Thing One and Thing Two

I may have said once or twice that I hate Cat Bordhi. Not everyone does, so therefore, the first person that PayPals me $3 to cover postage, I will send that person her New Pathways for Sock Knitters. (I would sell it to Cash4Books, like I did her second New Pathways sock book, but somewhere along the way I spilled a drink on it, and part of a dozen pages are water damaged, but readable.)

(The book is spoken for! Lady Euphoria loves Cat and can't believe her good luck. I am sending the book out today.)

Seriously. I have spent the better part of three days trying to figure this particular pattern out, and just when I thought I had it? I came up two stitches short on one sock and I just said fuck it. Ripped out the socks and most likely, I'll have a pretty pair knit for a four-year-old by tomorrow morning. Using some other pattern.

Sort of apropos to this, I investigated the side effects of Wellbutrin, as my wooziness is ongoing, as is the ringing in my ears, my stomach has been upset and all of these things are known side effects. Also, one can experience feelings of aggression and anger, and tremors. I call it a slam dunk. I am going off of this med immediately, because I am miserable and I am tired of feeling sick like this.

The stupid ass socks haven't helped.

However, I can't really hate Cat B, although I want to. I think she may have the sort of mind that can easily see how to knit a particular shape. She thinks in knitting. I imagine that she can run through the steps in her mind's eye, and then just do it, as they say. The problem, for me, comes when she tries to communicate that process to others, to write it down in a clear and easily understood manner. It may be her editor's fault, because the book is laid out in an incredibly chaotic manner, in my opinion. I had three pages of notes written out, and at times, five different places bookmarked, and I had to flip to and fro and check my notes, screw up, rip, swear, reknit and so on. I think I could have done a better job of organizing all of the information. In fact, a brain-damaged monkey could have done a better job. That being said, other people seem to have no problem whatever with her techniques. All I can say, is that I really, really tried to understand, and I just couldn't.

(Part of my problem is her use of letters as reference points, where a letter stood in for various stitch counts or measurements which one had to figure out beforehand, or locate some other place in the book. Her diagrams and instructions began to look like algebraic equations, where letters stand for numbers, and I just never got algebra, as it did not make any sense to me. At all. I learned much much later that algebra is, what?, concerned with the theoretical, and I have always been about the practical. I think I would have loved geometry and trig, but since I failed algebra, I wasn't allowed to take the higher courses in high school.)

Also? I get the "seeing the whole" in one's mind's eye. I can do that with costume construction. Show me a picture, a sketch, and in short order I can process tons of information and see how to make it so, as Capt. Picard would say. But if I had to write down coherent instructions for another person, it would be difficult to do. I know, I've tried.

Anyway. Time to move on.