can you define frustration?

Let me tell you about the 16th of March 1983.
A date that will linger in memory forever
This is one of those Significant Dates

Partly because it was the day that both of my parents-in-law celebrated the 60th anniversary of the highly improbable coincidence that saw them being born in the same little town in Abruzzi on the exact same day in 1923
As a relatively new and enthusiastic quilter I had made them a full sized Log Cabin quilt - my first big project in fact - and I have to point out that this was a full five or six months before the first rotary cutter graced these shores, so it was done the old fashioned way with scissors.
It was peach and brown ... it was not the world's most attractive quilt, nor was it exactly a masterpiece of precision but it was the absolute best that I could manage at the time and I poured my heart and soul into it. it was four times as big as my previous finished quilt: the cot quilt I'd made for Nadie.
As I sewed I imagined their gratitude and delight - well, Mother in Law's anyway. Father in law wouldn't have known delight if it crept up and bit him on the bum but that's another story.
It will probably surprise no quilter when I say that the final stitches were put in about an hour before we were due at the in laws' and there was still the job of trimming a few final stray threads ... and the weak of stomach or the faint of heart can probably see where this is heading and are excused from reading further.
yup
there it was: spread over our bed while Marc helped to remove any hangers on
and this is where the day took on it's supreme significance
his hand sort of slipped and he ... cut ... right ... through ... the ... top

It is quite possible that my marriage could have ended right then and there, but he was so horrified by what he'd managed to do that I didn't have the heart to say anything [ much ]
- and to this day that quilt with its careful little mend takes pride of place in ma-in-law's bedroom
cos I've never been game to attempt to make her another one

After a few hundred finished quilts, this still remains my personal pinnacle of quilterly frustration [ shock, horror, take your pick ] and quite possibly always will be

this week I experienced a similar level of knitterly angst:

Personally I blame Nadie who was rather keen on Wendy's Le Slouch and had chosen a soft smooshy purple yarn - Moda Dea Parade - from the stash.
I figured that I could knock one out easily while she and The Boy were up north and it would clear another guilt-inducing novelty yarn out of my house so why not?
It's one of those yarns that combines a carrier thread with a couple of different textures of fluffy stuff. If you're careful not to split stitches, it's reasonably easy to do plain knitting.
True, there was mild aggravation when I encountered three knots within the space of a metre and a half about two rows into the new ball and had to carefully tink backwards to the join but nothing to shed tears over, right?
Not until I was well into the crown decreases and a row from the end
and A CERTAIN SOMEONE WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS decided to pull it off the dpns and drag it around the room." It wasn't me"
I think that I can state with some level of authority that it is abso-bloody-lutely impossible to find let alone pick up dropped double decreases in this stuff
so


Le Slouch take 2