Made In America

I've only posted about one hundred gazillion dozen times about my Turkish Bed Socks.  So instead of re-hashing the whole process, I thought I would recap my overall thoughts ... be ye not as dumb as me, READ THE PATTERN.

Having knit, reknit, cut, grafted, and re-reknit these socks some more, I finally ended up with a finished pair of socks, and an extra heel cup area, and thought I was done.  So then I went out and purchased (an early Valentine's Day gift from my awesome husband) a pair of ugly shoes only to find (really??) that my socks are too long for the look I wanted.  Because I still, AFTER ALL OF MY SCREW UPS, DISREGARDED THE PATTERN!?!

So, if I want my socks to look like this, my initial inspiration,  the whole reason that I wanted to knit the socks, some sort of strange handknit sock porn for me, if I want that, I have to fold over an inch or so of the sock and tuck them under my toes.  Which you know, NOT comfortable.  Yes, the pattern said knit them shorter than normal and I said shorter schmorter.  Again, be ye not as dumb as me, READ THE PATTERN.  I could cut them and regraft them, you know AGAIN but I am done.  D. O. N. E. done. I'm just gonna wear them with other shoes and call it a day.

Yarn: SHIBUI Sock, color orchid, #4021, lot #5787, slightly less than 1 skein
Needles: Addi Turbo Circs, size 3.0 mm (US 2.5)
Pattern: Churchmouse Yarn's Turkish Bed Socks
Modifications: Too many.  Next time, follow the directions EXACTLY
Time: 5 days.
Care: Machine wash, gentle cycle, cold water. Dry flat.

Prickly

Another day, another cowl?  Perhaps.  It seems to be a thing for me lately.  Because, you know, this, my second cowl makes two, which is a thing?  Oh Jenna. Anywho ...

At our annual Knitting Party, this year's swap gifted me with this yarn in the Christmas Cactus colorway.  Now it is sock yarn, so one might think making socks with it would be logical.  I, however, am not logical.  Also, I recently unearthed (in my husband's car's trunk ... weird, right?) a pair of half, or perhaps a quarter, knit socks still (obviously) on the needles.  Those socks are somewhat brain-requiring and I didn't want to start another pair so I did a little search of the yarn in my colorway on Ravelry.  It is not the most popular colorway out there, but I saw this, and even though the dye lot there is a lot more red than mine, I decided to give it a go.  Also, I am currently addicted to cowls. 


The yarn was easy to ball up and had not a single knot.  Sadly this is worthy of both note and excitement.  What the hell happened to quality control yarn makers??  Anyway, the big down side of this yarn was the fact that knitting more than a row turned my fingers a lovely reddish orange.  I was able to wash my hands each time I finished working on it and the dye came off.  But it was annoying. 



The dye leaching was annoying.  And perhaps a smarter person would have not only remembered that, but thought about it before starting the blocking process.  I did remember it, and not wanting my neck or my collars to turn colors, I gave the cowl two good washes in Eucalan.  And then I let is soak in a third batch over night.  In my sink.  Which is some new age product and not porcelain.  The next morning the water was reddish orange and so was my sink.  NOT WINNING!  Several serious scrubs with Bar Keepers Friend and the sink was once again white, but I was annoyed.  Even with all of this washing and soaking, the cowl left reddish stains on three consecutive towels as I rung it out in prep for blocking.  Also annoying. 



As noted in these instruction, the actual pattern used was this one.  I used it too.  My only deviation was due to my inability to pay attention.  In mine, the garter rows between the yarn over rows vary from three rows to five.  Reddish orange fingers and all, I am happy with this cowl.  It wraps around my neck three times and is more snug than loose, but not too snug.  That being said, one of my CiF folks seemed to really like the yarn at our Knitting Party, so perhaps I will CiF ... I'm undecided right now.

Yarn: Done Roving Frolicking Feet, Christmas Cactus, 1 skein
Needles: Addi Turbo Circs, size 3.5 mm (US 4)
Pattern: Garter & Eyelet Cowl
Modifications: Varied the number of garter rows between lace/yarn over rows.
Time: 18 days.
Care: Machine wash, gentle cycle, cold water. Dry flat to block it out.

