Nothing Is Ever Simple

After banging my head against that shawl pattern I was writing yesterday, (which I was trying to knit one of to test the pattern and kept messing up — I’ve frogged* that puppy back to the slip knot 5 cotton-picking times!) I though, I’ll just do a pair of slippers today.  Easy, fast, straightforward, simple. Right?

Oh, I should have known the minute I saw the pattern’s author had a Japanese first and last name, and the words “Ladies: Size M.”   I hadn’t gotten four rows into the sole pattern when I realized, Houston, we have a problem.   So now I have to rewrite the pattern to make it an inch and a half longer to fit my size 8-1/2 American tootsies.   But, hey.  I like the pattern.  They’re the very kind of thing I want to wear around the house in cold weather.  Once I’ve waded through all the math and gotten one made, I just have to make the other one.   Piece of cake, right?

Sometime here soon, I’m also going to have to go on a conspiracy hunt — find and decide on all my UFOs**.  Am I ever going to finish them?  If not, froggy time; recycle the yarn and free up the needles.

I also need to go “cold sheep”*** big time.  My yarn stash is about to take me over.

I really should have known I wouldn’t have smooth sailing today. First thing, I wasn’t able to download my email.   I tried going to the Suddenlink website and couldn’t get on it.  I thought it was probably trouble with their website as I had TV, phone and could get on other internet sites.   Just for good measure,  I rebooted my modem.  When in doubt, reboot the modem.  Made no difference.

Before I even picked up the phone to call Suddenlink to find out what the deal was, I could feel my blood pressure going up.  Their phone tree is designed to deal with people who don’t have the sense God gave a doorknob. All I needed was 1 minute of a tech support person’s time answering a simple yes or no question, Is the Suddenlink website down?  To get that, I have to wade through the whole spiel, starting with proving it’s really  me by giving the SEEKRIT KOD.  Then I have to pick one of THEIR choices (my choice wasn’t one of them).  When you finally get to where you choose “tech support” then you have to wade through all the restart the modem song and dance.  Of course, by then, I’m yelling at the phone and my blood pressure is probably higher than giraffe’s ears.  When I FINALLY got to speak to the technician, I told her everything works, except I can’t download email or get on the Suddenlink website.  She checked to see if their website was down and sure enough.  Once I was actually speaking to a real live person, It took less than a minute to actually find out what I needed to know, and took a great deal of aggravation, hassle and major buzzkill to get to that point.  Their website’s still down, BTW, and has been down for about 8 hours now  All my services except email are still working.   Getting my email would be nice, though.

 

*What knitters do to a piece of knitting they've messed up:  rip-it, rip-it.
 **UFO - UnFinished Object.
 *** like going "cold turkey" except for knitters.  Not buying any more yarn until one's yarn stash is (greatly) reduced, either by getting rid of yarn or making something with it, or both.