Idle Hands

I'm not good at having nothing to do. Add to that, it hasn't exactly been an fun filled hiatus from work. Sick for 10 days, then injured back for two weeks. Once some sadistic public servant crammed some jury duty in the middle of it all, I started to worry that if someone suggested driving to Bakersfield, I might mistake it for a tropical vacation. (Don't worry, I'm not trolling for sympathy there is a point to this.)

And now, my Uncle seems to be in the early stages of Alzheimers, which culminated recently in his insisting that he does not live in his house, and his wandering the neighborhood at night looking for his "real" house.

So when I got called to go over there and hang out all night until they could find a 24 hour caregiver, making sure he didn't wander off, I knew I had already slid past "stir crazy" and would need something to do with myself in order to stay awake all night.

Which is why Crazy Aunt Purl had just the right blog post to solve my problem. She'd mentioned getting audio books from the library. Just the thing! But what to do with my hands... hmm.

When I was young, everyone around me knitted, and beautifully too. My one attempt ended in a potholder that looked like it had been mauled by dingos. But I'm not nine anymore, and I'd started to believe that maybe even I could make Crazy Aunt Purl's "Magic Scarf".

Not exactly. It looks surprisingly average in the picture, but in real life it has got to be the lumpiest scarf in recorded history. Which is why I'm glad I started with the cheapest, homeliest yarn I could find. But what I also found is that I couldn't stop. It's been eleven days, and I seem to have developed a fuzzy new compulsion.


By yesterday, I had three things that could be mistaken for scarves, if one defined that word very loosely (the beige one is a vast improvement, so at least I'm getting better at the scarf thing), and had inadvertently invented what is possibly the first knitted pork pie hat.

By this evening, I'd finished hat #2. Which is luckily an improvement over hat #1.

But I've already got three skeins of Patons Rumor yarn in Hibiscus Heather just begging to jump on my new bamboo needles.

Help.