Another One Bites the Dust

I snapped another Denise cable today. This is not fun.

This time I was at work, sitting at the lunch table, chatting. I was moving the stitches along the cable to knit the next stretch of the row, and describing to my friend Winston the difference between knitting and purling, when I heard the snap and froze in place. And continued to be frozen in place, just looking at the dozens of homeless little stitches in my lap, just waiting to unravel. Then I practiced my damage control and problem solving in-a-crisis skills.

I had no spare needles with me, there were too many stitches to pick up and hold with the little needle tip alone, and the blunt, broken end of the cable itself wouldn't fit through all the stitches without pulling them apart. Winston hovered near my elbow, tempted to start pestering me by pouring salad dressing down my neck or poking me with a fork while I couldn't move a muscle, but restraining himself in respect of the crisis at hand. He suggested sticking coffee stir sticks together. Um. No.

I remembered part of my Christmas gift to Jennifer - a little sewing kit. Jen is on vacation this week (in a place that is not -20 so we hate her for now), but I know where she keeps it in her desk drawer. I sent Winston running into Jen's lab in a hunt for the kit. First, he came back with a pencil tray full of paper clips. Not terribly helpful. The second time around, though, he successfully located the kit. I had him thread a needle, and ran a line of black thread through my renegade stitches. I tied the thread into a loop, and breathed for the first time in about 15 minutes.

Edge-of-your-seat stuff, here.

Guess I'm emailing Denise needles again. They're going to think I'm using the cables to strangle people, or knitting with barbed wire or something.