Yenta, advise thyself!

Dear Miss Conduct,

I am an etiquette advice columnist and blogger. Because I write for a magazine, I submit my columns a couple of weeks before they actually run. This means, of course, that things can happen after I submit the column, but before it runs, that might make for awkward situations.

Like this one. Last Sunday, I was at a Superbowl party with lots of my friends, most of whom read my column and blog, of course. My friend Verena was there, too. She's not very interested in football, so she brought her drop spindle and a bunch of wool and spent a lot of the evening spinning yarn while we chatted.

Then, to my embarrassment, I realized that the following Sunday, my column was going to be about a woman who knits at parties, and in that column, I had written, "People who are socially comfortable don't need to take handwork to parties."

I didn't mean my friend, Miss Conduct! The knitter in the question sounded compulsive about her knitting, and was clearly doing it to both draw attention to and deflect it from herself. My friend wasn't doing that. She doesn't need to do handcrafts at parties. I think she just figured that lots of people would be watching the game and not that interested in conversation, and knew that some of the folks who did want to mostly talk would get a kick out of seeing her new skill and trying it themselves.

I'm embarrassed in case she thinks I was writing about her, and I'm even more worried that some of our friends who saw her spinning at the party, and then read what I wrote, will think I'm being catty toward her or that we're on the outs.

What should I do, Miss Conduct?

Signed,

Weaving a Tangled Web in Cambridge

Dear Weaving,

You said your friends read your blog, so go explain yourself there. Duh.

Signed,

Miss Conduct