn't. What she meant, and what we soon learned all too well, was that the CAT would bring every creature he caught in the neighborhood into our basement. Oh…..

Anyway, dh arrived home when I was at knitting and went into the basement to discover the head – only.the.head – of a rabbit. (Rabbits can shriek; don't ask how I already knew this.)

Oh, yuck. And I’m sorry to share this story with you, but I’m hoping that doing so will take the thought of it out of my head and put it someplace else. Sorry if it’s in yours now…..

Third fragment:

My family makes fun of me for throwing just about everything out, or taking it to charity, when I determine that I have no use for it. A couple of weeks ago I found this shoe belonging to my younger daughter. She just checked her apartment in LA and doesn’t have the mate. So she has chastised ME, saying See what happens when you throw things away.

Well, I have the shoe. She doesn’t have the mate, so just who threw what away, I’d like to know. Huh? Huh?

Fourth Fragment:

The leaves here are starting to turn red. Yay! A pretty fall is ahead.

4 comments:

hokgardner said...

Well the instructions still don't make sense to me. Could be because I'm still tired. I think I'm going back to bed.

Sara Bonds @ Ordinary and Awesome said...

Poor rabbit! Makes me sad. Animals are hunters by nature. Our cats are indoors and our dog only goes out with us. So, no dead animals here. Dead insects are another story. I once had a bug set on my head by one of my cats. Eek!

Happy (late) FF!

Keeffer said...

i kept that shoe for 2 years and 9 months. little did i know that 3 years would have been the point at which the mate would have been found. ordinarily i NEVER would have thrown it away, but i was trying to purge and be neater and tidier. and SEE what happened!

Mrs4444 said...

You're brave to try a pattern in another dialect. Aren't knitting groups great?!

Welcome to FF! Thanks for joining in :)

Yikes~ A rabbit head?! YUCK!

Your family will thank you one day for not being a packrat. Unfortunately, it will be after you are gone... :)