Apollo, Dionysus, and DPN

So Sarah Poppins says to me, "is knitting considered Apollo's playground of Dionysis'?"

And my first thought was, "um, okay, which is which again?" And then I thought, "Well, it's not Bacchus's because if you drink too much while knitting you're bound to drop a stitch somewhere and then in the morning when you have rip it all out you're also nursing a headache."

But thankfully, I married a guy who Knows These Things, so he gave me the bad news that it's just not that simple and also, that I'm comparing apples to oranges on account of Bacchus being Dionysus in Roman clothing. Oh.

Now, I didn't *want* it to be Apollo's playground because Chris is forever giving me a hard time about how unsexy knitting is (which he is wrong about) and I don't know that Apollo, being all into order and everything, is all that sexy.

But in googling around Dionysus, I don't think he's really the knitting type. While it's true that some knitting patterns do seem shrouded in darkness and mystery and might drive a woman to wander around the wild woods shouting, "evoi, evoi" -- they're only tearing out stitches--not the living flesh of animals.

Apollo? Well, he's the god of music and it can be nice to listen to music while knitting -- but I admit I really, really like listening to a child's football practice while knitting. Is Apollo there? I don't know. There's certainly testosterone to spare. Apollo is associated with law, philosophy, and the arts. It helps to be philisophical when the item you just spent a month knitting turns out to have some fatal flaw (like one sleeve is longer than the other). I won't go into whether knitting is an art or not -- of course it is. And law? Well it's not against the law to take your knitting needles on an airplane, so it has that in its favor.

I guess I'll have to vote in favor of Apollo. He seems a little sexier to me after reading more about him. Actually, he sounds a little like Chris. Only Chris is probably funnier and looks better in elf shorts.

(Admit it, how many of his regular readers were petrified of posting at his blog this past week for fear of accidentally saying something that earned you those shorts? Jeez Louise. And you all thought he was kidding when he said that at least twice a year I have to tell him -- quite seriously -- if you get arrested I'm not bailing you out until the morning, so bring your own cash.)

The important thing is that I made progress on my soakers today and I did a really nice three-needle bind off for the shoulders of that child's sweater. Now if I can only remember whether I used size nine or ten needles for the ribbing. I have to start the sleeves soon and I just *can't* recall.