Rush

I hate it when the phone rings late at night or early in the morning. Nothing can send me into such a panic like this does. Remember, I grew up in an era when the telephone was not ubiquitous and was pretty much reserved for emergency communications. Well, at our house anyway. So when the phone rang this morning before 8AM I immediately assumed something terrible had happened.

Actually it was something wonderful and amazing. My sister who lives in Arizona, forgetting that California is an hour behind them in the winter months, called to tell me she finally has a computer, email, the whole nine yards. She has been trying for years to talk her husband into getting a computer. So finally, realizing that she was going to buy one whether he wanted to or not, he agreed. But he balked at the price. They got one from a friend who was upgrading. So now she doesn't have to call me at some ungodly hour and scare the bejesus out of me.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday teaching a couple of returnee knitters. It was good for me. They're both semi-continental knitters. "Semi" because they each had their own bastardized version of how to do it. And good for me since I don't knit continental. Well, I can, but I don't. Except for Fair Isle. Anyway, the mother was very easy to work with and was soon sailing away on her five year afghan project. The daughter, who never learned to cast on because her mother always did it for her, was a different matter. She was like double-wrapping her needle when she purled. It was a mess. I think she's okay now but she's pretty one-way so may have slipped back into her old habits overnight. So she'll have something that looks like condo knitting.

And b/p knitter has a slowly growing scarf on the needles. I tried to show her how to loosen up her stitches so that she wouldn't have to work so hard. I know that something is going on and that she's understanding what she's doing because she was concerned that switching at this point would cause her knitting to look different. So I'm encouraged that she's getting it. I've taught her to purl but she doesn't remember it but maybe when we start the next project it will come back to her. I sorta dread ribbing.

Tonight is knit together night. I haven't seen any of the group since last week so that will be fun. More progress on the poncho is my planned knitting. I got a third circular needle so I can handle all those stitches. I've been using two needles, a la socks on two circulars, but it's still too cumbersome. I will use the third needle kinda like using dpns. I really need to finish the poncho. It's cold here, or it's supposed to be getting cold. A drop of 25 degress has been predicted for the end of the week.

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