Out on a Day Pass from Hell

Hubby is at work. I am at home – alone. I am not sad. We will be eating dinner at home from Trader Joe’s bounty, just the two of us – alone. I am not heartbroken. We will then sit and watch our favorite t.v. shows sitting on our dual La-z-Boy recliner sofa – alone. I promise not to cry.

Oh, the holidays…. A time when one gets the privilege to spend time with family. A time when one gets to spend quality time with people forced to sleep in guest bedrooms on foreign beds, following a foreign schedule and eating foreign food. A time when one gets to eat ancestral cuisine of one’s in-laws. All of this done in the name of love and familial expectations. It would be more accurate to call it bondage most foul. No one is at their best after a couple of nights of poor sleep and having to be on one’s best behavior for hours on end, mindful that small children don’t really need to understand everything in the adult world like having a bat crap crazy boss who would be better emloyed as a dominatrix, or learn a new vocabulary particular to stress and peevishness – and this is those of us who got to leave, go home, have a snack and sleep in our own little beds.

In just such an environment I began one of my dad’s Christmas presents, having given up hope of finishing the two pairs of socks I needed to have done for hubby’s mom and sister-in-law. They will just have to get them in celebration of Martin Luther King Day or Inauguration Day.

My dad having received all the hats and socks he wanted and requested a pair of leg warmers for Christmas this year. Let me assure you that most legwarmer patterns aren’t designed for someone with only one X chromosome who wore red, white and blue vertical striped bell bottoms the first time they were in style. So after puzzling over it for a couple of days, I had roughed out a design.

I got the yarn, cast-on and started knitting. Things were going rather smoothly until I realized that I had not thought through the details that give a project that tailored look. I did cut myself some slack as my sanity was tested by hearing “Angels We Have Heard on High” played on machine gun setting after having been played on pipe organ, electric guitar, drums, and some other yet identified setting on this year’s gift that kept on sharing the joy – an electronic keyboard in the hands of an 8 year old.

I digress. This would not have been such a painful realization had I not proved my knitting MOJO (it was mad knitting magic skills, not just the puny re-twisting a cable 10 rows back without ripping back the project skills.) Let’s just say I am prepared to knit two pair of legwarmers at this point – the first the prototypes and the second the slick, improved version. (I will post pictures of both efforts after the New Year complete with instructions.) As the project is in worsted weight yarn, it isn’t taking me long.