Uglification and disgruntlement

I have joined the ranks of the truly ugly. Cinderella's step-sister ugly. Phantom of the Opera ugly. Frightening small children ugly.

I have an enormous sty right in the center of my lower left eyelid. It's the size of a small cherry tomato, and about the same color. It is not possible to camouflage something this big and hideous with anything except dark glasses, and I am not pretentious enough to wear dark glasses indoors, so the end result is that I have spent the last several days frightening people. It's actually fairly entertaining. I'll walk into a room, remove my sunglasses, and observe the expressions of shock and/or horror. People who love me, like my DH, are quite honest about it. "Gosh, it's gotten worse!" he exclaimed last night after I'd spent several hours deluding myself into thinking it had gotten better. "It looks really awful!"

I much prefer his reaction to those of the polite folks who attempt not to comment, like the young teacher I interviewed this morning. She kept trying not to stare at it, but she couldn't help herself. She kept blinking quickly and then jerking her gaze suddenly to the right. Fascinating. I could have taken her off the hook by excusing my appearance in advance, but I was seized with a desire to discover what the truly deformed have to deal with.

I would take a picture of it to share with you all, but I'm not sure I want it documented for posterity. I will be quite relieved when it's finally gone, although it might take a while. Ugliness this profound does not go gently into the good night.

Shall I talk about knitting now? I had a few hours to kill on Saturday, so I made a naughty visit to Knitting Arts for their Mother's Day sale. Acquired a lovely array of Rowan, Muench, and Great Adirondack. The Rowan is all wool tweeds, dk and 4-ply, in greenish-blue, off-white, and rose, the Muench is Samoa cotton(the best for my little backpacks and purses), in lt. blue, lt. green, pink, and peach, and the Great Adirondack is crazy stuff, fuzzy and shiny and sparkly, in a rainbow of pastels to match the Samoa. Kind of like the Prism we used to make Shawlapalooza -- I have this idea for a little poncho and matching bag in Samoa/Adirondack for Princess M, a smaller version of the Fuzzy Sparkly poncho. The Rowan is for a hat from Interweave Knits last winter, plus some socks. When I get around to socks!

I'm halfway through the final knitting piece for CNITU's backpack; soon it will be ready to block and crochet together. Slow going -- I have NO TIME to knit at the moment, since my middle school students have their final performance on Friday and my show goes into tech on Saturday. I recall Sally Melville saying in one of her books that if she doesn't have time to knit every day, she gets grumpy. Ah, Sally, how right you are.