Not As Intended

Despite the insanely warm temperatures  (Damn you Global Warming!), I knit myself a warm and bulky cowl.  In my mind I knew EXACTLY what I wanted.  I wanted it to stripe, but not too obnoxiously.  I want it to be neutral, but not boring.  I wanted it to wrap around my neck twice, but not have too much extra play.  I wanted it to be seamless and soft.  Sadly, that which is in my head is not necessarily one with reality. 

  

I used Jared Flood's Noro Striped Scarf as a jumping off point.  But I did jump off quite a bit. Which is to say I knit two rows per color, and did so in a 1x1 rib.  I didn't do any of his pretty edging, or use his pattern numbers.

  
The knitting of this baby was pretty darn quick. I enjoyed watching the shades of the Noro pop in and out. I did not, however, enjoy picking the twigs out of the Noro or dealing with the random breaks and knots in the yarn. In fact, that part was really friggen annoying. Not as annoying as trying to seam this monster together though. While my provisional cast on seemed quite normal, it wasn't. I used a crochet chain. Used the bumps and started my 1x1 rib. Which, I learned at 11:45pm on New Year's Eve, was an epic fail. It looked normal before I took out the chain, but it wasn't.

    In fact, it was almost as if it was not actual knitting.  This may have been daunting to some, but not me.  Oh no.  I was sure it would be fine once I got to grafting. Ha!  And HAHAHA.  I had about 10 resources on grafting in a rib, none of which were actually spot on, and tried to cobble something pretty together.  I tried.  Over.  And over.  Never really stopping.  Well, that's not quite true. I did take a quick break to ring in the New Year with a smooch for my husband and a chug of some iced tea, but that was it.  And that is perhaps why, at 1:00 a.m. I said 'to Hell with you' and weaved in my ends.  I wasn't thrilled, but I was tired and I wanted to be done. 

The next morning, I was still tired, but I was also horrified.  What awful crap was this?  What happened to the perfectionist yarn cutter I once was? At the (smart) urging of a friend, I ripped, and cut that shit out.  And then I started again.  I had to reknit several inches because my end weaving was that damn good (unlike my seaming) and so the stripes are now no longer perfect.  This irked me.  And it still kind of does.  But I am going to pretend it doesn't.  In any event, I reknit and then, using my pea brain, decided to use the tried and true mattress stitch instead of some new age grafting stitch I made up out of frustration.

  

I do have a seam, but it isn't too unseemly (hardy har har).  If you put the seam in the back, you can't tell my stripes are not in perfect colorlogical pattern order.  So, good enough!

Yarn: One and a quarter skeins of Noro Big Kureyon and one skein of an unknown grey yarn I received as a gift from a friend
Needles: Addi Turbo Circs, size 5.5 mm (US 9)
Pattern: Noro Striped Scarf
Modifications: Cast on 55, knit 1x1 rib, bind off, mattress stitch
Time: Two weeks
Care: Dry clean (as if)

One of Four

So remember when I mentioned that cruel, cruel mistress, Craft It Forward (CIF) 2011, which incidentally has not been seen anywhere in 2012 because people learned their lesson?  No?  Did I mention it?  Well if not in short (heh, as if) there was a status on facebook that read something along the lines of:

It's time to Craft-It-Forward!  Would you like me to make you something special in my oh-so-abundant-free-time?  I have had way to much wine and am feeling friendly.  I also smoked crack and dined on magic mushrooms.  Life is a rainbow, experienced on the back of a unicorn.  I will plan to craft something for the first five people that write a comment AND re-post this status on their own walls. Even as I type this, I suspect it isn't going to end well but I want something awesome from someone else.  I am selfish.  I will pay for this selfishness. Eventually your craft will get done, but only after I feel so guilty for being a slacker and have received a craft from you or someone else.  Please pass the dutchie from the left hand side.

Perhaps it was a bit more succient.  In any event, I had CIF well under control (read: no one had crafted me so I felt comfortable not having crafted someone else).  But then.  But then I was having a crochet issue with the Sweet Pea Shawl and joked that a friend could crochet my shawl for me as my CIF gift ... AND SHE DID.  But then my other friend randomly appeared with an awesome felted gnome bag, with the gnome modeled after a real life one, well real life statute, obviously.  So then my feet were to the fire.  I am working on something for the crocheter, but in the meantime, gnomey said she saw a bandana cowl at a LYS and wanted to make one some day and I thought to myself I AM ON THIS.  Except this is me we are talking about and so by on this I mean I had a month to feel guilty for not going to look at the cowl or picking yarn or starting the knit.  But somehow I got off my rump and got to knitting.

