The Rib and Cables sock has overtaken the Go with the Flow, after an unfortunate frogging incident involving a heel flap miscalculation.

According to the Rules of Frogging, the knitter is permitted to throw the frogged item into a corner for ever a few days, or until the unfortunate frogging incident is no longer quite so painful.

[You’d think that since I went to all the trouble to recalculate the original pattern to fit my foot better, and since I actually wrote the calculations down, that I’d remember to use them on the second sock, wouldn’t you? Naaah, that would make too much sense.]

I posed the Here and There scarf, too, all finished and blocked. It will be warm and cozy come winter.

I’ve been pondering Knitting Circle dynamics, with interesting input from Amie and Martha. I’ll just let it be what it is, and not expect more than an afternoon of knitting. I’ll either get to know the group, or I won’t.

You see, I seem to have expectations. Long, long ago (in 1981) I began to attend a journal class with my friend V. We’d been invited to join the Wednesday night class by Bunny, the teacher, who was a fabric artist we’d met at a small show we’d all three been in. She began each of the three fifteen-minute segments by reading quotes and ideas — things she had gathered from her reading, or what someone in the class had written the week before — and then we’d write. “Think with your pen on the page,” Bunny would say.

We took turns reading to the group, and Bunny and anyone who wanted to could comment. Well, that very first night we sat there, shy and nervous, as a woman we’d just met read the horrible, painful, powerful story of her rape. She just read it, unwavering. The faces around the room were full of love and shared pain.

I have never felt so trusted, so intimate, so tribal, as I did that night. I spent the next ten years going to journal class on Wednesday nights. We shared our souls, wrote poetry and drivel, laughed and cried, struggled to survive the death of one of our dearest friends, and ultimately, the death of our teacher. We wrote in many living rooms, in summer and winter, with and without our beloved Bunny. And always, we shared ourselves easily, palms up, hearts wide open.

That’s way too much to ask of a Thursday afternoon knitting circle.