brainylady

I want it all

I want to knit smarter and faster. I also want to do all the prep work that Jenna advises in her fabulous Knitty article, I really do. It just makes so much sense! But then there are the freshly wound balls of yarn that taunt and beckon and make it well-nigh impossible to ignore them for the time it takes to read through a whole pattern, let alone indicate decreases on one's enlarged schematic! I don't think I'm strong enough.

As I was pulling on my (store-bought) socks this morning, I was thinking that it would be funny to write a short story about a knitting blogger who feels so much pressure to attract readers and keep up with the other, speedy knitters that she fakes her FOs. At first, she is hesitant; she scans a stitch-detail photo from an old, obscure knitting book and posts it on her blog, casually claiming it as a swatch of her own. As she gets more comments from unsuspecting readers, she gets bolder; eventually, she's photographing socks and sweaters she's bought and pretending that she's knit them. I don't know how the story would end, though. Would she be outed and ousted, like Jayson Blair from the NY Times (who is now on a book tour promoting his memoirs of news-faking)? Would the whole knitblogging ring implode under the weight of scandal? Perhaps knitters from around the ring would stand by her, admitting that they too have felt the pressure, even been tempted to exaggerate about their own accomplishments on the needles. Or maybe she'd just walk away and vanish from the ring without a trace. She'd donate her computer to a local high school, and knit contentedly on her back porch, rarely finishing the second sock of a pair and caring not a whit.

What do you think would happen?