*snarl* Feckin' Christmas....

Most women, when they get PMS, get headaches, cramps, bloating, etc. Me? I get a colossal case of dropsy and then also get to be the special target of Murphy's Law for a week.

This time, ten days before Christmas (oh god, nine days now) is not a great time for me to be having this sort of PMS. Not only is dropsy a bad thing to have when you're trying to churn four different batches of cookies out of your kitchen (what am I saying, the only cookies I've touched I've also eaten - the baking is all Caz this year), but this whole Murphy's Law business? Am REALLY tired of it.

To whit:

I needed to knit three hats for family Christmas celebrations this weekend.

I knit one, and at the end realized that it was, perhaps, a trifle large. I decided, "That's all right. If it's really much too big, I will have the recipient assist me in frogging the hat (which I expect would be a lot of fun since the recipient is like three years old), and then I will re-knit and get it sent off within a couple weeks."

I then embarked on the second hat, then paused after twice frogging the decreases, because I couldn't settle on a decrease pattern that wouldn't leave me white-knuckled wondering when I was going to run out of yarn. That hat is still waiting for decreases.

So then I started the third hat. Again there was some hemming and hawing on the issue of pattern, but eventually I selected one. All seemed well. I cast on yesterday (Wednesday), made a decent bit of headway, then knitted like a fiend today, in between discussions over whether instant coffee would be a suitable replacement for espresso powder in a recipe (We decided to go for it, incidentally.)

Now, I measured my gauge on this third hat earlier today. The pattern called for 20 sts/4 in, and I was at about 19.5. Not quite dead-on, but really quite close enough as far as I was concerned. So I continued knitting, then after rather some time, I realized that the hat seemed a bit large. I tried pulling it onto my head and realized that it was about a perfect fit. Considering this hat's intended recipient is like five or six years old, I was not amused.

And yet, still I did That Thing. You know, where you go, "Oh man, I've really screwed this up somehow," and so your chosen course of action then is to continue as before, in the apparent hopes that somehow the additional length will fix whatever is wrong.

Eventually, I had to admit that Continuing On was not working. Also, it was becoming painfully clear that I was going to run out of yarn and soon. So I pulled out my trusty tape measure and checked my gauge again, only to discover that somehow I was knitting at 18 sts/4 in. CRAPENZIE!!

The moral of that story, clearly, is don't trust your gauge measurements if they're taken when there are toddlers in the room.

So now, with two knitting days completely wasted, I'm forced to face the fact that really, what I'm going to have to do is give my dear nephews cheapish dork-presents on Saturday, and then mail them each their hats in another couple weeks once I get them all completed.

Somebody pass me some spritz cookies and a whole mess of buttered rum cider, willya? I've got sorrows to drown.