It took me a week and a half to get her done, but I did it.  I followed the pattern EXACTLY but because my yarn wasn't bulky, I doubled it.  While this makes the fabric warm and dense, it does inhibit the drape to some extent.  Having never seen the thing in real life, I was constantly checking other people's versions on Ravelry and kept thinking mine looked loooonnnnnggggg.  And now that I have seen the one in the LYS, I can say my version IS long. 

But my friend swears she likes it, so I am going to assume this is true. When she tried it one she gave it a little swagger. A swish and a wosh. Or something.  It does not look as long and about-to-get-caught-between-the-boobs on her, as it did when I tried it on.  I consider this a good thing. 

As an aside, the yarn I used, Rios, while lovely to knit with, SUCKED BIG MONKEY LIPS to wind.  Before I realized that CIF was a really stupid idea, I bought this yarn with various CIF ideas in mind.  The first skein was twisted and knotted and took me an hour or so to wind due to having to manually untangle the shit.  I figured it was a fluke.  WRONG.  The second skein?  A FUCKING NIGHTMARE.  There were so many knots and twists and tangles, I had to cut the yarn to get it out of the skein.  I had to ball it by hand because it was so tangled on the swift that every turn made it worse.  It took me DAYS to get it into a manageable ball. I have NEVER EVER NEVER NEVER seen such a disaster of yarn in a normal unassuming looking skein.  If, and that is a big if, IF I ever buy this yarn again, it will be with the insistence that the yarn store ball it for me.

Yarn: Malabrigo Rios, almost 2 skeins, 52 Paris Night
Needles: Addi Turbo Circs, size 6.5 mm (US 10)
Pattern: Bandana Cowl
Modifications: Doubled the yarn
Time: A week and a half.
Care: Machine wash, gentle cycle, cold water.  Dry flat.

Foggy

I've been so damn slow at blogging my knits, in this case more than two years, that the details of what I did are some what ... foggy.  NOT THAT I AM OLD AND LOSING MY MIND. I'm not.  Advanced maternal age my arse.  I'm a spring chicken dammit.  Now, what was I talking about?

So, another Christmas stocking.  I've blabbered on about Christmas stocking knitting.  A lot.  The stuff about the first stocking was useful.  The stuff about the second stocking was not really present so I guess I can't say it wasn't useful. Anywho, I am going to shake out the cobwebs and hope for the best.  I plan on knitting a third stocking next year for our third baby, who is due in April.  A boy child?!?!?  I go forth optimistically thinking I will remember something useful.

The stocking.  It was fine to knit.  No surprises or deviations. I started at the top and worked my way down, like the pattern calls for and unlike I did for the first one, where I went from the toe up.  Once the stocking was knit, I went ahead and bedazzled it.  I DID NOT BLOCK IT.  Short of a tsunami, that sucker is never going to see water. 

I have an "In Progress" knitting photo and an "In Progress" post-knitting, pre-seaming, damn what a mess photo.


  
These are of no help, and I am not exactly sure why I took them.  Though the bedazzling was not difficult, it, combined with my inexpert color work, made for quite the train wreck on the oh-so-very-wrong side of the stocking.  Also, I am not the best bedazzler ever.  Or, maybe I *meant* for the boy snowman's arms to have muscles ...

What?  Snowmen aren't JACKED?  Well mine is.  So there!  Other than some creative bedazzling, the only other issue with the stocking that I had was its length.  Having actually loaded that sucker up with goodies this year, I can say that the thing is HUGE.  It is at least an inch longer than the first stocking.

It's the second to last one on the right.  The one practically dragging on the ground. To fill it seems like a MASSIVE undertaking.  I thought I was going to have extra stuff sticking out of the top.  Instead?  Instead it was like a cavernous black hole.  It looked sad and kind of gaping in the middle.

