Sixth Time's the Charm?

This hat is killing me.

So I went to the Stitch-n-Bitch last night at Electric Earth Cafe.

I decided it was high time I get that blasted Jayne Cobb hat going again, so I deliberately took nothing else. I ran late, of course, but got there just as the only other woman left (others had been and gone already) was packing up her stuff. I apologized and she happily agreed to wait, so I ordered myself a medium iced mocha and a mystery biscotti (there was dried fruit and some kind of nut involved - the dude at the counter speculated apricot and pistachio, which I think was close enough). They were backed up a bit on drinks, so I went to sit down and knit for a while.

We hung out, chatted, I began casting on for my hat. Left my tail too short. I needed 60 sts, I got 55 before I ran out of tail. sigh.

Try again. This time the tail was fine, and after a moment's hesitation as I realized that somehow I'd completely forgotten how to use my circs, I figured myself out and got going. I very confidently knitted along, chatting away before my companion mentioned the word "ribbing" as she described a project she'd worked on a while before. Uh-oh. Ribbing? I looked down at my almost-two-rows of rolling stockinette and realized my mistake.

Craaaaaaaap.

Tore it out, realized I was thirsty. Went up to the counter, mentioned my drink. Dude apologized that it had been forgotten. I went back and sat down, he arrived a couple minutes later bearing my iced mocha, and said he'd made it a large to make up for having forgotten me. Nice of him, eh?

Perhaps now I should mention that I've had problems with insomnia since I was 11 years old, and so in recent years, as my body got too old to function whatsoever on less than five hours of sleep a night, I've cut caffeine out of my usual daily intake. But as I had been wearing out before I even left and Caz and I were planning to put together the new baby gate his parents had kindly gotten us once we got the kids to bed, I figured some caffeine was in order. Plus mochas are tasty.

So I started again on my hat. Cast on my 60 stitches. All was well. I connected the ends and, as I was about to begin knitting, my stitch-n-bitch pal reminded me "Now, don't forget, you're doing ribbing." I laughed and thanked her and began my ribbed hat brim.

Another woman stopped by - she was writing a paper on her laptop and sat near us as she is also a knitter and was really looking for a reason to slack on her paper. Which I can totally understand. I slacked on practically every paper I've been assigned in my entire life. I liked her from the start. So we all chatted knitting, discussed how exactly the two-socks-on-double-circs thing works and how it manages to work without tearing massive holes in the space-time continuum (as Caz insists it must, and he's only seen it performed on one sock - I think if he saw it happening on two socks his head would explode).

Really, it was a marvelously good time. And I happily sucked down my entire large iced mocha, never mind that my no-longer-used-to-caffeine-or-coffee stomach hadn't had any visitors since lunchtime. I had a biscotti, surely that would suffice!

An hour and a half after my arrival, I left having had some great conversation, with a whopping one-and-a-half completed rows of 2x2 ribbing and a gut full of coffee-rot. sigh.


This afternoon, I should note, I put in some more work on the Blasted Hat while the kids napped. So far so good. And I've decided. If somehow it thwarts me this time, and thwarts me one more time, thus breaking any remote hint of magic the number seven might hold for this cussed thing, I will simply wad it up into a ball of tangled horror and send it on to my friend like that.

Along with the remaining last tatters of my sanity.