Can You Tell I'm Not in a Swap?

When I participate in a swap, it usually includes the requirement that I post at least 3 fiber-related blog posts per month.

That requirement helps, becuase usually I think of the perfect blog post while I'm driving. You never get those. You've never gotten one and you probably never will. They come, they occupy my mind long enough for me to decide they're absolutely brilliant, and then I lose them in traffic forever. Trust me, you're not missing much.

You also don't see the thoughts that go through my head when I'm trying to puzzle something out. This is because those would look something like this:

Let's see. It turns out I was wrong, we don't have:

a -> b
b -> c
c -> d
d -> e
e -> f

Really we have:

a -> b
b -> c
c -> c
c -> d
d -> b
b -> e
e -> f

Now, how am I going to figure out this chain? I'm going to have to use the timestamp. But that means I can't make this into a generic case, and I'm dealing with about 40,000 rows. Hmm...

I haven't shown my knitting in a while. That requires me to take photographs. I actually don't like taking photographs very much. I probably should take a class in photography. The homework would make me take the time to learn some theory and actually improve a bit. And if I took better photos, maybe I'd enjoy it more.

Yesterday, I thought about blogging about having burned my finger. I accidentally poured some boiling water over the back of my right index finger while making jelly. I have three apple trees in my front yard, and my grandmother always used to make jelly from them, so I find myself compulsively making jelly once every decade or so. This, however, is the first time I burned myself in the process.

Last night I thought I probably wouldn't be using my right index finger for a couple of days at least. I followed most of the instruction from the Mayo clinic and immersed it in cold water and took an ibuprofen. Then I ordered a glass of ice water at dinner to hold my finger against between bites and ended up soaking my finger by the end of the meal. So when I went to bed I found I finally had a use for the rather long tubular gauge swatch I had knit in preparation for my first successful sock. I used it as an ice-pack cover. I set the covered ice-pack on top of my hand and was surprised that I slept really well. This morning, I was thrilled to discover the finger didn't bother me much at all. I can even knit with it! (Ok, I'll admit that I knit continental. If I were using that finger for tension I wouldn't be quite so enthusiastic.)

It's a funny-looking ice-pack cover. I wanted to decide what size needles to use to knit a sock and the pattern called for 66 stitches in the round. So I've got about 2.5 inches of ribbing done on a size 0 needle, four inches of stockinette done on the same needle, another 2.5 inches of ribbing done on a size 1 needle, another four inches or so of stockinette done on the size 1 needle and then somewhat less than 2 inches of ribbing on the size 1 needle. By then I'd had enough so I cast off and threw the thing in the wash to see how it would turn out. I think it fit my leg snugger than it fit the ice-pack, but who cares? Now I've got a use for the funny-looking gauge swatch I couldn't figure out what to do with!

And the jelly is good, too.