Too Fast to Shoot

The fox that I saw at the Botanical Gardens today.

The iPhone (which is currently not talking to my SIM card and so is really at this point an iPod Touch) took too long to turn on, quit iPod, switch to Camera and get the software loaded - the fox sprung out of the bushes (manicured, naturally), dashed across a small patch of lawn and squeezed between the bars of the gate, but I did see it, I really did.

Heretofore the wildest thing I've seen there were the koi or the ducks, and they're not very wild at all.

Luckily the various Chihulys were less quick and more obliging in terms of posing for pictures, so they will have to do.

Did you ever see some yarn (that you did not own), lust mightily after it with ideas barrelling through your brain, and then when you finally acquired it, everything you tried was just feh?

A couple of years ago, against my better judgement, I knitted a counterpane-style sweater, trying not to look at the nipple in the middle, convinced, as the directions said, that it would block out.

You'd think I'd learn that unless you're working in garter stitch or moss stitch, that's just not going to happen unless you make said garment so much too small for you so as to render it so tight that it's more corset-like than comfy (inasmuch as very stretchy knitted stuff can be corset-like), and it's at least tight enough to magnify any minor (and especially the not-so-minor) body areas which are, shall we say, not completely smooth (in the fat-free sense) and most certainly not up to withstanding that kind of scrutiny.

Seriously, you 'd think I wouldn't be quite so trusting twice, but at least this time I won't be working the entire garment, weaving in all ends and everything, making it particularly difficult to recycle the yarn.

What I'm really more in the mood for doing is trying to right the wrongs of the nineties wherein I ignored reality and convinced myself that yes, cropped tops really were flattering on me. What on earth was I thinking? I now have this collection (of which you see two, both of which have since been deconstructed into raw materials, which is to say yarn, putting them in a better position for repentance and recompense) of handknits, some in yarns I really like, which are too short and too wide to be useful to me.

See, I finally finished that necklace I was working on last weekend. I originally thought I'd put it in my Etsy shop, but I'm really attached and am not willing to part with it. Not that I don't have more necklaces than any human female actually needs, but I want this one too.

As a compromise, I decided that I might just try to enter the monthly challenge for a group of which I'm a member, but I've been having false starts.

You'd think I'd be used to it already.

In case you can't tell, it's ever so slightly Not Completely Flat, which means that if it were to grow to adulthood, it would have a serious case of The Ugly Buckle.