In Which the Pirate Crosses Her Fingers.

Pictures were taken. The pattern was revised. A last-minute gauge swatch was knit, just to be sure. The email was sent – my pattern has just been sent off to Knitty.

For some reason, this process reminded me of writing English papers. Teachers always wanted us to take notes on index cards, from which we would write an outline, then compose the paper from the outline. I never worked like that; I always just wrote the paper, then (since I needed to hand in an outline for full credit) worked backwards to the index cards.

With this particular pattern, I mucked around with it until it fit, knit it, had the Ninja test knit it too, re-wrote the pattern, knit it again for myself, revised the pattern again… and then knit a test swatch about fifteen minutes before submitting the thing to Knitty. Crazy, eh?

Speaking of crazy, I chose not to go to WEBS this weekend. I know, I know, it’s heresy – but I had a choice. Either we could drive 80 mph on the highways from Ottawa to Northampton and I could spend half an hour in the store, or we could drive much slower down much more scenic routes, and I could do touristy things like boat tours, unexpectedly excellent restaurants in small towns, and rainbows after thunderstorms. I chose the touristy things… and I’m owed a trip to the yarn store. Besides, (she told herself, not quite convincingly) I have so much yarn right now. Enough to keep me busy for a good long while. I don’t need to buy more. Really. And I did go to two yarn stores in Ottawa. One had the right yarn in the wrong color, and one was having a 50% off going-out-of-business sale but had nothing I wanted to buy, even at half-price.

Anyway, I was nervous before I submitted the pattern, and now I’m strangely calm. Either they will like it or they don’t. My hope is, of course, that they do like it, and that lots of people will come read my blog as a result, and that I’ll design more patterns in the future and sell them for a few dollars each and make some pocket change with which I can buy myself lunch every so often! Yeah!