Random Friday thoughts:

The knitlist is all abuzz with the idea of people knitting "willy warmers" (non-knitters: yes THAT 'willy') for their male SOs for Valentine's Day.

Now, maybe I'm a prude - or maybe I'm overly nervous about such things - but you know the old "sweater curse"? Where it says that if you knit a sweater for your boyfriend, he will leave you, presumably because he looks at the sweater and sees a ball and chain, or because he's going "whoa, she's way too committed way too early?" I mean, if a sweater makes some men sweat because it supposedly makes them feel their manhood being bled away....

Wouldn't a willy warmer bring up thoughts of, um, castration? Because, it like has a DRAWSTRING and all on it?

I'm thinking: had I a Male Companion who knit, and he made me - oh, I don't know, say an angora brassiere, to mark this day, I'd look at it sitting there in the box and feel my heart start to sink: oh, so he expects me to wear this? if I don't like it, is he going to be offended? how much time and money did he put into this thing anyway? And just WHEN does he expect me to wear it, and what sort of "game" is it going to be a part of? can I claim that angora chafes my delicate bits?

I'd much rather have a nice card and maybe him dropping by my office on the day just to say "hi."

I guess to make a long story short: knitting friends don't let knitting friends give bizarre handknit gifts.

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It's raining again. And it's poised to get COLD this afternoon. I zipped the liner back into my raincoat this morning (I have a long London Fog trenchcoat. It's dark blue - the other color choice at the time was black, but I remember I bought it not long after Columbine happened, and the idea of a black trenchcoat - even on a then-20-something woman who spends more time thinking construcive things than destructive things - just kind of turned me off).

yes, my trenchcoat is almost 10 years old. You have a problem with that?

The main thing is now I am faced with a decision. I need to make my once-or-twice-a-month trip down south for things not locally procurable. (And I have a JoAnn's 40% off coupon. And a coupon for free stuff at Bath and Body Works, and one of the things I need to buy is at Bath and Body Works, and so the free stuff is just icing on the cake). My original plan was to do it this afternoon, rather than give up part of my Saturday (and deal with the Saturday crowds). I sort of relished the idea of spending Saturday morning half-listening to the "making stuff" shows on HGTV or Food network or PBS while I graded the exam from today...but now, I don't know. If it's going to be cold and windy and rainy this afternoon (Cold I can deal with. Rain I can probably deal with as long as the Other Drivers remember how to drive safely in rain. But strong winds, not so much - I have to cross a river on a high bridge and I have phobias about that, because of a news story a few years ago about a woman who blew off - car and all - off the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan, just a few days after my family had crossed said bridge).

I will say my inner child is stomping her foot and saying "But I *wanted* to go TODAY!"

So we'll see.

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I'm back in sockmode now. I've been happily digging around in my stash, finding things, repurposing yarns I had other ideas about. It's funny how I shift interest in projects - for a while, I was just kind of "meh" about making more socks.

I dug out some Socka that I got supercheap when Elann had a bunch of it for sale - I think they called the color "driftwood" or something like it, it's a cream color with short brown flecks and will probably knit up into a random dot pattern. I decided I want to do cabled socks with it, probably the moss-stitch-and-cable from the Charlene Schurch book. And I still want to start the Dublin Bay socks.

My living room would look very odd to a non-knitter (or to a less-obsessed knitter) right now; in addition to the projects-in-process on the coffeetable and the ottoman, there are little groups of two balls of sockyarn plus a pattern scattered around the room. Kind of like sockmonster droppings scattered about.

I also have some pink-and-yellow worsted weight wool that I want to wind off and make heavy socks out of. Even if I have to wear it with liners (I kind of remember feeling it a while back and thinking, ooh, that's scratchy, why did you buy it for socks?)