So let’s say, hypothetically, that you are forming a knitting team for a sweater knitting tournament.

Maybe you are even forming a couple teams. Because one of the sweaters is sort of a harder pattern and you want a really good team so you don’t end up with like, an extra arm on it. Sweater for a freaky octomom. And it’s going to have snowflakes on it. And if you have a crappy knitting team, the snowflakes be all askew and then no one wins. So you got the good snowflake people on that one. And the other team, is just like a sweater tank top and there’s no arms to even worry about and you don’t really care how it turns out. Just want to go out there and have some fun, uh, knitting a tank top. Like not even a tank top. A tube top! So easy! So fun! Even a cat could do it! An 18 year old diabetic cat that hides under the bed and listens to the radio all day.

So for the tube top team, you have to post a classified ad in the Knitting Knews that sounds something like this:

I love to walk on the beach and I swear I am not an alcoholic. I just like knitting sweaters for fun and I need some tube top knitting pals for the big sweater knitting tournament! Sometimes my tube tops are lumpy, but what the hell!

And no one answers it. Except for a couple friends who are just all, yay, cute sweaters, saw yer ad! You don’t feel very hopeful. Maybe you shouldn’t have said that thing about the beach? Or the lumpy? Or cursed in it?

But wait, then someone does!

But what if it’s someone who, before you went out and picked up your newest pair of knitting shears. Needles. Shears? Let’s just say shears. Because you make your own yarn from your sheep and all that. So before you picked up your new shears, you saw this lady at a wool carding class and this lady went all in your face and pointy finger at you about your new shears having contaminated blood. I mean blades. Because you got them from just across the border, in, uh, Canada. And she thought there were plenty of perfectly good blades here that wouldn’t contaminate the whole knitting community with disease. Because she knows knitting disease, missy. It’s her business. And she had pointed her finger in your face and shouted this at you, PEOPLE LIKE YOU, first time anyone had ever pointed a finger in your face and shouted crazy stuff til you backed away and shuffled off, baffled. Hell. You were just getting some new shears and what a unleashing of wrathlike nutso this lady you don’t even know has for you.

And this lady, who freaks you out, is actually a very well respected knitter. Been knitting much longer than you.

And I guess she has forgotten this incident. Or is just crazy. Or doesn’t care anymore. But for whatever reason, answered your classified and wants to knit tank tops with YOU. And your contaminated, foreign born shears.

And really, no one else does. They heard your tank tops are sloppy and your stitches sometimes just slip off and go all loopy for a minute before they go back in their stitching row. Even though they end up cute! Super cute!

So, do you go with your first idea which is, to say something super mature to the knitting lady like, “I wouldn’t knit a sweater for a rat’s ass with you, crazy knitting lady that pointed your finger in my face and shouted all INSANE at me, almost 2 years ago and forgot all about it, but I never forget the ranting of the crazypants, especially when there is a finger pointing in my face! And by the way, I did not import any diseases from, uh, Canada and who the hell cares where you get your shears! Knitting Lady!”

Or, do you just crack open a beer and say, “What the hell. It’s just a goddamn tube top. Maybe knitting with a volatile weirdo would be sort of entertaining, actually. Besides, no one else will knit with me.”

So what would you do?