Tuesday, May 17, 2016

The thwarted knitter

Netflix: best knitting friend, worst knitting enemy.  Or is it Chromecast I'm eyeing with disapproval?  Here's the progress report on my second traveling sock:


Chompy sock!  I do love the way a sock looks at the end of a heel flap, when it gets all chompy like this.  I've inundated you with pictures of stuffed animal tableaux over the years so I try to resist introducing you to new additions to our little animal family here at Hugs, but... the chompy socks always make me think of Sharky:

Sharky is THE most attentive Miss Fisher fan, you can't believe it.  He often sits beside me while I'm knitting and he doesn't take his eyes off the screen even once.  Which I like, because if his eyes are on me, I get to wondering whether or not I look delicious.


But to get back to the knitting situation - I had better get a move on with casting on a new pair of emergency socks, because the current pair is dangerously close to completion.  I know I've said it before but when you get to a certain stage in life, emergency room visits come with alarming frequency from both older and younger relatives, and it's essential to have a ton of lightweight knitting in your bag at all times.

Okay: so, the travel socks have been my go-to TV knitting since I finished Carolyn's socks*, because I have been beyond swamped and only knitting for about 52 minutes per night, aka as long as it takes to watch another episode of Miss Fisher on Netflix, as cast by Chromecast to our TV set.

Technology: it's super exciting.  I resist change, so the stuff that is old hat to quite a few of you is still fresh and thrilling to me.  Also frustrating.


Tonight I sat down for my 52 minute knitfest and it turned into 90 minutes of trying to figure out where the little Cast icon had gone from the corner of my Netflix screen.  Yep, it took me 90 minutes of staring into space with bewildered abandonment, nostril-flaring, jabbing at a touchscreen, restarting my phone, restarting my modem, and fussing over my wireless settings to figure out that I needed to unplug the Chromecast's power cord for about a minute so it could reboot.  Naturally, this included moving the furniture the TV stands on, so that was another hunk of time, and now here we are.  Healthy technology and a sock no further along than it was before and it's too late for me to watch anything because I am exhausted by all that effort and just want to crawl into bed.

And that wasn't the only disappointment from today, because during a fast shop through the grocery store I discovered a new source of ready-made pudding and bought all three flavours, only to discover back home that the manufacturer wasn't kidding about 15 grams of sugar in one tiny bucket.  I managed about 3 tablespoons before I started to get headache-y.

Wanh!  Thankfully I had also picked up an apple strudel, so I had backup on the dessert front.

Here's another view of the socks:


The stripes aren't quite lining in this picture, but they're a lot closer in person.  I love when this happens.  It doesn't matter to me so much since I gave up on showing off every pair of socks I own in Mary Jane shoes in favour of my comfy Blundstone boots or a pair of sensible laceups, but it's still a nice perk when I'm knitting them.


* The report from South London is that Carolyn and her husband have both been wearing their new-from-me socks since she got home! So they must be having a cool spring in their area, and I was right to knit her a new pair.  Love when an effort like that is immediately justified, don't you?



2 comments:

Kathy said...

You aren't kidding about the springtime weather but it's been better in England than here in south-west France.
I'm still wearing jumpers! (i.e. sweaters)and this has been the worst April/May that I have experienced in eleven years. Usually I'm in sandals and cotton crops by now.
I only hope that the better weather in England persists when I return there for good later in the year.

Mary Keenan said...

Oh Kathy! that is not a fun sendoff for you from France :^( My best friend left on Monday for a working holiday in southwest France, oddly enough - hope he packed some woollies!