Re: Aurora

Donna:

>> That would be at least 8 or 10 points. Of course, some of the old time
>> gansey knitters used a lot of needles....

Mal:

> Wait... thinking about stabbing loved ones makes you all misty eyed?
> Are you really sitting there in a wistful reverie thinking, "oh, those were the days, when I was a  woman in the bloom of her youth, viciously jabbing gansey needles into any passing husband! Oh, Kirsten, what happiness you have ahead of you!"

 Hm? I got distracted thinking about gansey knitters and their skill
of knitting huge honking sweaters in the round with maybe 15 needles
(or "wires" or "pins") in between bouts of cannery work and stringing
up herring to dry. Makes me feel like a cheater for using a circular
needle.

> Because that's downright terrifying. That's the kind of woman that knits nightmares.

<sweet smile> Mal, when I say I knit so I don't kill people I mean it.
Besides, I use wooden needles a lot of the time, and blood would make
them gicky.

Mal:

> Please tell me that you're just horribly depressed. Or suicidal. Or mourning a dead hamster.

Well, I am depressed. And in spite of my brave words before, I still
have bouts of feeling as if nothing good will ever happen to me. But I
only ever want to smack you upside the head occasionally, and even
then, I'd take the thimble off.

Mal:

I'd be comforted if I knew you were just miserable instead of getting
some sort of joyful tear in your eye just thinking about the pain my
kind, loving, wonderful, absolutely perfect (Please believe me,
Kirsten! Don't hurt me!) wife could inflict on me with a No. 6 and a
swift jab.

A U.S. 6? Psht, don't be such a baby Mal! That wouldn't do much more
than leave a bruise. Look, don't worry. There are very very VERY few
people on this planet I'd want to feel pain (it's that Quaker thing)
and you are far from being on that list. In any case, a woman who puts
up with you screaming about corn subsidies at 1 in the morning is not
a woman to patently abuse a textile instrument.

I once wrote a short short about a guy trying to hijack a plane that
happens to be full of knitters/crocheters/weavers/spinners  on the way
back from a wool festival. When he threatens to set off a bomb in the
hold, the prospect of all the yarn, fleece, spinning wheels, etc in
their luggage being destroyed turns the passengers into a raging mob
who swiftly overcome him as well as his confederates and truss them up
with vintage acrylic yarn (circa 1973). Only the admission that the
bomb threat was a bluff spares him. In the end, a sweet, white-haired,
grandmotherly type offers him some advice: "Never fuck with the
stash."

I've never done anything with it, because it's in poor taste, but I
had fun writing it.

Donna

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You can call yourself whatever you want; it's what you do that matters.