More ripping back.

I started adding the "thumb" portion of the Target Wave Mittens (fall '06 IK) last night. Got nearly done and thought, wait, this is going the wrong way.

(This is sort of a weird mitten design - it's knit flat, and then you seam the cuff and then pick up stitches for part of the hand/thumb and knit that as a sort of bullseye. It's how you get the "target" patterning I guess)

Anyway, it wasn't clear that it was the CUFF you were supposed to seam - I interpreted the pattern as saying you seamed the TOP of the mitten, and started and ended your rows for the thumb at the cuff. So the hand/thumb part was going on upside down.

And you know? When I realized that, I just ripped it out - ripped it totally out - and threw the mitten and the yarn on the floor. That was IT. Even my knitting was betraying me, now.

(I have one class that, getting discussion started? Is like trying to have a conversation with a herd of cows. And of course, one of my colleagues who had some burnout issues last year and as a result decided to change his teaching method to "least amount of effort possible" turns out to have the Best! Class! Evah! and of course he's attributing it to his least-effort methods...which means he sees me as both a chump and a dinosaur for "still trying" and I'm sure he's going to be evangelizing his method at the upcoming departmental meetings and trying to persuade us all to use it. And you know, I can't. I can't do it the way he is doing it. I just can't.

And of course he comes and tells me this as I'm frantically scrabbling for something that I need for a class, and it's 5 minutes before that class starts. This is a person who has a knack for coming with his little self-congratulatory orations when I'm either trying very hard to get something done or am already in a funk. (And even when I'm like that, I'm too polite to just look at him and say whatever more polite option for "STFU!" that I can think of.)

I also had a problem with my health insurance yesterday, they are refusing to pay for something they are supposed to pay for and I'm hitting a brick wall.

And I'm going to be worried all day today, because my mom happened to let it slip in the conversation the last time she called me that she is taking their 18 year old cats in today to have their teeth done. Which involves general anesthesia. And these are 18 year old cats. And although they are not MY cats, I grew rather attached to them during the time I was living with my parents when I was in grad school. And they're 18 years old.

So I didn't sleep well at all last night - along with The Hot. It is still so hot here. And I am beginning to believe irrational things, like that it will never cool down again, and that we'll never get rain again, and that if things don't change weatherwise in the next two weeks, I may to just snap and freak out and maybe scream at my smug colleague the next time he talks about how he's getting extra free time and all that. Because there's only so much I can take, and I am up to here.

and it's only the first full week of classes.)

Anyway, I threw the knitting down and went out to my friend's surprise 40th birthday party. (And, you know? When I turn 40 I am leaving town for the day, I think, so no one can show up with a big coffin and mock gravestones and all that crap. Because, I really don't see any humor in "you're getting older, ha ha ha! Look! Here are death-themed gag gifts!")

And all through it I was thinking about those damn mittens, and what I could do - I had already sewn up the top seam, meaning there'd be no wiggle room to redo the thumb the way the pattern specifies. I thought about ripping out the seam, but as I was doing these for Dulaan, I sewed the seam extra-special tight and was afraid I'd ruin the mitten. And I thought of just tossing all that I had done up to that point, and then either redoing the mittens or not, but it makes me sick to my stomach to throw away that much knitting and that much time. And then I thought, well, I could rewrite the pattern to do the thumb part on dpns, in the round. But the way my brain function has been going this week I was afraid of even trying. (I'm HOPING it's allergies and not something more ominous, but my memory/ability with spatial relations/mathematical ability are really tanking this week).

I finally realized I could knit it "flat," as specified (back and forth, knit and purl) but use dpns so there's more "flexibility" to account for the already sewn seam. So I'm doing that. I'm a few rows in, and it looks like it's correct.

I guess what I'm saying is, if you do these mittens, the part to seam before you pick up the stitches for the thumb part is the cuff and not the top, even though the instructions seem to direct you to seam the top.