the Village Knittiot

Sometimes, I have really brilliant ideas. Occassionally, my really brilliant ideas work out to be semi-brilliant events, but mostly, they turn into amusing stories about disastrous happenings.

Like the time I talked my friend into making candles by melting wax in a small pan on the stove and we had to call the fire department because it caught on fire. I’m sure there were more than a few chuckles exchanged amongst the 911 operators that day when I tried to explain to them that they couldn’t send a fire truck because my mom would kill me. Or the time I tried to imitate what my friend Chris told us he’d been doing on his bike moments before he fell and needed a trip to the emergency room and 16 stitches in his head. I didn’t need stitches, but it didn’t feel good when my head, like his, hit pavement.

Saturday was my husband’s birthday. I’d already bought him something, but a week before, I decided I really ought to make him something too. My plan was to work on it when he wasn’t around so it would be a total surprise. It was a total surprise. When I gave it to him, it looked like this:

It was supposed to look like this, but what can you do?

I was about one skein and 3 hours short of my idealistic projections. I realized this on Saturday morning, 35 minutes before I was supposed to be home to take him to the movies. Oh well, I thought. Nothing is perfect. I decided to just wrap it up in the box, needles and all.

I had planned just enough time for one quick stop. There was this fun “retro-ish” wrapping paper and a rather cool black and white postcard of a very sexy David Bowie circa 1975 (better than a boring birthday card) that I thought would be perfect. I got up to the register and laid my $5.15 worth of merchandise on the counter and took out my credit card. “Oh,” said the girl behind the counter. “We have a minimum of $10.00 when you are paying with your card.” Now, this is a pet peeve of mine. I want to spend money at your shop. I will probably come back to your shop and spend more money in the future. But you are inhibiting my ability to spend my money at your shop. Note to self - doesn’t matter how cool this place is, it is now on the no-shopping list. Okay, I said, and left.

Once outside the shop, I realize I now have 20 minutes to get home, and there is literally nowhere for me to stop and find a card and some wrapping paper at this point. I get in the car. I have an unfinished hat, a DVD (Coffee and Cigarettes - Jim Jarmusch is brilliant), a department store box from a present someone got us for our wedding, a silver bow from last year’s Christmas presents, and a knitting pattern for said unfinished hat. And that’s when inspiration hit. You know, knitting patterns make great birthday cards.

DH was delighted with my ingenious impromptu birthday card, not being one to care much about the particulars of wrapping paper and greeting cards. The hat was definitely a surprise, and all in all we had a great day, which, now that I think about it, was pretty inevitable since it involved homemade margaritas…

This entry was posted on Monday, November 22nd, 2004 at 4:38 pm and is filed under this Knittiot Life, this Random Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.