There was another slight hiccup with the lining.  As in the first one I cut, and a sweet friend sewed for me, was too small.  I didn't account for the space the seam would take up.  Duh.  Not winning.  My second go around turned out fine size wise, though my seaming it into the stocking itself was a little ghetto-riffic.  Sometime I will tell you about the story of my sewing machine, the five+ year belief that I had lost the power cord, and the startling revelation that I actually didn't.  In the meantime, I like the stocking a lot.  It was not nearly the pain in the ass that I experienced my first go around and I am glad I knit it and hope my daughter enjoys it.  If she doesn't, I'll just pinch her.

  
Yarn: Elegant Heirlooms, Googleheims Stocking Kit purchased from Angelika's Yarn Store
Needles: Addi Turbo Lace Circs, size 3.25 mm (US 4)
Pattern: "Moonflakes"
Modifications: Added extra stripe around white name band so both top and bottom had a red and green stripe. This matched the first stocking I knit.
Time:  Ummm, two years total.  EMBARASSING.  But also due to my sewing, or lack thereof.
Care: Only use it once a year and don't let anyone touch it.

Done!

My version of the Moderne Baby Blanket is dooooonnnnneeeee!

My pictures leave something to be desired (to put it mildly), but I am so done with this baby, that I can't see me waiting for nice light and doing another proper photo shoot.

Yarn: Knit Picks, Swish Worsted, White, Sugar Plum, Amethyst and Parrot. Less than 3 skeins of each.
Needles: Knitters Pride Nova Circs, size 4.25 mm (US 6) ** These are a lot less expensive than Addi Turbo Circs and were just as nice **
Pattern: Moderne Baby Blanket
Modifications: Made MUCH smaller and improvised on squares once I figured out what I was doing.
Time: Less than 2 months.
Care: Machine wash and tumble dry low.

Socky Sherbet

This weekend, while sprawled out on a couch during a girls' weekend, I finished the Sunday Swing Socks. As soon as they were done, I put them on and went for a walk along the beach hunting for sea glass. It turns out, I am a MUCH better sock knitter than I am sea glass finder ... even after consuming an entire bottle of wine and some Poochi Poochi Sake.


These socks were so unbelievably easy to knit. So easy that I never actually printed out the pattern. I looked at the pattern online and knitted from the iPad for the first round or so and then realized that the spacing was six stitches and eight stitches and that was then end of my need for the pattern. I did goof at one point and switch the eight and the six so one repeat is off, but I am pretending that it never happened and in fact, that last bit of the sentence is going to self-destruct as soon as you click away from this entry. Seriously. It will. Though you shouldn't click back and double check or my secret Sycophant Zombie Army will have to come and assimilate you into the fold.

Anyway, I digress. These socks are easy. Though I suspect that if these were your first socks, you might want to refer to the pattern a little more than me. I didn't alter anything in the pattern, except the cuff/ribbing, which I had started before I determined what pattern these socks were going to be. I'm not sure what the pattern calls for but a simple k1,p1 rib works fine.

Also fine? The yarn. It is ArtYarns and it is lovely. I am a fan of ArtYarns yarns and am bummed to hear (from several unrelated sources) that the woman who is ArtYarns is a bit of a yahoo who is trying to re-brand herself and in doing so is pricing her self out of the market. Well at least for cashmere. Which these socks are not. But still. I don't like the word on the street. Assuming the sock yarn stays affordable, and you are interested, I'd say it is a nice knit. Not splitty. Not knotty. Smooth and flowy and squishy. I'm not sure how it will wear and if the colors will fade (Koigu I'm looking at you ... fader!) as I have only used the ArtYarns cashmere and silk before, but I am hopeful. Really hopeful. I have a skein leftover, as well as a bit left over from each skein that I knit the socks from and am thinking kid socks (though these aren't superwash which could be tricky with the under three crowd).

So, as the great Charlie Sheen would say, these socks? WINNING, Duh!


Yarn: ArtYarns Ultramerino 4, less than two skeins, color 127.
Needles: Addi Circs, size 2.5 mm (US 1)
Pattern: Sunday Swing Socks
Time: 4 weeks!
Care: Hand wash and dry flat in shade.

Repetitive

Yah, you people who doubted my ability to control the weather? FOOLS!


Two days ago I finished knitting another cowl and the last two days the weather has been in the upper fifties and low sixties (fahrenheit) and very un-cowl wearing like. I am omnipotent. Feel free to seek favor with cookies or large bills. Or Louis Vuitton wonderfulness. I am not picky. I am also not hardcore badass when photographed in an artsy manner. But I try.



