Bad knitting day.

For the most part, today was beautiful. It's Martin Luther King Day so I had the day off school, though my university tries to make it a "day of service," since volunteering in the community is a pretty appropriate way of honoring Dr. King's memory. I participated for the first time this year and it was really nice. I brought my younger sister along because she's been talking about wanting to do volunteer work and we spent the day helping out at Arts & Scraps in Detroit. At the end of the day she even won a raffle! The prize was a copy of some essays & speeches by MLK, which I will definitely be reading as soon as I can.

So, yeah, that part of the day was great, and afterwards we decided to check out a new-to-me LYS, The Yarn Tree in Flat Rock. Marj had mentioned that they were having a sale and that was all the motivation I needed to finally go check the place out. It was pretty cool! It's basically an old house packed from floor to ceiling with yarn. I liked it a lot and will be going back, but it was there that I began to suspect that the Knitting Gods (or whatever you want to call them) were not really on my side today. First I forgot my list of yarns I need for my upcoming projects, then they didn't have the needles I needed, then I just couldn't find the perfect yarn (and felt rushed because they were closing in like 5 minutes). In the end I left with only a skein of Crystal Palace Fjord Print, which I will probably use for a Calorimetry. I'm not complaining, but it wasn't quite the super-successful trip I had in mind, though that's primarily my fault.

It got so much worse when I got home, though. See, being the world's best big sister, I'd bought my sister a skein of Berocco Softwist in a beautiful, sparkly off-white. Intending to wind it into a ball, I untwisted the skein into a hank and, knowing that hanks are famously easy to tangle, was treating it with great caution until I set it down for a second...and my poor sister didn't know how likely it was to tangle...and she tried to pick it up, and next thing we knew we had a huge mess on our hands. And so I spent roughly an hour of my life meticulously untangling 100 yards of yarn. I'm proud to say that I got it all out and there are no knots in sight, but it was pretty torturous. Let's just say my sister kinda owes me...and also that I am very, very glad that I am now of legal drinking age because a glass of wine did make it mildly more bearable.

So, whatever I did to offend the Knitting Gods, you'd think so much time spent so carefully untangling and balling up yarn (for someone else's use, even!) would be enough to atone and have them back on my good side, right? Wrong. I think I'm just not meant to knit today! After that fiasco I tried to cast on for this hat I've been dying to make and just kept screwing up. First I knit with the tail instead of the working yarn, then I twisted the stitches when I was joining in the round (a first for me), and eventually I finally got it going...and had to conclude that my circular needle is way too short to Magic Loop it. :( At this point I think I'll just knit it flat and seam it. Yes, of course I HATE seaming, but I've gotten better at it and I do like it better than spending money on needles. My new goals is to save up for a good set of interchangeable circulars, which I'm sure would save me money in the long run anyway. Too bad I didn't think of this plan until after Christmas and my birthday, since it would've been a great big gift to ask for from my family. Oh well. Note to any relatives reading this: If you feel like spearheading the drive to commercialize Easter, or if perhaps you want to start a new Valentine's tradition of buying your beloved niece expensive knitting supplies, I'd just like to note that I'd support that wholeheartedly! Of course I'm just kidding! (...sort of)

Everyone has their off days, though, right? I did get a decent number of rows done on my cardigan today, so it wasn't all a waste. Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive, though. If nothing else, I'm going to Knit Night for the first time in approximately a zillion years!!! I can't wait to see everyone! I think I'm bringing my sister, too, which should be lots of fun, and I'll also bring along the rest of those Reese's cookies. Hope to see you there!