Things I Hate . . . errr, Dislike Intensely

When you live with a child who sees the world as black and white, with no shades of grey, the word "hate" is a bad word. I am routinely lectured on my use of the word "hate," even if it is the word that best describes my true feelings.

For example, I HATE washing dishes. The fact that I spend 50% of my waking hours either dirtying dishes (meal prep and cooking) or washing dishes, it's a pretty strong feeling being evoked by the sight of yet another mountain of dishes teetering in the sink. Especially I've gone to bed, leaving a clean kitchen, and wake up to the mess caused by a group of miscellaneous children who have decided that they needed some bedtime snacks, and a teenager gets up at midnight for a little refueling and decides turkey bacon and eggs make a good snack and leaves the egg smeared pan and plate drying on the stove, and hubby gets up in the morning and fixes breakfast and leaves the cereal box, rice milk carton and cereal bowl on the counter. Can you blame me if I growl a bit about how much I hate dishes?

I also hate bitter cold weather. Winter is fine, as long as you can step outside with a reasonable amount of warm clothing protecting your body. However, when the temperature and wind chill combined dips into the double digits below zero and your teenage daughter asks you to drive her to school and you forget your mittens and the drive is too short to truly warm the engine enough to heat the car and your hands are so cold when you get home that you can hardly turn the key in the ignition to the off position, "hate" seems like a very reasonable word to use.

Alas, now I even have a knitting "hate." Nupps! Believe it or not, I am knitting nupps for the first time in over 30 years of knitting and now I know what all the fuss is about. I used to hate bobbles because I had to turn the work so many times. But I learned to knit in both directions and I no longer hate bobbles. They are a piece of cake. But nupps . . . grrrrr!

It seemed like a fun little pattern. I picked up some Land O' Lace yarn from Creative Fibers in New Prague. They had a lovely little sample scarf knit up from a Land O' Lace pattern. So scrumptious I just had to purchase the required two hanks and pattern. I cast on for the scarf and was rolling along merrily when I discovered that this was a two-ended scarf that needed to be grafted in the middle.

No problem, I cast on the other side, knit it to the same length as the first side, then transferred both sides to the same needle and started knitting both ends at the same time. Then I arrived at my first nupp. Argggh! I wrestled and fiddled, perspired and pouted, growled and grumbled. It was official, I joined the Nupp Haters of the Knitting World.

The scarf is now in time out, whilst I seek out a pair of Addi Turbo Lace needles in the appropriate size to see if the pointer tips will make nupps less objectionable or not. If they don't, I'll be heading directly to the frog pond and seeking a nupp-less lace pattern for a new scarf. Life is too short to spend precious knitting time HATING.

In the meantime, I've gone back to knitting Arwen for Peeps. I am working on the hood right now, then I will have the sleeves and the cabled band left to finish before sweater #12 is off the needles. I am also continuing to work on Hockeyman's Japanese-inspired Blankie whenever I'm sitting in my armchair, watching television. I am also carrying around Hubby's Annual Birthday Socks as my travel knitting project. Plenty of projects to keep me busy without returning to the dreaded nupps.

Feel free to send any tips for knitting nupps my way. After all, what we need is LOVE . . . especially in the knitting realm.