In any event, I knit a cowl that is eerily similar in pattern to the one I knit a month or so earlier. It was going to be for a Craft-it-Forward Facebook thing, but then I realized that the Malabrigo worsted yarn is basically roving and I don't like it. Not one bit. I KNOW. Another secret I need to keep from the cool kids. Everyone loves Malabrigo. Hell, I love the colors of Malabrigo, but the worsted merino, well, I am not sure what is the appeal. It is roving in a skein. It is shite. Not surprisingly, it wears like shite as well (my fingertipless mitts have more pills than my local pharmacy). Nonetheless, even after I realized my yarn choice goof, I plugged on through and now have myself a cowl that does not shed every time I pull it over my face. I like it though it is a little smallish, or rather my head is a little biggish.


The pattern calls for two skeins and I used just one. As you can see here, that was what I had left for the seaming. Since this seemed ... odd, I measured the cowl before I seamed it up and it was in line with the pattern specs. I'm at a loss. When I finished seaming, I had maybe a foot of roving yarn left over. From the first skein. Which ... yeah? I dunno. It is not even really a happy thing as I am not in love with this stuff and am chomping at the bit to knit something else with the remaining skein. Meh.

The pattern itself was super easy to follow and overall, even with my poor yarn choice, I am pleased with the finished product. So that, not-so-meh.


Yarn: Malabrigo, Worsted, Merino Wool, #37 - Lettuce - 1 skein.
Needles: Addo Circ, size 5.0 mm (US 8)
Pattern: Tuesday Night Cowl
Time: A month.
Care: Hand wash cold and dry flat in shade or dry clean.

Holy Cowl

So in, literally, two days I whipped up a cow that I had seen at Stitches East. I left that typo there because it amused me. I knit a cow. Wahahaha. Okay, not really funny anymore. Moving on. Or not. I did say Stitches East which means last October, which means a finished object from last year is being blogged this year. I should be embarrassed but I still have a few finished objects from TWO years ago that I have not blogged so let us ignore that and really move on. I knit up a cowl. It was quick and I love it. Almost.


I love that it was a super duper quick knit. I love that the color is neutral but doesn't get washed out in my amazing complexion despite my fabulous lighting in that there photo above. I love that it covers the quadruple chins (that I acquired AFTER giving birth to Juliet, WRONG). And really, I could stop there. Hides multiple chins? WIN.



It also can double as a stole on a toddler and even a pre-schooler (which says VERY BAD THINGS about the aforementioned quadruple chins). And, for the record, the pre-schooler there, that is her "model pose" which I guess means she has a head ache from being overworked?

I also really liked the pattern. It was easy to follow and well written. I did have a few cables that gaped at the ends. I am not sure what I did to cause this. But I went back and tightened them up with extra yarn when I weaved in my ends because I am anal and crazy and was worried that The Fashion Police would beat me with last year's it bag should it see those gaping holy bits. Twas no big deal.


The only thing I am not totally in love with? The yarn. I double stranded some baby alpaca and some woolly cashmere, which is beyond heavenly soft but ... but it sheds. A lot. I have lint rolled the thing. Repeatedly. I have given it a superduper bath which sadly sucked out some of the body but not enough of the superfluous fluff so when I wear it I tend to sneeze. Or cry. Depending on whether the fluff goes up my nose or in my eyes. And since I have to pull it over my face to get it on, that fluff is going somewhere I don't want it to go. I am kind of hoping that it will defluff itself eventually. But I realize that this likely be a pipe dream. All that being said, even with the fluff, I like this cowl lots and have been wearing it. Tearfully.


Yarn: Frontier Fiber Mill, 100% Suri Alpaca, Regalia, 2 skeins with Filatura Di Crosa, Nobile, Color 15, Lot 0010, 3 skeins
Needles: Addi Circs, size 6 mm (US 10)
Pattern: Burberry Inspired Cowl
Time: 2 days
Care: Hand wash in cold. Dry flat.

Dropped

Way back in November of 2009, on November 9, to be exact I started a little knitting project. A drop stitch shawl/scarf. I had been trying to recreate a store bought scarf, saw something similar at Stitches East, and decided to go for it. It required the casting on of one hundred and fifty stitches, which I did. While I was in labor. After I cast on the oodles of stitches, I was able to knit a couple of rounds before bellying up to the epidural bar. Then there was some dropped, not on purpose, stitches and a yarn break and I packed up the project and moved onto the having baby project. Since then I have worked on the baby project full time and am happy to report she is alive and kicking and learning to earn her keep modeling my knitwear.


