public service announcement

First of all, thank you so much for all of your sweet and encouraging comments and emails this past week! I can't tell you how much your good wishes and positive thoughts mean to me. I am overwhelmed by all the love out there in knit blogland and am so grateful for your friendship and support. You guys truly are the best!! Things are much better now and I have all of you to thank for that! Your good vibes made it priority mail all the way to the islands and made a world of difference. I know I've been MIA, but I anticipate being back with a little more regularity now. Unfortunately, my online time may be curtailed due to a different craziness of a more mundane variety, known as the end-of-the-semester crunch, but I still hope to be able to pop in from time to time.

Yes, there is knitting to be had in this post, but it comes in the form of a PSA: Knitting violence is wrong. My friends, it is with a heavy heart that I must confess to you that I am a former perpetrator of knitting violence. My name is Chris, and I am an abusive knitter. My story, unfortunately, is not all that uncommon; perhaps you might even recognize yourself in my woeful tale. Like every abuser before me, I blamed the victim. %$&*@%* I mean, Beautiful Sampler Stole- it was all her fault. We got off to a less than stellar start with the invisible cast-on. The splitty hairiness of the alpaca during K2tog added to the friction, and unable to decipher the elusive directions in Row 6, I found myself increasingly on edge. After the second frogging of the night, I completely lost it. In a fit of complete and utter knitterly rage, I flew my size 2 Inox circs and Alpaca Cloud across the room and screamed sailorly potty-mouth obscenities, the likes of which you've never heard. Novel combinations of adverbs, adjectives and nouns that have yet to find their way into our modern lexicon. I could see the fear in Mr. W's eyes when I grabbed the disavowed circs by the cord and proceeded to hurl the needles against the wall again. and again. and again. Looking at the limp remains of frogged alpaca, gnarled in my sweaty, clenched fists, I realized that I... I had a problem. Surely, no knitting deserves this kind of abuse! Luckily, remorse set in and redemption was found on the KAL page in the form of collective wisdom and Row 6 help. Though I'm now 1 repeat away from finishing the central panel, I recognize that I'm still at risk for future violent behavior, especially with the impending border panels looming in my future. Knowledge is power and awareness is key; "Stop hitting the knitting!" has become my ardent mantra during these trying times.

I realize that March went out like a lion while I was AWOL, but I don't want to let another moment pass without sharing the beautiful postcard I received last month from my wonderful Project Spectrum Postcard Swap partner, Leah. She's such a sweetheart- she even enclosed yummy chocolate (which, unfortunately, never stood a fighting chance of making it to the photo shoot) with her card. Thank you so much, Leah!!I absolutely love the card- the vellum envelope, beaded lettering and dimensional paper crafting are just gorgeous and it has been such a pleasure getting to know you this past month.

Finally, I thought I'd end with some gratuitous Bossy and Stinky pics from an early Egg Hunt this past weekend at The Waikiki Aquarium. Bossy was a little miffed about why the eggs weren't hidden and instead, just dumped onto the grass like chicken feed. Thanks to some quick and resourceful finagling on my part, I was able to explain that the Easter Bunny has to hire people to help him, especially in the week preceeding Easter, since he's obviously gearing up for The Big Egg Hiding Day. Luckily, this resonated with 4 year old logic and Bossy was ultimately stoked to "find" his eggs. I worry for Stinky, though. Her ability to "smile and show me your egg at the same time" doesn't bode too well for her simultaneously chewing gum and walking in the future!