Not as Much Fun as it Should Have Been

Pattern - #12 from Arne and Carlos' 55 Balls to Knit

Yarn - Dale Garn Heilo, red, white from Woolybaabaa

Needles - Assorted US 2/2.75 MM wooden DPNS

Notes to self - 

I don't like color work.

I don't like carrying colors in both hands because

I don't like continental knitting.

Sixty four stitches when you don't like the technique or the yarn are an awful lot of stitches.

And yet, here I've cast on for another one? 

Because some things are more important than knitting

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.  If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were.  Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind . . . ."

~John Donne, MEDITATION XVII              

  http://timeline.national911memorial.org/

Admitting Defeat

Remember the Monteagle bag project?  In June I had another opportunity to deliver on it.  On the one hand, it could be argued that I failed; the Monteagle bag remains a hopeless tangle stuffed into the bottom of one of my myriad piles of knitting. In fact, I should probably admit to a fundamental failure because I have given up on the Monteagle Bag.  A wise decision prompted by the imminence of the Giftee's arrival and the fortuitous concatenation of circumstances that sent us to Galena for the Easter weekend.

Galena means Fiberwild and one of  Fiberwild's in-house brand kits is for a crocheted market bag.  I figured that since it's crochet, it would be fast.  I was right.  All would have been well had I resisted the little voice that said, "If I just . . . ." 

Even with tweaking, I would have finished in a timely fashion if one of my tweaks hadn't involved a second handle.  Deciding that I should be able to get a second handle after I had changed the body of the bag proved my undoing. I ran out of yarn.  A search of  the Berroco home page revealed that not a single LYS in my area carried the yarn. My only option was to call Fiberwild and order another kit, and while Fiberwild did their usual outstanding job, it still meant a one day delay between order and delivery.  Which meant I got the yarn I needed on the day I met with the intended recipient.  All was not lost.  I finished it the next day and was able to send in on with a friend who lives in the same state and who was visiting at the same time. 

A most felictous defeat (means I win).