I now have just over 3" to go on the sweater. And did Decrease Round 3, which cuts down the number of stitches.

My knitting is slowed a bit because last night I burned myself. I decided I wanted to make tortillas and beans for dinner (after a long stretch of not cooking because BLEAH it was HOT). Well, one of the annoyances with my (electric) stove is that when the burners are on low, you cannot SEE that they are on. And the knobs are positioned such that occasionally, distractedly, I will turn on the wrong burner.

So I was cooking up the tortillas on one burner, trying to heat the beans on another. And I was almost done with the tortillas (had been putting the finished ones on a plate that, because I have NO ROOM in my kitchen, I had set on yet another (off, or so I thought) burner).

And I wondered why the beans weren't heating.

And then I looked at the stove knobs.

Crud. I turned on the front burner on that side when I meant to turn on the rear burner.

And then - OH NO - the plate is sitting on a hot burner! (they are Corelle plates, so they won't melt, but it is possible that that kind of heating may shatter them).

So, without thinking, I grabbed the plate to sweep it back up off the burner, as I turned OFF the front burner and turned ON the rear burner with my right hand.

It was interesting, in that I had discussed reflexes, particularly the hot-stove reflex, with my General Biology class just a few days before. Because as I set the first two fingers of my left hand under the plate (to stabilize it), I realized OW HOT.

But didn't drop the plate - my "must not break limited supply of kitchenware and must not ruin hard-fought-for dinner" overrode my desire to get the HOT away from my hand (It sounds like it took longer than it actually did). A second later I decided that the burner OFF could do no more harm if harm had not already been done, set the plate back down on the burner, and stuck my hand under the cold tap.

It was quite impressive how much it hurt. Even with running cold water over it for several minutes.

I put some Foille on it, could not find the band-aids immediately (I also have a too-small bathroom, so everything gets jumbled up in the drawers under the vanity). So I wound up eating my meal the way they eat in some cultures: with my left hand in my lap (that being the hand with the burns and the burn ointment on it)

It's hard to eat with just one hand when you're used to having the use of both.

After dinner I found the bandages and put a couple on, and tried some knitting, but it did slow things down. (Fortunately, the burn stopped hurting after a while).

This morning, while I can tell I burned the finger, it's not as bad. The middle finger, which got burned worse, has a little patch of stiff skin on it but at least there was no blistering.

If I could figure out how to make the ventilation work, I would totally replace this stove with a gas stove. I learned how to cook on a gas stove and it still makes more sense to me because you can SEE how high the flame is on a gas stove and you can SEE when it's on.