Mormons...What's the Deal?

Or more specifically, what's the appeal?

I Don't Get It
I know I'm biased when it comes to evaluating the Latter Day Saints (LDS), or any religion for that matter. But I can't understand what would possess someone to join this odd religion.

As part of full disclosure, I have a gay friend who grew up in a Mormon household. When he realized he was gay, they went to extensive measures for about a decade to cure him of this sickness. Including incessant counseling (that sounded a lot like brainwashing), deprivation of food and sleep, and even "aversion therapy" such as attaching electrodes to his genitals and trying to shock the sickness out of him.

I also find the LDS folks who come to my door irritating.

All that being said, even if I try to see their religion from a purely pragmatic perspective, it just seems odd. The creation of a religion by peering into a hat, all the way to magic underwear. Add to that the hypocrisy of things such as their aversion to caffeine, except for Coca Cola, which the LDS organization used to own a lot of stock of.

I'd love to hear from someone who converted to Mormonism, so I could understand what would have someone come to that kind of decision.

Current Knitting
Most of this weekend was spent working on spinning and test plying (see below), but I did get some knitting done on the right-front of the colorblock cardigan.



Like a lot of full-size sweaters, I know I will have to force myself to finish the sleeves on this garment.

Current Spinning
I finished spinning two bobbins of singles using the multi-color merino.



I pulled down a bunch of old very fine merino singles I had done a year or so ago, and decided to try test-plying each of these colors with the two multi's.



Here are what each of the test plies ended up looking like.



The first one (from the left) is just the two singles by themselves. The next one is the bright red, then green, then deep plum.

Any preferences based on what you can see on your monitors?

Readers' Comments/Questions
Angie Cox writes, "On a Google search I found a sweater you made in 2005 .It wouldn't open the page or enlarge the image. It is a patchwork of Scandinavian patterns. I really loved it , would you be able to say which month it is featured in the archives?"

I looked through all my 2005 sweaters, and I couldn't determine what you meant by Scanadinavian patterns, so I don't know what sweater you're talking about. Was it a pullover or a cardigan? Was it multi-colored or single? Unfortunately, when blogger converted to the new format, they blew away all my archived pictures. I still have them stored locally, and I'd be glad to post any that you can help me identify.

"K" writes, "I personally can't stand chocolate brown and pale blue together. I hereby ban that combination forever."

Shortly after reading your comment, I ran into someone wearing that exact combination of colors. It was great, but it didn't look awful either, but it did make me laugh.

Anonymous writes, "To avoid confusion, I will adopt a pseudonym, Sofi, for future comments."

Thanks, a name and presumed gender make it a lot easier to reply to comments.