The knitting project, however, was less full-time and more on and off. That being said, I finally finished it. The fact that a scarf took me almost a year makes me nauseous. I mean really. Ten months? For realz? In my defense (and yes, I do realize I am defending myself against myself, but whatever), I did finish a pair of socks and start a sweater and learn to crochet (poorly) so it's not as if I worked on it constantly. But still. Ten months!

The pattern was written by a yarn shop in Rhode Island called Unwind. Basically you cast on one hundred and fifty stitches, or one hundred and eighty if you are in labor (thankfully one hundred and eighty is divisible by five so it worked out perfectly) and then you knit those one hundred plus stitches, through the back loop, in the round, until the thing is eighteen or so inches. If you, like me, have a lot of yarn, you might go nineteen inches. Then you do this bind off where you are binding off five stitches and then pulling the yarn through a stitch and then knitting and dropping stitches and if this sounds confusing to you, you're not the only one. I am good at blindly following instructions, which I did, and it worked. But it was also a bit scary. Especially since I started it while driving in the car to Cooperstown (a city where I had no knitterly support) for a mini-vacation. I mean honestly, I was in the car with all this time to realize that for all intents and purposes I had knit the body of a sweater (read: LOTS OF WORK) and was doing some hinky bind-off which might be wrong and render all of that knitting USELESS.

Nonetheless, I did the cast-off and it seemed okay. I figured in for a penny, in for a pound and so I started dropping oodles and oodles of stitches. Seventy-five percent of the knitting I did? Dropped. Now not only was this sucky because all of my hard work was for naught. But also, I used alpaca which is basically like one big wad of self adhesive and thus, hard to drop. Really hard. In the end I did manage to get it done without breaking any of the long floaty bits (or anything else for that matter).


So then it was happily ever after right? Uh no. My nerves got another run for my money when it became obvious that the cast-on was WAY tighter than the bind-off. Now I figure that a slight difference in tension is normal, but when you throw in baby labor as part of your cast-on, you will, apparently, get the wholly mother of all tightness. Which in practical speak meant I could have a trapezoidal shaped scarfy wrap or take drastic measures. Those drastic measures? Cut the bars/dropped stitch sections for the cast-on row. Almost a year done of knitting and then I am faced with the prospect of hacking away at it. Which, me being me, I did. I went through and cut off the bars for the entire cast-on row. Then I gave the thing the evil eye and dared it to unwind or unknit. I did do a slight weaving of ends and kind of rubbed the ends figuring this and alpaca would put me in good stead. So far? So good.

After the cut-o-rama, I then had to block the thing as it looked like a pile of pasta. I was a bit scared of submerging it in water since alpaca has been known to turn into a wet rag of nothingness. After all I had gone through I decided to forgo my normal dunk and pin and got out the iron and a spray bottle. It was time consuming but, for the most part, I got all those drops looking smooth.

For the rest of its life, I will remember starting this scarf while I was in labor and having the anesthesiologist rip it when he went to put in my epidural. It is my Juliet scarf. For that reason alone I don't hate it. If I had to do it all over again that sucker would NOT be nineteen inches wide. I intended to make it a wrap but it looks TOTALLY stupid as a wrap and instead I wear it as a very fluffy scarf. I also am thinking the dropped bits would be fewer as I hate the fact that I undid so much of the work. But when all is said and done, I do like it and have worn it several times (like to ♥Rhinebeck♥).


Yarn: Schoppel Wolle, Baby Alpaka Naturbelassen, Color 98808870, Lot 1119344, 3 skeins
Needles: Susan Bates Circs, size 5 mm (US 8)
Pattern: Drop Stitch Wrap and Scarf by Unwind
Time: 10 months?!?
Care: Machine washable, gentle (hardy har har). Dry flat. Low heat iron.

