I am dense

Sometimes I am very dense. Here's and example - Wiknit. It is a blog that lists knitting contests. I think I mentioned it before. It's fun to enter contests, and learn about new blogs. In my head I call it "We Knit". I don't have a Wii, and don't remember ever hearing it's name, but I thought it was pronounced "we". Every time I go to Wiiknit I wonder what a "Wii" has to do with knitting contests. Is it because you play games on a Wii and contests are games? Finally it dawned on me. The website is pronounced "Win It". Duh! (Or maybe it's not, let me know if I'm wrong). Edited to add: Bigger Duh! It is WiKnit. One 'i'. No Wiis involved. That explains a lot.

But this is a story about my dense-ness at it's densest. There was or is, for all I know, an easy listening station here in San Francisco called KABL, pronounced "Cable". Their jingle was spoken slowly by a man in kind of 70's Al Green voice "Cable...K A B L..." and then a bell: "ding-ding". I never thought much about it.

One day I was at the Cliff House with my sister and my first husband, and one of those tourist buses that look like a cable car went by. I think it was a promotion for the station. It passed by with a big KABL sign on the side, and the driver rang a bell "ding-ding", and my brain went "ding-ding", too. KABL - Cable Car!! I get it! No wonder that bell was their trademark. I truly had no idea why this radio station in San Francisco, home of the world-famous cable cars was called KABL.

Is anyone else as dense as me? I would love to hear your stories.

Speaking of dense, I've been trying to get these socks going, as a side project when I get stuck on the Fana Sweater. I've had this beautiful yarn from Rio de la Plata for a few months. I've been fussing around with socks, trying to customize a pattern for my size 10.5 feet, small ankles, and sturdy calves. I can't seem to get it right, they are always too big. So I decided just to stick to Ann Budd's basic 8 stitch to the inch sock in size large from "Getting Started Knitting Socks". I wanted a little more challenge than working plain so I picked a pattern that I thought would subtlety show up with the multicolored yarn.

I copied the page with a "wishbone" lace pattern which I was going to put on each side of the sock with two reps of eight stitches. This was my "while the kid is napping in the back seat" project, so I didn't want to take the whole book. I made notes, and cast on and did a K2P2 ribbing. Then I pulled out the pattern and realized I didn't know what one of the symbols meant, and couldn't look it up because I didn't have the book. I didn't want to waste valuable knitting time, so I went ahead with "slanted wishbone", on the same page, which I didn't like as much, but whose symbols I knew.

At the next knitting session, I realized that I had done something wrong, the pattern didn't look right. So I tore it out down the the ribbing. It was a pain to get the stitches back on the needles facing the right way. And I started again. With the pattern I originally liked? No, I was stuck without the book again. Things went better, until I realized I didn't plan very well. Duh, using just two reps didn't show the beauty of the pattern. Note to self - learn how to read charts better.

So the project sat, in great peril of never getting picked up again. I just couldn't bear to rip and have to pick up the ribbing again. Yesterday I was stuck without a project because I'm in a holding pattern on the sweater, so I tried the socks one more time. Ripping out and putting the stitches back was worse this, as the yarn started to split, and I dropped some stitches. This time I'm doing the pattern I initially chose, with three reps, only on one side of the leg. That means there is a left and a right and the socks will potentially wear faster, but I don't care. I just want to see if this pattern fits because I've got two beautiful balls of yarn waiting to become socks.

You can't see the pattern yet, I've done more today, but it doesn't show as much as I had hoped. But that's okay.