Public Service Announcement

The following is a Very Special Message from shelby knits:

Listen up, kids. Don't drink and knit.

I know that all the cool girls are tossing back cosmopolitans while cabling cashmere, but drunk knitting only leads to heartbreak. Let me share this cautionary tale.

Over the weekend, we visited my mother-in-law and her lovely gentleman friend. Saturday evening we went out for dinner at the restaurant where my sister-in-law works, and Greg ordered us a pitcher of beer. Let me say that between pregnancy, nursing, dieting, and general prudery, the last few years have not been laden with Sloshy Shelby occassions. As such, I have apparently become a very cheap date.
Two glasses of beer, which in my college days occassionally substituted for breakfast, left me a teensy bit loopy. Loopy enough that I announced as we climbed into the car that I was a little drunk. Not "where are my pants?" drunk, but slightly impaired.

After telling your mother-in-law that you're drunk, don't try to retain the appearance of normalcy by picking up your knitting back at the house. If you do, (because sitting time means knitting time, drunk or not, right?) don't further attempt to act all sober by initiating conversation that requires more than 2% of your attention.

I think I could have handling tipsy knitting or tipsy chat, but the combo led to knitting a row I should have purled. Not so bad, true, if I would have noticed right away. I did not. I got a few more rows into it before I found the Idiot Ridge right in the middle of all my pretty pretty stockinette.

The real reason not to drink and knit is that you may end up having to UNknit while still a wee bit off. With cotton yarn. And without any reference material to make sure I was unknitting the right way. Thank god the in-laws go to bed early, so I could concentrate.

Of course, not long after I got the mistake taken out, I fell asleep with my knitting on my lap. The one good thing about the whole thing is that I didn't drop any stitches when I did so.

So, please remember, alcohol and alpaca don't mix. Stitch Sober!!