*grumble*

So, I’m working on that Halloween vest, which obviously I did not get done in time and therefore feel utterly vindicated by my decision to make it the next size up – Captain Adventure will still be humiliated by it be able to proudly wear it next year.

However. There is a small problem.

This KnitPicks pattern has been discontinued. It cannot be purchased again for love or money.

Early into the project, Eldest and a friend were bouncing around in the playroom and dumped a glass of water all over my knitting bag. Being stupid bent on my mental destruction children, they didn’t think to grab the wet paper pattern and, you know, take steps to protect it and/or get it dry.

No. Their steps were all around not getting busted, so they left the soaking wet, irreplaceable pamphlet in a sodden heap in the knitting bag.

I was not amused. But, the pattern was still mostly readable and therefore I decided to let them live.

Last week, Boo Bug and Danger Mouse were playing “teachers on vacation,” which required mugs of water coffee being sipped while lounging on the sofa next to my knitting, reading.

Of course, they dropped and smashed one of the mugs. And naturally, the water soaked my pattern book yet again. And even more predictably, they didn’t even get a towel for the pool of water on the floor – they focused all their efforts on cleaning up the broken mug so that they could pretend the whole thing had never even happened.

The pattern…is shot. The pages glued together, chunks of the chart stuck to chunks of the abbreviations page…gah.

So, I’m going to be spending some time trying to re-typeset my pattern.

Can’t you just feel the joy and enthusiasm oozing out of your monitor right now?

OH yeah. THIS is what every knitter wants to spent a perfectly good Saturday doing.

If this pattern had been in a book, I would have made a photocopy, put that into a sheet protector and used that for my “active” knitting. But since it was a little pamphlet, already in “convenient” form and all…I didn’t think it was necessary to do that.

Grumble…

Oh well. It is what it is. And I do want to keep the pattern, so I guess I’d better quit complaining and start typesetting.

Chapter One. Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse…