I almost literally carry my knitting everywhere. Except for right now, because I finished the Endpaper Mitts last night and am once again suffering from One Project Paralysis.

Toting my knitting everywhere has an upside, in that I can easily squeeze in a couple of rows on a mitt or a sock in the five minutes I have to kill before class, or the ten minutes I’m waiting at the bus stop, or the fifteen minutes I’m waiting for my food to come. Over the course of a week, a few minutes here and there add up to quite a lot of project progress.

Toting my knitting everywhere has a downside, in that sometimes I wind up taking my knitting somewhere it would rather not be, like an unruly child at the opera.

Last weekend was our annual visiting weekend for prospective grad students. As usual, I had my knitting with me to help while away the down time while waiting for meetings to end and rides to come.

And then I found myself at a bar with the prospectives. And with my knitting. I’m sure you all know that when yarn and cigarette smoke meet, the theme from Romeo and Juliet plays while they race towards each other, embrace, and pledge everlasting love.

And then yesterday, I toted my knitting to a lecture and happily killed ten minutes while waiting for the talk to start. And I continued to be happy until I got home and found that I was one needle short. There was much fumbling under couch cushions, checking and re-checking of empty bags, peering under the seats of cars with flashlights, and scrunching my face up and trying to will the missing needle into existence. No dice.

An Addi Turbo costs roughly the same as three days of lunch (the currency in Grad Studentania happens to be the Meal). Curses!

But apparently the knitting gods were smiling on me because when I returned to the auditorium today, my missing needle was still right there under my seat. It was dusty and surrounded by pen caps, paper clips, and other academic debris, but it was there. Hooray!

In her original entry about the Endpaper Mitts, Eunny referred to them as a “light bagatelle of a knit,” and that description is about as perfect as can be. I’ve been itching to make a pair ever since she posted them and finally cast on last weekend to treat my One-Project Paralysis.

Eunny also referred to them as “wham bam mitts,” which is also highly appropriate. Behold, Mitt #1, Finished:

The Italian tubular cast-on recommended for the mitts is a bit of knitting genius—by far the best tubular cast-on I’ve ever attempted. All the other tubular cast-ons I’ve tried have left a gap that needed to be sewn up after joining for knitting in the round, but this one doesn’t! I would really love to dissect the cast-on to see how the yarn wraps around itself to produce such a great edge. Maybe later this week.

Also featured prominently in the above photo: the rollerblading scar on my left thumb joint. I was flying down a hill at full speed when a rock got caught in my wheels and I went flying down the hill in a completely different way. My wrist guards saved me from serious injury, but I left a nice chunk of thumb skin on the pavement. And now I have a unique, identifying scar.

Alternate post title: Preaching to the Converted

Pittsburgh has been slowly getting buried under a steady stream of snow, slush, and ice for the last two days. Pitt actually canceled classes between 4pm yesterday and noon today due to weather, which means I got to go home early yesterday and sleep in this morning. CMU is still running, but a lot of non-essential staff stayed home today rather than risk skidding off one of Pittsburgh’s fifteen thousand bridges on the way to work.

It’s weather like this that makes me appreciate wool.

I walked part of the way home yesterday—when the roads are this bad, walking is often the best choice in terms of both speed and safety. I was just wearing regular sneakers to trudge through several inches of snow and slush, but my new Hederas kept my feet sufficiently warm. I’d also wrapped my neck with my giant angora wrap and topped my head with a good wool hat, and I was positively sweating, despite the freezing rain coming down all around me.

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