The Dangers of Overstuffing Your Knitting Bag
So last night I had a PEO meeting. As I am president of my chapter, I quite naturally have to go to the meetings, and yet as I'm trying to avoid sugar I decided to arrive a bit late to the social so that I could easily ignore it. In this, I succeeded, but I think I also offended the woman who brought the dessert. That's always a risk.
Anyway, because I was late I had to park rather far away from the hostess's home. In fact, because I also have the bike cart in the back of the van - and so can't see clearly out of the back - I chose to park several car lengths beyond the line of vehicles parked in front of her home. All in all, I was about two and a half to three houses away from the house I was visiting, parked on the opposite side of the street.
I was actually a bit later than I had planned, so I jumped out of the car and grabbed my knitting bag/purse and my PEO bag and hurried up the street. Just as I came to the edge of the hostess's front yard, I heard something fall out of my knitting bag and hit the ground. I turned around and was horrified to find my new shawl project lying on the sidewalk. My horror turned to shock when I realized in a flash that the six rows of shawl before me were not attached to anything in my bag.
With a gasp, I grabbed up my knitting and began to gather up the yarn as quickly as I could. You would think this wouldn't be that difficult...but the yarn was a dark chocolate brown fingering weight yarn, and the street light above my van was out. A knitter's prayer ran through my mind (Please don't let any cars come! Please let the yarn be intact! Please don't be filthy! Please don't let anyone hit me as I'm bent over in the middle of the road trying to find this (&$(@ #Y$# yarn! ) as I tried to juggle the strand of yarn leading back to my van with both of my bags. Finally, I gave up on trying to real the yarn in as I walked, and I rushed to my van where I finished the process. It does, after all, go quicker when pulling on two ends of the yarn at once.
Here, a whole new set of problems hit. First, the key bob with my remote door lock broke off of my key chain a couple of weeks ago. Normally, this isn't much of a problem, but I knew there wasn't a chance in you know what of me finding it in the bottom of my knitting bag in the dark. Fortunately, my keys were still in hand, so I fumbled with the lock and finally got the car open. I turned on the light, climbed in and found my missing ball of yarn.
Next, as I turned to climb back out so that I could stuff the whole mess back into my bag, my PEO bag gave up to gravity and fell over, spewing paperwork all over the road. So I bent down and gathered all of that up (again with the dark...) and then turned and locked the van. At which point I remembered that I had to manually turn the overhead light off. So I again had to fumble with the keys to unlock the door.
Finally, I started walking across the street and happened to glance down at myself. I had worn a shawl in instead of a coat - which is something I do often. At this point, I must have been out of shock because when I realized that my shawl pin was missing all I did was sigh and turn back to the van. I unlocked it a third time and riffled through it for a few minutes before realizing that my pin was probably long gone. At this point it was becoming critical for me to get into that house to start the meeting, so I locked the van a third and final time headed in. (and a post-meeting search of the road, car and purse turned up nothing.)
The moral of the story is to make absolute sure that your knitting bag is not overly full. I broke my one rule last night - of being sure the bag is easily closed and capable of staying closed on it's own - and look what happened!
I think I'll recover today with a big pot of tea, perhaps some chocolate and my shawl.
Anyway, because I was late I had to park rather far away from the hostess's home. In fact, because I also have the bike cart in the back of the van - and so can't see clearly out of the back - I chose to park several car lengths beyond the line of vehicles parked in front of her home. All in all, I was about two and a half to three houses away from the house I was visiting, parked on the opposite side of the street.
I was actually a bit later than I had planned, so I jumped out of the car and grabbed my knitting bag/purse and my PEO bag and hurried up the street. Just as I came to the edge of the hostess's front yard, I heard something fall out of my knitting bag and hit the ground. I turned around and was horrified to find my new shawl project lying on the sidewalk. My horror turned to shock when I realized in a flash that the six rows of shawl before me were not attached to anything in my bag.
With a gasp, I grabbed up my knitting and began to gather up the yarn as quickly as I could. You would think this wouldn't be that difficult...but the yarn was a dark chocolate brown fingering weight yarn, and the street light above my van was out. A knitter's prayer ran through my mind (Please don't let any cars come! Please let the yarn be intact! Please don't be filthy! Please don't let anyone hit me as I'm bent over in the middle of the road trying to find this (&$(@ #Y$# yarn! ) as I tried to juggle the strand of yarn leading back to my van with both of my bags. Finally, I gave up on trying to real the yarn in as I walked, and I rushed to my van where I finished the process. It does, after all, go quicker when pulling on two ends of the yarn at once.
Here, a whole new set of problems hit. First, the key bob with my remote door lock broke off of my key chain a couple of weeks ago. Normally, this isn't much of a problem, but I knew there wasn't a chance in you know what of me finding it in the bottom of my knitting bag in the dark. Fortunately, my keys were still in hand, so I fumbled with the lock and finally got the car open. I turned on the light, climbed in and found my missing ball of yarn.
Next, as I turned to climb back out so that I could stuff the whole mess back into my bag, my PEO bag gave up to gravity and fell over, spewing paperwork all over the road. So I bent down and gathered all of that up (again with the dark...) and then turned and locked the van. At which point I remembered that I had to manually turn the overhead light off. So I again had to fumble with the keys to unlock the door.
Finally, I started walking across the street and happened to glance down at myself. I had worn a shawl in instead of a coat - which is something I do often. At this point, I must have been out of shock because when I realized that my shawl pin was missing all I did was sigh and turn back to the van. I unlocked it a third time and riffled through it for a few minutes before realizing that my pin was probably long gone. At this point it was becoming critical for me to get into that house to start the meeting, so I locked the van a third and final time headed in. (and a post-meeting search of the road, car and purse turned up nothing.)
The moral of the story is to make absolute sure that your knitting bag is not overly full. I broke my one rule last night - of being sure the bag is easily closed and capable of staying closed on it's own - and look what happened!
I think I'll recover today with a big pot of tea, perhaps some chocolate and my shawl.
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