Cold Feet

For the first time in ... an eternity, LB/Jillian is napping. I decided to make use of this time and notclean, notlaundry, notdishes and surf the internet. Actually, I first spent time alphabetizing our kids books. Seriously. I have problems. I only got one shelf done though. Which actually is so irksome that I, well, I can't even verbalize the irksomeness of it. I can state, however, that I will most likely be alphabetizing more books tonight. Such is the fast paced life I live. In any event, as I was surfing the internet, my feet became unacceptably cold. Conveniently, I had a pair of handknit socks sitting next to the computer. Not so conveniently, they had been sitting there for months waiting to be photographed and blogged. So, in the interest of having warm feet with minimal fuss, I pulled out the socks, gave them a good shake (dust), used my shirt to wipe the dust off of the corner of the desk, and snapped a few photos. Then I put them on, sat back down and here I am, sock shod and sassy!



The socks do not to lie flat, making them hard to photograph in a normal sock-like fashion (and also making me nervous that they were not actually going to fit on my feet). So I ended up folding them in a way that, for some admittedly weird reason, reminded me of maxipads.



I can't remember much about these socks. Except that I started them in May and was less than thrilled with the colors when working on them and noticed something hinky with the heel as I was going along. Said hinkyness might be why the socks don't sit sock like.

As an aside, it has been so long since I've blogged, I forgot what I called my kids on the blog. Many years ago [snort], I worked with nutjobs and wackados and total anonymity was important. Now, not so much. So I am using my kids' real names. If you'd like, I'll also give you my social security number, address, and home phone number (yes, I know, how passé, I have a home phone).



Yarn: C*EYE*BER Fiber, Vancouver Island sock coordinates
Needles: Addi Circs, size 2.5 mm (US 1) which are now M.I.A????
Pattern: Um... Toe up star toe, stockinette, short row heel, 2x2 rib cuff.
Time: No idea.
Care: Machine washable, gentle. Dry flat.

Jungle Boogie

Ta da! I finished the itsy bitsy baby socks. Unfortunately, the itsy bitsy (well not so itsy bitsy, rather rolly polly) baby is sound asleep and unavailable for a photo op. And actually, being that LB is also asleep ... this is really not that unfortunate. Two kids napping at the same time? Totally fortunate. Also rare. So of course I am using my alone time productively by farting around on the internet. Woot!



In case you are curious, these socks took up NO YARN. I mean really. I made a full on whole pair of adult Monkey Socks with this yarn and had two little balls left over. These guys took up one of the remaining little balls. Insane. Also, when used on such a small project, the yarn stripes and is not the psychedelic blur it is on bigger projects. Neat.

Yarn: Lorna Laces, Shepherd Sock, Color 302, Jungle Stripe
Needles: Addi Circs, size 2.5 mm (US 1)
Pattern: None. Toe up star toe, 28 rows in the rounds, short row heel, 6 rows rib.
Time: Actual knitting time - 3.5 days. Total time - one month.
Care: Machine washable.

Sweater Scmeter

I don't like knitting sweaters. It's true. I like wearing sweaters. I like owning sweaters. But the knitting part, not so much. That last few days LB has been sick, we've been housebound and I've been a surly bitch. My patience is nil and my empathy for whiny little girls, sick or otherwise, is negative nil. I've repeatedly thought that I should turn on Elmo so that she could veg out on the couch and I could sit and knit next to her and maybe mellow out a tad. And this is a wonderful plan, except when I pull out the sweater I get more grumpy and more surly and then when LB drops her cup of milk, because apparently she is incapable of holding her cup for extended periods of time but also refuses to put it on the table because I asked her to and that means she must not, um, anyway, she drops her cup, creates a minute shower of milk droplets all over the couch, her sister, and the floor, and I explode. That sentence was so long, even I got lost in the middle.

So yah, I hate knitting sweaters. I do not, however, hate knitting socks. I like knitting socks. Speaking of which, here is a pair I finished knitting some time ago.



I find these socks to be quite comfortable when I am pole dancing. They prevent blisters when I am working a long shift and they keep my feet warm too. A+ for function. Also, A+ for form. See how aesthetically pleasing they are with their precisely matching stripes? Nice, eh? I suspect those matching stripes get me better tips.



Yarn: Regia, Design Line, Kaffe Fassett, 4253, 27053.
Needles: Addi Circs, size 2.5 mm (US 1) WHICH I HAVE SINCE LOST!?!
Pattern: Jaywalker
Modifications: Toe up.
Time: One month.
Care: Machine wash, tumble dry low heat.