Jerry Springer gloves, part 2

Sorry if the previous post seems a bit, er, truncated, but SOMEONE you know has a very clever Beau, who is adamant about ushering that someone out the door in a hurry. I guess it was just a fantasy of mine that Pepper's Pizza stays open till 11 on Thursday, but someone's Beau knew better (it closes at 10), and made me cut my blog entry short because SOMEONE you know was insisting on going to Pepper's for pizza last night. Ahem. Anyway.

The gloves are known as "Jerry Springer" gloves because I knit all the fingers while listening to This American Life on NPR, and the show was, interestingly, about Jerry Springer's career in politics before he became the man we know today. And thereafter I could not look at the gloves and help but think of Mr. Springer. However, TAL is only an hour long, and I need more than an hour to knit eight fingers (thumbs don't count)... so I guess maybe I fudged a bit and made the fingers a WEE bit too short. As in, just long enough to cover my fingers if they are straight. The agony came when I put the gloves on and MADE A FIST! Then the gloves started to ride up on my hands and do all kinds of uncomfortable contortions that remind me of the way those girls act in bars, you know the ones who are wearing the tube tops, who spend every other second adjusting their tops, pushing, pulling, smoothing, tugging, and probably don't know just how much they are fidgeting? I am pretty much against any sort of clothing that requires constant maintenance while being worn, with the exception of the Holiday Halter from Hell, which won me a Best Cleavage award AND was handknit by MOI.

Rip out the gloves? Hell no! These aren't MY gloves anymore, they're Jerry's! So I had the *brilliant* idea of just adding a few rows onto the tops of the fingers. So I ripped the fingers back a few rows... and that's when the frenzy of activity and accomplishment came to a halt. And the gloves moved around the top and sides of the WIP pile for almost a year. A YEAR! Finally, I got sick of seeing them every day, knowing that the only reason I wasn't enjoying wearing them was because I couldn't sit down for half an hour and knit up the tops of the dang fingers. So of course, I put on some This American Life and got to work. Now, the gloves are done, ends are darned in, and I wore them yesterday while walking to work: much success. I even did that thing that newly-engaged women sometimes do to show off their new rocks: I waved to a few more people than I usually would, and did a few more hands-near-your-line-of-sight type gesticulations. Then was forced to remove them, because they are technically not "dress code" at work, regardless of their Springerness.

A very nice idea from my favorite Harlot: donating a knitted item to knit-item-collecting charity in honor of someone, particularly on the honoree's birthday. We all want to feel special on our birthdays, but aren't some of us tired of getting little meaningless trinkets all the time? I am. I love my family and friends, but I must confess that a lot of gifts end up being regifted or end up at the Goodwill in a few years. I appreciate the thought: so why don't we spread the love around, way way around? I'd be all about people donating money or hats or whatever to a charity in lieu of giving me a birthday gift. I wish everyone felt that way! I'd be cranking out hats like crazy. Anyway, I thought it might be a nice idea for us all to think about, because it can also encourage us to make that donation that we intend to do "someday"... if you pin a date on it, it's a lot easier to get something finished and sent off.