Curmudgeonly Ruminations

I hate knitalongs.

As revealed in yesterday's post, I hate deadlines, I don't like things I'm told (or think) I "should" do, and when the two get rolled up together, I really get cranky. Maybe that's why I'm about a year behind in filing my medical insurance paperwork.

The last time I committed to a knitalong, my knitting group and I decided it would be a lot of fun to do one of the lace fichus in "Victorian Lace Today". Fun, fun, fun. Yippity-skippity, whoop-de-doo!

What in the HELL was I thinking?

As always, K., she of the engineer's mind and laser-like concentration, came back the first week with the thing practically finished. She explained the problems she'd run into reading the charts, and how she figured out how to work with them, and what to watch out for.

Meanwhile, M. and I had each made it partway through the ties (thin garter strips) and, each for reasons of our own, had ripped them out and started over.

The next week K. had finished hers and blocked it, and was wearing it. M. and I quietly put ours away to age like fine whisky. I'll have to check on mine, say, in 20 years. The best single malts are at least that old. Or maybe even 21 years. If I'm not in the senior home by then, crocheting granny squares and spending Saturday nights at Bingo. That fichu wouldn't be any good for me anyway. I'd just dribble my pablum on it.

I avoid mystery knitalongs. These are the ones where some stranger online -- sometimes from a yarn company, sometimes just a random torturer -- issues instructions for something section by section, which you are supposed to have the faith to knit without knowing whether you're making a lace stole, a Dr. Who scarf, or a cabled red carpet for the Oscars.

You sink many kopecks into buying the yarn, you get the (sometimes error-filled) instructions, and away you go. Of course you finish each section before the next set of instructions comes out, so you can lah-di-dah your way through the thing and get it done on time.

Or ball it up in the middle of section 2 and put it away somewhere dark, hopefully somewhere moths like to breed.

Did I mention I am short on faith? Especially when it comes to decrees issued by unknown online personages.

I prefer to do my knitting alone, in the dark seclusion of my home, so that if I decide I don't want to finish the project, or that I want to put it aside for a week or a lifetime, I am beholden to no one.

Yep, I'm a curmudgeon. Board-certified.