Sheep Shots

I picked up Diamond Patch last night for the first time in several days, and sat down to work on it (relatively mindless knitting) while watching Good Night, and Good Luck (review follows). I was knitting breezily along on diamond #11, then 12 (the one where the joining.into.a. circle takes place, and for the love of FSM, I wish I had taken a picture!

I pressed on, though, and started #13, yanking, stretching, pulling to narrow and lengthen. I "hung it up" by the points to let gravity work it's magic, but dudes, 11" of ease in a "little summer sweater"--I don't think so! Pictures! We need pictures!


So I ripped it back. Yep, the whole damned thing. Into little balls of cotton wonderfulness.

It hurt. Oh, it hurt.

And I coughed and sneezed and got some seriously puffy eyes over the whole thing.

I can certainly understand how fiber workers develop brown lung!

And then, Dear Readers, I started over, smaller.

52-stitch diamonds (no matter what my gauge swatch (yeh, twice, why) said) are too big (The swatch measured 8", in the work; the diamonds in the sweater were 9.5"). And 40-stitch diamonds are too small (6").

46-stitch diamonds should be "just right" (to quote Goldilocks) at somewhere a hair south of 8". That should give me a finished size of right around 48" (or maybe just a tad narrower).



That's the last frogging diamond being reworked "on the hoof" so to speak (not unlike knitting right off the back of a bunny).

At 1 diamond a day, and 30 diamonds to make, I should meet my target date: Beginning of Summer.









Movie Review: Good Night, and Good Luck was enthralling. So much so that I didn't notice George Clooney was actually in it! (I knew he directed--I read the paper!) So much so that I swear to FSM that I did not notice until the freakin' end that the whole thing is in black and white.

I will say that viewers who were not "Children of that Era" (i.e. born after about 1950 or so) may find the story a little,um, boring, perhaps. Even with Clooney. (I am not a fan of his. I always prefered "Carter.")

But those of us who lived through McCarthy (even if we were children--those hearings are my earliest TV memory, how sad is that?) and Nixon/Watergate, may find subtle messages--"loyalty oaths," convictions without trial--for our times.

When it was over, all I could say was " that was good." And then I sat back to ponder parallels.

Welcome, spring! My Long Drive the other day took me through PA farm country. You can sure tell when it's spring in Pennsylvania! Just crank down the windows and inhale! Chemical fertilizer on the fields, manure on the fields (I confess that I prefer the natural smell of manure to the chemical smell of That Other Stuff--neither hangs around very long, which is a Very Good Thing), the pungent aroma of fresh-squashed skunk.

I read somewhere that the reason skunks are so abundant as road-kill, flattened fauna, and dead stuff, is that they have no real natural enemies and so, do.not.understand.cars. Squirrels, rabbits, even deer have the good sense to be afraid of a ton of metal barreling toward them and usually get the f*ck out.of.the.way. Not skunks. Nope. They react to motor vehicles the same way that they react to any other challenge: Tail raised in defiance right up to the bitter *splat*