More subway madness

Kelly wrote that she too encountered a knitter in public who was unwilling to bond, even if just with some companionable eye contact. It is weird. I don't get it.

And last night I had another run-in with someone who was rude and then accused me of being the problem. (I know, I know, at some point I have to start wondering if it's me, not them, but so far I don't think it's been my fault). What happened was that the person sitting right in front of me (note - directly in front of me) on the (crowded during rush hour) subway got up, so I took her seat. I did my usual little look around as I sat to make sure there wasn't anyone elderly, pregnant or disabled that I should be offering it to, but no, so I went about my business. But then the woman I had been standing beside said (to her friend, not to me), something like, "Well, I was here first, but I guess that doesn't matter, so whatever."

I told her (very politely, which in hindsight was far more than she deserved) that I would be happy to give her my seat if she would have the courtesy to address me directly, but she shook me off before I could finish saying that and said (again, to her friend) that I was 'just rude' and that she had 'said her piece'.

(What would have been funny is if I had then dissolved into sobs, crying, "Oh! I've been told! I see now that I've been living a life of unforgiveable sin! And she won't even let me atone for my faux pas! I will burn with the shame of my actions forever and EVER!!!" :D )

Ultimately someone near me also got off the train and I slid into his seat so Passive-Aggressive Princess Girl could sit down...which she did...pointedly turned away from me, and without a thank you. Another guy nearby and the woman he was talking to shook their heads at the Princess and advised me that I should tell her 'you're welcome'. We all exchanged annoyed looks of commiseration.

It's a full moon tonight. Maybe that explains it.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Things are no longer going so well. One of the skeins is tangled pretty badly and I'm currently occupied in rewinding the whole thing from the free end. It sucks big-time.

Fafner blanket for baby Muth

Last night I began the edging. As mentioned before, this is my first time knitting around corners and I was really looking forward to it. I was not disappointed. Kelly, it does indeed use short rows and very clever they are, too. The pattern calls for casting on 28 stitches and working the repeating cable pattern until you want to start a corner. I wanted to start the corner right away, so not much of the cable pattern got done before the turning point. :) The first row of the (left-turning) corner has you work 26 stitches in the pattern (RS), turn, and go back on the WS. The third row of the corner has you work 24 stitches in the pattern, turn, and go back on the WS. You continue to follow the pattern, working two fewer stitches on every RS row, until you hit the point where you work 2 stitches on the RS, turn, and go back on the WS. At this point, my work looked like this:


Then, the pattern has you work across 4 sts on the RS, turn, and go back on the WS. Next, you work across 6 stitches on the RS, turn, and go back on the WS. And so on, continuing to follow the pattern. I haven't quite finished going around the corner, but you will still get an excellent idea of how it works by looking at what I've done so far:


There are only two problems. Firstly, my cables on the edging so far are pretty wonky and some of the stitches are embarrassingly uneven. That's actually weird, I'm not sure why that happened. Usually my cables look quite nice.

The second problem is that the edging is only about 5" wide, which is going to give me a finished blanket of three feet square. I was kind of hoping for something a little larger, even just a few inches longer on each dimension. So (depending on how much cream I have left, and I suspect I will have quite a bit), I may do a second edging once I've sewn everything together. I'm not thinking of doing anything fancy - simple garter stitch is actually what I have in mind, and done by picking up stitches around the outside of the blanket so I don't have to do any more sewing. But we'll see how it goes.