February Challenge Announced. And Completed. (!)

Thong. Thong. Thong. Knitted Thong. The February Challenge is/was a thong. The usual craziness of my life is not what delayed this posting. Rather it's the fact that I am somewhat a Victorian at heart, and the thought of discussing a thong on the internet with possible strangers had me paralyzed. So deep breath......I KNITTED A THONG.

Really it's a Frankenthong. It started out as the bottoms to Joan McGowan-Michael's Basic Baby Doll and Panty (ugh! my least fave word ever) from her book, Knitting Lingerie Style. Oh, here's where I tell you a very important rule to the challenge that I failed to mention.....All of the yarn has to be from my stash. The pattern calls for Adrienne Vittadini Celia, which is 109 yds/50g of 100% silk. From my stash I pulled a skein of........I Love This Cotton! #24 Ivory, which is 180 yds/100g of 100% cotton. Silk, cotton. Silk, cotton. A child can see how this was going to go wrong fast. As I had promised Jason, I did not start on the thong right away. I waited until the 4th and cast on. I updated Meli all day long. I bragged about how quickly the thong was knitting up. I finished it that night, minus the elastic in the waistband. The next morning I sent her this text: "Omg. The thong turned out horrrrrrribly wrong. Horribly. Everything was going along fine & the next thing I know, I've got a skinny diaper for a big sumo wrestler......I knew the project was too easy!" Followed by this:

And then this: "Amazingly I had NO CLUE how bad things were until I finished knitting and really saw how loooooong the waist band was. It's, oh say, 9 in too long. Hello. That's almost A FOOT TOO LONG!"

I could have fixed it that Friday. I could have picked a different thong pattern. I could have tried to find a different yarn in my stash. Did I? No. I dropped the GIANT thong on the middle of my dining room table and tried in vain to ignore it until last week. I read Days of Gold by Jude Deveraux, started The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, knit a baby sweater for Alaina's new baby boy, knit a pair of modified Bella's Mittens for Trena, watched every minute of the Olympics aired on NBC and USA, finished a celtic horse cross-stitch that I had started two years ago, and did my usual take-care-of-baby/hubby/cats/house routine. I also considered participating in the 2010 Knitting Olympics but nixed the idea as I am still recovering from my tight deadline in January.

Finally, I could no longer ignore the thong. And I was tired of pushing it out of the way everytime I sat down to a meal. I didn't want to frog the whole thing since I thought the main part of it was somewhat okay. I grabbed my scissors and decided that even if I completely ruined the thong by cutting it up, I only had a days work invested in it, so what the heck. I cut the whale-sized waistband off, held the rest up to a thong from my young'un days (which is why you should never get rid of anything....might come in handy someday) to figure out the "butt strip" length, hacked off some of the length there and whipstiched the end like crazy to prevent unraveling. Then I actually figured out my guage, multiplied that by desired waist length, cast on the appropriate number of stitches, cast off, dug out some elastic, and voila.

It's not pretty, and I don't think the lucky recipient can wear them as a real undergarment. But that wasn't really the point since she doesn't wear underwear. I will protect her identity by only saying that her first initial is M and she lives in Virginia and ripped the seat out of her jeans in spectacular fashion the first day I met her. (And that's how I know she doesn't wear underwear.)

Lessons Learned in February:

1. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

2. Some things have no substitute. Or cotton is nothing like silk....

3. Finishing projects, old or new, is really, really satisfying.

4. I like store-bought underwear very much.

For March, I will be knitting two socks at once on a long circular needle. Oooooh.

Quick Jonas update.....we went for his 9 month wellness checkup on the 2nd. He weighed 21lbs something ounces (the card is in a pile somewhere.....) and was 29 1/4 in tall. He's 80th percentile for height, 75th for weight, and 60th for his head size. His third tooth has poked out, and he has three more that are ready to make their debut any day now. He continues to be a totally awesome baby!

We ate at a bad Chinese buffet in Paris yesterday after taking Aunt Esta to church (where they applauded her being there because she hadn't been in so long....too funny!). Jonas was very excited to get to wear Grandpa's watch and hold a fortune cookie and wouldn't hold his arms still for a picture.