Desperate times, desperate measures

So it's like this. That pirate pattern has consumed me. Don't ask me why. I have no explanation. I started the cuff last night, and by lights-out time, I had it finished. But I didn't go to bed. I stayed up and knitted 7 more rows, because I couldn't stop. By that point, I some how managed to convince myself that Future Valerie needed Present Valerie to get some sleep so that Future Valerie could knit with wild abandon. So I gave up and went to sleep. Reluctantly. Lucky thing, I was in one of those crazed hazes where I could have easily knit until 3am.

So I went to sleep, and all I did was dream of Pirate Mittens. Knit in about every yarn in the house.

Today I rushed off to work, and all day, I was wanting to ditch all the cataloguing and pull out my knitting. Thank god for lunch break, which is time for knitting, with a little bit of eating snuck in.

That's when I discovered The Problem. I was going to be taking little girls to their dance class after work, and that involves an hour in a coffee shop, knitting. But I was working my way steadily towards the part where "waste yarn" was required and I had no waste yarn. I searched my desk drawers and shelves, convinced I would find some forgotten yarn somewhere, but alas, no yarn. I have a knitting coworker, but although she had brought a project with her, the yarn was balled up, with the spare end inside the ball and inaccessible.

However, my coworker was very understanding, and started making suggestions "Do we have twine?" and digging through her drawers to find something that I could knit in as waste yarn. "headphones?" "lanyard?"

Eventually, we settled upon this: medical tape, taken from a first aid kit, carefully rolled up to create a worsted weight substitute. Check it out...



And in this next picture, the rolled up medical tape has been knit into the mitten. It's difficult to see, being that it's white, but it's that extra thick white line on the left side in the middle. Seeeeee?