The Road To Madness Is Paved With Ketchup

Let’s begin with a skein of Malabrigo Sock.

And let’s say that I am winding said skein. Insanity level is low moderate, given that Malabrigo Sock has a tendency to tangle, and given that I don’t own a swift or ball winder. So. Moderate. One can handle that. One might argue that anyone who takes large quantities of string and pokes at them with some pointy sticks for hours and hours in the name of “enjoyment” is used to handling moderate levels of insanity.

And let’s say that I am happily winding away, and looking at the pretty pretty red, and oh wait how about we go off on a completely unrelated tangent about salty snacks. A particular snack that you may not be familiar with, depending on what parts of the world you come from, as I am informed that it may be a Canadian thing.

I am speaking, of course, of ketchup chips.

And what on earth does this have to do with knitting? (Nothing. I mean, something.) Have I gone mad? (Yes.)

Well, I used to eat ketchup chips as a kid. The average ketchup chip would be this sad, pale thing, weakly sprinkled with red bits, that tasted vaguely tangy and spicy. But the best thing EVER would be when you’d reach into the bag and pull out a chip that was just saturated with red powder. It was like a delicious artificial ketchup flavouring party in your mouth!

The more I looked at this yarn, the more it looked like one of those heavily seasoned ketchup chips. In fact, I could almost swear that it smelled like a ketchup chip. If I had eaten some of the yarn, I’m sure it would have tasted like ketchup chips, but it seems like a generally bad idea to eat yarn, so I didn’t. Does anyone know if Malabrigo has been blending their merino with ketchup chips? I’m pretty sure they have been. But how could this be? Was there a massive ketchup chip yarn conspiracy brewing?

“Ketchup… catsup… ketchup… catsup…”

But then, suddenly, it all made sense.

My yarn was not made of ketchup chips. That would be insane. In fact, that would be wonderfully, deliciously insane, and would surely overtake any other insanity associated with this yarn, like, I don’t know…

… trying to convert a rectangular stole into a triangular shawl…

… when you have only ever knit a triangular shawl once in your entire life…

… and have no experience charting or designing triangular shawls…

… and have never ever tried to chart anything in Excel before…

… and basically HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT YOU ARE DOING.

Oh. Right. That.

So, really, my brain is just trying to fight fire insanity with fire insanity. Isn’t that clever of it?

Yeah. I stumbled on this pretty pretty pattern, Diagonale. It was a big-ass rectangular stole. I don’t wear rectangular stoles, I don’t have enough yarn on hand for one and I ain’t buying more, and even if I did have the yarn and did wear it I would never survive the task of knitting 950 yards’ worth of Repetitive Rectangle. Please. I couldn’t even make it through a Clapotis.

But I did have 440 yarns of sock yarn, and a growing obsession with triangular shawls, and a strong sense of masochism. No problem! I’ll just rechart it – use a triangle’s worth of the stitch pattern on one side, mirror it on the other side, and work out some sort of central section that makes the two sides smoosh together nicely. Yeah! No problem at all! I’ll just… um…

Okay, that is NOT a chart. That’s a NOTHING. That looks like someone barfed knitting symbols onto a grid and then smeared it around a bit.

So, good then, I think I’m ready to cast on. Wait, what? Yeah! I don’t need no stinkin’ chart! I’ll just figure it out as I go along! This is a brilliant idea! As evidenced by the numerous exclamation points I’m using! There is nothing insane about this plan at all!

Mmm… ketchup.

19 Jun 2009  ·   Tags: Design, Diagonale, I Am Going Mad, Obscuriosity