Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. After three weeks of being on call for jury duty for the District Court of Maryland, I get selected as a jury member for a trial. I can't say this was a surprise, though. I had an awful feeling that I was going to get picked about halfway through the three-hour voir dire process. Of course, the fact that I practically leaped out of my seat when faced with the question of whether I would be able to participate in a trial that was scheduled to last four plus days probably didn't help matters. I cited work-related reasons, and I honestly felt that I had just cause for dismissal. The judge wasn't having any of it, though, and I ended up back in the pool. Chances are that if I had kept my mouth shut I would have been "safe". Now I have the dubious honor of serving as Juror #7 on an eight person jury.

On a positive note, I was able to complete my swatch for the Ribby Cardi (I'm not entirely sure how I managed to get my needles into the courthouse without detection, let alone comment!).

Looks like I'll definitely have to drop a needle size -- instead of the recommended US 6 and 7 needles, I'll be using US 5 & 6. I'm still a little worried about the ribbing aspect of this project. I've always used the Knitting-On method to cast-on my stitches, but it doesn't seem to work as well when setting up for a project like the Ribby. I've managed to find a cast-on method on Knittinghelp.com that seems more suited for ribbing. The method is called Cable Cast-on. Fortunately, it wasn't hard to master and I'm definitely encouraged by what I've seen so far. The first row immediately after the cast-on row is always the most difficult for me -- things tend to get a little loose -- but this doesn't seem to be the case with the Cable Cast-on. Who knows: I might actually start enjoying ribbing after this experience!