But then I started to read The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life by Ben Sherwood. (On my Kindle — the original version, not the new spiffy Kindle 2, but oh well.)

The VERY first story of suvival was about Ellin Klor, titled “A Knitting Needle Through the Heart” (click link for excerpt). I had to do a double-take. A knitting needle where exactly? The heart you say? Egads!

The very next day, I was knitting and watching TV, and I stumbled upon Mystery Diagnosis on the Discovery Health channel. After a story about a boy who had breathing problems, they played a piece about a woman who stepped on a crochet hook and impaled her own foot! Yikes! And the scary thing is this injury triggered a slew of other health problems (hence the mystery diagnosis) and kept her essentially bedridden for weeks.

If the universe is trying to warn me against knitting, I’m not listening. Though I’m now being a bit more careful about where I keep my needles when I’m not knitting, lest I sit down on them and pierce my behind.

Whether it’s the cosmos trying to put a damper on my knitting or just the result bad planning, I knit the ugliest bathmat in existence recently:

It was supposed to be Absorba (Ravelry), from Mason-Dixon Knitting, but since I don’t actually own that book, I decided to ad-lib the pattern. This was not a good idea. Once I realized the color scheme was all messed up, I gave up and just made the edge striped. The good news is that it’s comfy to stand on and it absorbs a lot of water, so it’s not a complete loss. Since I accidentally bought twice as much yarn as needed, I’m making a new bathmat in a different stitch pattern to atone for the ugliness of my existing one.

Final question for my readers: have you ever injured yourself while crafting? I’m curious to find out if it’s as dangerous as reported!

Last night, I stumbled upon the Ravelry page for Absorba, The Great Bathmat and something snapped in me. I just had to knit it. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have the yarn or the book containing the pattern. So, I jumped in the car and headed to Michaels and came back with this:

I’m knitting with 3 strands of Sugar N Cream held together on size 15 needles. Needless to say, this is a fast project. Since I don’t have the actual pattern, I’m just ad-libbing the log-cabin technique. Maybe not the best idea, since my colors are coming out kinda wonky:

But, meh, who cares? It’s a bathmat. My current bathmat is kinda disgusting, so anything will be an improvement.