3171 Unraveling the budget and the knitting in one fell swoop

Thursday, February 24, 20011

"Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."

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Fred the minivan has been leaking a bright pink fluid for some time now, which has made me reluctant to drive him the 2.5 hours up to the old house. I consulted the book, and it said it could be either power steering or transmission fluid. It leaks only for a few days after I'd driven him, and then it stops, and it was bright pink, not a dirty pink, so I suspected it was the power steering - on the theory that transmission fluid would be a bit more "used" looking.

I had been waiting for a warmish day with no wind so I could check the levels of both, and then it occurred to me that even if I did find one low, what then? I could add more fluid, but what if it let loose all of a sudden on the thruway? I decided to have it professionally diagnosed.

I spent a few hours knitting this morning in the Chrysler dealership waiting room. It was the transmission seals.

Net - between Hal's pothole bubbled tire and Fred's seals, I've spent about $1,500 on car repairs this past month. Taxes are due on the old house, the gas bill on the new house is murder, and premiums on three insurance policies will come due within the next month. Yeah, I've got savings, I'm not going to starve, but, let's face it, I'm the one who washes zip-lock bags and reuses them. I BUDGET!

I guess I *can* wait to find out why Suzie Suzuki is belching smoke.

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I wanted to knit a baby blanket. I bought a kit from Herrschners, which included the yarn and a pattern book, and on the last trip to the old house I picked up my needles. I wanted to make the blanket, "Little Blessings", on the cover of the pattern book.

The pattern is screwed up!

It says at the end of row 16, you should have 159 stitches. But after doing row 17 and ripping it out twice, I mapped the pattern for row 17, and it requires 160 stitches. I added another stitch, and row 17 worked. Then when I got to row 19, the repeating lacy pattern didn't match up to row 17. On row 17, the pattern repeats every 6 stitches. On row 19, the pattern repeats every 7 stitches! Something's very wrong. I ripped out three rows and tried to add a stitch to the pattern on row 17, or subtract a stitch on row 19, and then realized that since I don't really know which is the "correct" guess at the error, there was a 50-50 chance I'd run into worse problems further up, when the design changed.

I ripped the whole thing out and started over with a free fan and shell ripple pattern from the internet.

The Herrschners pattern book is three years old. You can't convince me that no one has complained about that pattern. In decades past, when there was an error in a pattern book (and it's not uncommon), there has always been a correction letter tucked in the book.

I am very disappointed in you, Herrschners.
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