Cast on.
Cast off.
The Caster.

I finished the Dulaan sweater.



Looks pretty good except for the row of ribbing I left off on the front piece, which I didn't notice until I was halfway through.

Pattern: From Jil Eaton's Minnies

Yarn: Some thick, wooly yellow stuff that starts with the letter "G", which is followed by a few too many consonants for my brain to remember.

Our Lady of Provisional Castigation
Having finished the Dulaan sweater, I was left without a project to clutch during The Sopranos finale.

Next in my Qast-on Queue was the Sahara. I had the pattern. I had the yarn. All I needed was the ability to channel a person with an I.Q. greater than mine, ::i.e. the combination of my shoe size and the depth of Paris Hilton's personality left butt-cheek:: so I could get at least one good provisional cast-on, to get me started.

Ha.

First I tried the instructions provided with the printed pattern.

Ha.

Then I tried several on-line video resources.

Ha.
Ha.
Ha.

The closest I came to getting a provisional education was through the Knitting At Knoon instructional video.

When I first watched it, I didn't have my needles and yarn with me so couldn't follow along. But hell, they made it look so easy, I knew I could remember.

Ha. And Ha.

Part of the problem was that for most of the time I was trying to get learnt in this matter, I was outdoors supervising The Cakers and a friend, who was over for a play date.

When my son was little and had a friend over, it was a guaranteed free time for me. All he and his friends would do, for hours, is play with cars on one of those rugs with a town and roads imprinted on it. All I would ever hear from their little corner was low muttering and the occasional siren-sound-a-la-boy: Dooo-deee-dooo-dee-dooo-dee awwwwwwwwwwwh! Bawwnnnn! Bawwnnn! ::the horn.::

Anyway, girls seem to be different. At least mine is.

Mom?

What?

Can we run through the sprinkler in the front yard?

No.

Why?

Cindy doesn't have a swimsuit here.

She can wear mine.

What will you wear?

I can wear my old bading suit.

You don't have an old bading suit.

Well, can I run through the sprinkler in the front yard, in my bading suit?

What's Cindy going to do?

She can watch.

No.

Can she wear my underwear?

She can wear her own underwear, but...

Before I could finish, Cakers yells over to her friend: Cindy! My Mom says you can run through the front yard sprinkler in your underwear!

Cindy stares first at Cakers, then at me, in unabashed mortification. This was her first visit to our home, and after two hours of playing in the house, she still hadn't taken off her bike helmet. She also left her bike in the middle of the sidewalk in front of our house, facing the direction of her home. Apparently this recent kindergarten graduate has no problem casting on a provisional escape plan.

No. No sprinklers in the front yard.

They both walked away.

Fifteen seconds pass, and once again I have the crochet hook poised, perfectly perpendicular, near the point of the needle, certain this was going to be the one...

Mom?

What?

Can we run through the sprinkler in the back yard? In our own underwear?

Anyway.

The other problem was that I am not a crocheter and even after watching the easy peasy video demo, with yarn and implements in hand, I could not make my hands do what I was watching. I kept crocheting the knot off of the hook and winding up with three stitches on the needle and nothing on the hook. That would be great if I were casting on for a washcloth.

Then it was dinner.
Then I went for a walk.
Then it was 30 minutes before The Sopranos, and I had nothing on the needles.
Then I remembered some yarn I bought from Bron, awhile ago and that it's a perfect match for Bonne Marie's Mondo tank top. But I didn't have the pattern. So, about 8:40 p.m., I bought the pattern on line, printed it out, dug out the yarn, kissed the Cakers goodnight and by 8:55 p.m. I was on the couch, casting on, most non-provisionally.

I got quite a bit done, on account of how many times I had to look away from the screen, to avoid seeing what wasn't about to happen. ::For the record, I thought The Soprano's finale was brilliant.::



Here's a close-up of the fabric:



Got Claptop?
My laptop has returned from her cure. Evidently she had about every internetually transmitted disease in the book, and needed to be lectured, purged and scoured.

She's been sitting on my desk for the past hour, unbooted. I feel like I hardly know her anymore, and am afraid of facing the inevitable pain of a loss of such magnitude. And of reloading all my software. And I forgot to save my favorites. And I can't find my Comcast registration number. And tomorrow I'm going on vacation.

Tales of a Kindergarten Mutha will have to wait until I'm on the other side.

P.S. Blogger Users: Don't trust the Autosave. Before exiting, even if it says it's been saved, I type a letter, delete the letter, then save it again myself.