oh, good grief

I am, I have to admit, a slovenly hedonist. I could show you pictures of a dishevelled house, just to make my point, but halloween has come and gone, and who needs to see an unswept floor. Instead, a picture of my new pretty-pretties, which I have been petting and petting and petting, because it makes me feel good, in a way that hoovering never does.

The other day I had to sit on a few trains, for a few hours. Being peculiarly efficient, I managed to drag myself to the train station early. (Well, no, I got there early because I had heard whispers that a certain store opposite the station had good - read expensive - yarn, AND a bargain bag of even better - read was once expensive and is now cheap - yarn.) A spat of innocent browsing, just the thing to pass the time.

My bag was already packed with goodies to help pass the time. A perfect opportunity to drag socks to their heels, I thought, and catch up on a Pink Martini or two. And yet, oh yet, someone, somehow, had packed a couple of unadorned needles, in useful sizes, and a pattern book, just in case. At first, I was good, and stuck to the money-off selection, where four little balls of jaeger baby merino 4ply came out to play. Soft, baby colours too. But then I remembered that mother no. 1 had specified an anything but baby colour item, so back they went. But surely mother no. 2, or even no. 3 would approve, so out they came again. Now, I could have stopped there, and escaped cheaply, and I swear I walked towards the cash-desk. So how did I find myself by the cashsoft? And how did I manage to pick up six? I think, in a trance, I might have burrowed ever so slightly into the stack. Six balls were stuck like burrs, cradling gently in my arms. I kindly suggested they wanted to return to their lot mates, but they explained it was cramped and crowded in there, and their little cashmere fibres were being crushed, and wouldn't some fresh air be good for them, and how they just always, always dreamt of growing up one day, and becoming a scarf, so they could twizzle in the coming winter winds. And being soft, and because they are soft, I might just have rescued them. But I am sure I explained that they would all have to wait quietly, in their plastic bags, until the socks were done.

And I was doing so well, as I moved towards the door. But the yarn asked so politely if it could see the pattern book (and might had made rude comments about having to spend the day in a plastic bag, and wasn't I evil, to have promised the open road, and then keep them locked up, unable to breathe), and there wasn't enough room for everything to go in one bag. And didn't the store just happen to have a hand-bag display by the door (so sue me, I went for the hand-bag door, and not the men's novelty cuff-link section door). And didn't a little dog shout out 'take me walkies'.

And what was meant to be a quick hit-and-run cheap shop turned into a totally self-indulgent over-the-top shop. And do you think the socks got a look in? Or did I spent an hour and a half fondling yarn and sniffing new leather?

Not to worry, though, I got my comeuppance the next day. (Although I prefer to think I was being prescient - and arranging rewards in advance.) For as little Fran has been discovering the house, she has stolen a voice. Each day Fran seems to develop a new little chirrup or quack or meow, while Sootie, who used to be the very vocal baby of the family and is now suffering the torments of being a middle-child, has lost her meow. There is nothing more pathetic than a cat who can barely croak. Particularly when piteously croaking in the cat-box on the way to the vet. And my payback? In the shape of cat claws left embedded in my hand when the injection when in. But the vet found my dripping blood funny, especially when he realised he wouldn't be rostered on when I take her back tomorrow for her second shot. Oh, the shame, to have a cat whose record comes up on screen with flashing warning signs. (And that little piece of sardine that was waiting in the fridge for her, when she got back from the torture-shop? Do you think she got that? Well of course she did.)

For my next post, after this oh good grief, what is she wittering on about session, I will be asking you 'how large is a baby these days?'. No, seriously, I have baby clothes to knit, and the wrong yarn, and a whole set of gauge issues, and I might just be winging it on a pattern or two, and children are lovely and all the rest, but I don't do babies, and I don't know if my knitting would fit a mini-munchkin or a geheffalump.