A Tea Party and Two Dishcloths for a Top

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where -" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"- so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Today, I did a cool thing: I went to a tea party.

Ok, maybe cool isn't the best word for it. It was really hot out today, and it was a sweaty time, but it was fun and unusual.

We leave near a place called the Teafarm, and each summer, they host a Mad Hatter Tea Party. You wear a fun hat, or dress up as someone from Alice in Wonderland, and you drink tea (both hot and iced) and get scones and cake and fruit and play croquet, and well... it was fun.

It was a good time, and a nice opportunity to catch up with friends and enjoy some nice tea. We went and played "croquet" i.e. we hit big rubber balls through huge croquet hoops with mallets. I was thinking that this was just my kinda sport until my ball popped on a thorn from a blackberry bush. I don't think that's how you're supposed to do it, but I'm not a professional.

Each of our settings had a little place card with a quote. I liked mine: "I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then."

And it's true: The older I get, the more I realize how different a person I am. There are things I can do now that I never used to be able to do, and there are things I tolerate now that I couldn't tolerate before. And... there are things I used to let people get away with that I won't anymore. And there are things I do now that I wish I didn't do... but going back to what I was is not an option I'd ever take.

The Mad Hatter was mad... but maybe madness allows wisdom to come through without the coating of self-consciousness we all put on things we say.

As always, I brought home a little bit of tea, even though the hubby said I wasn't allowed (the cupboard is kinda full). But in the end, he'll enjoy it just as much:

I brought along my knitting, but I didn't work on it. It turns out I don't knit well in the heat. But it's an interesting project. I'm experimenting with some cotton yarn at a light fingering weight from Schachenmayr called Tahiti. It's in this lovely gradient that goes from dark charcoal grey to bright white. I'm trying to make a tunic out of two simple rectangles, inspired by a pattern from this summer's Interweave Crochet called the Summer Marsala Tunic. I'm trying to knit the front and the back on the bias, from one corner to the other, like two big, rectangular dishcloths. 

I giggled when I looked at this photo, because, when people ask me what I'm making, sometimes I say, "A thong," just to be silly. This photo looks like a big pair of underwear. It's the heat. It makes me stupid. But anyway...

I started out with much smaller needles (3.25mm or size 3), but soon fell back to my favourite size 6 needles, as it made for a much nicer, floatier fabric. I'm also throwing in a strip of linen stitch at intervals, because I like linen stitch, and I felt like it needed something else to make the texture more interesting.

I'm not sure how it'll turn out, but I'm optimistic that it'll be something wearable. I won't know until I'm done, and if there's one thing I've developed over the years, it's the tenacity to finish the projects I start. You never know what you'll get out of experiments, but you always get SOMETHING. It's just as the Cheshire Cat says: You're sure to get somewhere if you keep walking long enough.

I think I'll make a cuppa tea now.