So, I’ve been carrying that sock around in my purse, so as to be ready to knit at a moment’s notice. (I’ve never been a girl scout–dropped out after Brownies–but “Be Prepared” has always seemed like a good motto to me!)

Then, yesterday, just as I was walking in the door on my lunch break, my cell phone rang. This is unusual in itself because almost no one ever calls me, but my mom was at the grocery store and she often calls to ask verification questions about things we may or may not need. I thought it might be her, calling my cell, knowing I was on my way home and not at my desk at work. Meanwhile, Chappy is circling around in his greeting posture, eager to be petted, happy to have someone home–and you just can’t ignore that kind of enthusiasm. And, oh yes, the alarm was beeping its “You have 30 seconds before I call the police” warning.

So, I punch in the alarm code to appease that. I say “Hey Chappy” to reassure him that I’m glad to see him too, and then I reach in my purse to whip out my phone . . . and as I do, it catches on one of the DPNs and somehow tears it from the sock and flings it across the kitchen . . . Ack! My poor sock!

I quickly lunge for the needle to grab it before Chappy picks it up and runs off with it, and then stand there, weaving it back into my sock before I lose any more stitches. (As it is, two dropped, but I rescued them and everything’s fine.)

Oh! And of course, the call is from “Unknown” and therefore not one I want to answer anyway. (You know that if I hadn’t looked, it would have been an urgent call actually meant for me, don’t you? Because of course, that’s the way these things work.) Wrong numbers are bad enough on the regular phone, but they’re just really annoying on a cell phone.

Of course, if I had been doing this sock with the Magic Loop* method I usually use, this would not have happened.

Obviously, our foremothers and -fathers did not have to deal with cell phones as they traipsed around the countryside with their knitting!

*I know some people prefer the 2-circ method for socks, but the dangling ends annoy me as more than the extra points on the DPNs. I also know that some people don’t like to risk their good needles on a method that may put added stress on the cable joins, but my answer to this is that (1) I haven’t really noticed that being a problem, though I’m careful to avoid it, and (2) I mostly use Inox Express needles for this–they’re cheaper than Addis but give much the same knitting “feel.” Knitting needles are a very personal preference, I know, but I like the sleek, slippery, turbo feel. Although for DPNs (when I must use them) I prefer bamboo because they are not, in fact, slippery and at least usually cling to the yarn a little better than these did when they met up with my cell phone!

Tags: Knitting/Spinning // 6 Comments »