The Things We Do For Love

I'm one of those lucky people with strong, positive family relationships. I actually like my parents and enjoy the time we spend together. My brother is one of my favorite people, and has been since the day he was born. And my nieces and nephews? Smitten. Completely and totally and helplessly smitten.

Here's the all the proof we need of that:

Miss Six, our very own kindergarten diva, has a keen fashion sense and the confidence to use it. Her preferences run to anything pink, sparkly, pink, sequined, pink, glittery, or pink. I'm very sorry to tell you that one day, while innocently shopping with Miss Six in our local Tarzhay, she spotted a ball of what might be referred to very loosely as "yarn."

It's not yarn as you and I might know it. Aside from the fact that it is long and thin and wound into a vaguely ball-shaped blob, it has little in common with actual yarn. In fact, calling it yarn probably insults all the other yarns. It's more like a cheap rayon embroidery thread with these weird flat fringey blocks every inch or so. Here, take a closer look at a strand of this stuff laid across my sleeve. The seam on the right of this picture is the cuff seam and might give you some idea of scale. The central thread on this so-called yarn is no thicker than the line on a t-shirt seam.

Can you believe that anyone would put the word "yarn" on the label of this stuff?

Whatever we call it, in the eyes of Miss Six, its value was above rubies. She took one look at it, gasped like a true diva, and started rubbing the yarn on her cheeks. Then she refused to put it down. (Those of you who have been yarn shopping with me will note the family resemblance there. Miss Six has all the makings of an obsessed knitter.)

In her eyes, this yarn has several things going for it. It's pink in places. It's shiny. It's very soft to the touch. It's got lots of other colors generally reckoned "good for girls" by the kindergarten fashion cabal. As an added bonus, it's fun to reel out a length and brush the fringey parts over your skin. Kinda tickles.

So. After I capitulated -- it helped that the yarn was from the dollar section of the store and had been marked 75% off -- we brought the yarn home and she's been playing with it ever since. For months, she asked me to knit her something out of this stuff, but couldn't decide what. Finally, after long deliberation, I sort of made the executive decision to make her a little head scarf, one of those triangle things that ties under your hair. She wears these sometimes, so I figure she'll like it. As an added bonus, it will use only about half the blobby skein, so she'll still be able to play tickle with the leftovers.

The knitting is torture. The needles fall out of the stitches. The yarn has -zero- elasticity. I've seen cement blocks that were stretchier than this yarn.

And somehow, my intense hatred of this yarn doesn't matter. All that matters is knowing how she'll sparkle when she sees her new scarf.

But I'd still like to finish this thing quickly and never ever knit with this yarn again.