If I were a jealous knitter...

I'd be very green right now.

As you may know, we knit the Great American Aran Afghan as a class of one square per month. We finished it almost a year ago and most everyone put them together and have been enjoying them ever since. Joan, Patrice, Barbara, and Joanne can snuggle under theirs as they knit and I just heard from my friend Mary who moved away that she too, finished hers.

Mine's knit, naturally, since I taught the class and had every square done before each class. Each carefully blocked square is sitting in the back room of my Shop patiently waiting to be put together.

I hadn't been feeling too bad about it sitting there because I knew at least one knitter, had the finishing looming over her head as well. Who was that knitter? Why, it was Tracy of course.

To refresh your memory, dear Tracy made the same fair isle vest for her Dad for Christmas that I made mine. She shamed me regularly on her progress for said vest because she was always, always many inches ahead of me. She got me to rally, however, and I too had a lovely gift for Dad for Christmas. (For the record, I'm not competitive either, but the thought of her being so far ahead of me kept me up at night.)

As we feverishly knit our vests on Fair Isle Friday, we often discussed finishing our afghans. I even suggested that we do it together some afternoon so we could once again share the angst of finishing something fussy, sewing all those squares together and adding our borders.

Speaking of borders, I chose to do the Eyelet border which could be picked up and knit. Tracy chose to do the cable border as shown in the book which required miles of cables that had to be sewn on after the squares were put together. (Barbara and Mary beautifully did this border as well without any angst or complaints at all.) I had already decided to take the easy way out and put on the Eyelet border.

So I merrily knit other things because Tracy and I hadn't set a date and I didn't give my unfinished afghan another thought. It took quite a long time, but I had gotten over the fact that all those other wonderfully over achieving knitters were enjoying their finished afghans because there was something about Tracy not being done that comforted me.

So guess what happens? Tracy strolled into Open Knitting yesterday afternoon with her totally finished, totally lovely afghan all damn done.


I wish you could see all of the finished afghans in person because pictures just don't do them justice.

In keeping with the envy deadly sin theme, Kris and Linda came to the Shop recently with their newly knitted, adorable giraffes, Geoffrey and Eugene. You can read all about their adventures here and here. Too cute, aren't they?

Well, once again try to imagine how I felt when they shared this picture with me.

There's two precious knitted giraffes sitting on Mr. Ben's lap - Mr. Ben, the biggest, homeliest, sassiest, bad ass monkey to ever be created. Those two baby giraffes will probably never be the same after their exposure to that wandering, irresponsible troublemaker.

Do you see that little stripey monkey in the picture? The little guy snuggling up to the baby giraffe's arm? Well, he showed up by parcel post a week or so ago. And you know who he is? He's Mr. Ben's illegitimate son. Apparently, while Mr. Ben was in Texas over the holidays, he took off and went to Tijuana where he whooped it up with the locals. And unlike in Vegas, what happens in Tijuana does not stay in Tijuana.

Geez, Mr. Ben, if I find out that you've corrupted those giraffes in any way...