So I’m sick again today, and I’m sitting here, watching Oprah. I get to the end of a stripe in my brown ripple afghan. Yay! I put the blanket down to take a break, on the couch next to me, and then I cross the room to check my e-mail.

I then hear this ungodly rrrrrrr-r-r-r-i-i-pppp! My blankie, my beautiful (albeit brown) blankie, is hooked on the footrest mount of my chair. And I’m dragging it with me. When I manage to extricate it from myself, I saw this:

If there were some word I could type that would mimic the sound of my wails, I would. But I think the sound defies written expression. I’ve been working on this blanket for almost 6 months. I was getting near a point where I was going to call it done, and now this.

The thing is, I don’t know how to repair it. It is ripped in the middle of the second stripe. I don’t know if there even is a way to fix it. It’s a little beyond me. I could stick a lifeline in the third stripe, then go back and add yarn and do a bind off row there. But that would disturb the color pattern. The second stripe is not just pulled out, it is actually ripped. And I can’t just pick up and knit in the opposite direction, because it’s a ripple pattern and the ripples all already go the other way.

I know there must be an expert knitter out there who would have some ideas. If so, I’d love to hear them!

Thanks! Back to sobbing now.

It’s just another Saturday night at the homestead! I decided it’s been a while since I photographed the Brown Ripple Afghan, so I thought I’d do an update. Sir Goofnut, aka my 6-year-old son, decided that he needed to get in on the action. I laid the blanket out on the floor last weekend, and the consensus was that it was about half done. Sigh. I might make it a wee bit smaller, because I am anxious for Miss Z. to receive it. So I’ve been knitting a lot this weekend, trying to catch up. Unfortunately I am on the stripe that is from one of my lesser favorite yarns in the blanket, in that it is so much slipperier than the others. Thankfully that stripe is almost done.

So I’ve been knitting and listening to podcasts this weekend. The weather is good for it; it’s the end of March but temps were still below freezing this morning. Last night I listened to Kelley Petkun interview Janet Szabo on the Knit Picks Podcast. Then tonight, I was thrilled to learn that there is a new episode of Cast On available, and guess what??!!?? It’s all about HATS! Hats are my most favorite thing in the world to knit. In fact, I can’t wait to get done with this blanket so I can knit one! It’s been too long.

Anyway, back to the pointy sticks! It’s a great night, indeed.