there's a van with a cat in it

Apparently that's the super-secret British spy way of saying "Danger Will Robinson! Abort mission!" If only I had listened. So here's my nugget of advice gleaned from a weekend of knitting in front of the tube: don't try to design a sweater while watching dramatic British spy shows on TV (or on the laptop, which is how we do it around here).

The sad outcome was, I cast on too many stitches for the front closure, Helen got killed thanks to managerial incompetence, and then I knitted several more inches of whole-sweater-in-the-round, oblivious to the oversized front. In fact, I didn't even notice until this afternoon as I was blithely knitting in the car on the way home from a quick winter jaunt to the beach, and the stitches weren't adding up.

Helen was one of my favorite characters from Episode 1 of MI-5, the aforementioned dramatic British spy show, and they went and killed her off right at the incredibly tense climax of Episode 2. They do things differently over there in England on the teevee. Do you cable-having people get this show on BBC America? Half the reason we have Netflix is so that I can get British television. I don't know what the other half the reason is, you'd have to ask HWWLLB.

Any rate, the MI-5 is bad for my knitting, it's too engrossing. Also, my hands get all trembly while watching it (I told you it's dramatic!), and I think the tension in my knitting increases. I think I could safely frog while watching it though, and goodness knows I have plenty of that to do now. Thanks a lot, BBC!