Flip Of A Coin

The Jaywalkers made rather pitiful progress this weekend - I'm all the way down to the heel flap on the first sock. Woo. But I have that whole "we spent the entire weekend buying a house and moving" excuse. This does not excuse the fact that I really SHOULD stop being selfish and put them down so I can finish Dad's socks first. I will do that. I will.

I got my first package from Greenwood Fiberworks. It's this wonderful sproingy cotton-lycra yarn that's been selling like gangbusters since Grumperina started talking about it (which is how I heard about it, and thank heavens for that). I got it on moving day - sort of like a housewarming gift! I left it on the counter at the new house and came back to find friends bouncing it around and trying to use it as a slingshot. Fun for non-knitters too! AND the yarn came with a pattern and a hand-written note. How's that for impressive? I've already ordered three more skeins - one in a screaming orange colour that will be my own personal socks. I like mine colourful - the nuttier the better.

I'm also grateful to have found a really delicious non-wool sock yarn. The merino is soft and delicious and all, but for Florida, it's not totally appropriate. Travis wore his Fugly Socks on moving day - they were cushy and nice for support, but when he took them off that night, we discovered that the warmth and the friction had caused almost the entire bottom of the foot to felt. He declared that the felting actually did make them even more comfortable - and it did look pretty neat - but I'm annoyed nonetheless. So superwash wool socks it is....or we stick to the cotton until winter.

The new Knitty issue is up! There's a great sock pattern...I have so many things I'd like to make, but all I can think about is socks.

We're almost completely moved into the new house. I've got my Knitting Room partially set up - it's so beautifully bright and airy - there are four huge windows, nearly floor-to-ceiling, so there's more natural light than you could ever wish for. I can just curl up in my giant loveseat-sized knitting chair and clickety-clack away. I even found a consignment-shop yarn shelf bookcase that is stained perfectly to match the doors and floors that at first glance it almost looks built-in. And gone are the bookends and shelf tchotckes - now each shelf proudly displays favoured yarns. Travis would argue that since he has a computer desk and a set of drums, he should get the larger office, since I could knit in a closet (and I'm pretty sure I have). But I win...mostly just because I'm the woman and I'll gripe and guilt-trip and never let him live it down if he takes the larger room. Membership has its privileges.

Mem'ries....In The Corner Of My Stash...

Okay, here's what happened. I have grown to resent Travis' socks. I look at them in the closet now and they irritate me. It's not that they're poorly made - they're far from perfect, but for a first attempt, they're noble. But I HATE the yarn. I don't like the way it pooled, I don't like how it striped in a spiral, and I don't really like the colours. I LOVED it in the skein. And now I'm annoyed at the couple more skeins I have coming. (Yeah, Knitpicks? You still suck at shipping.) More than anything, I'm just irritated that my first socks were kinda bleh.

I do love how soft Ken's Alafaya socks are....too bad I've only done about 3/4 of the ribbing on the second sock and kind of set it aside. (The curse of the "it's not going to be finished in time for his birthday, so let's give up" attitude.)

I also love my Jaywalkers:



These are for ME. This colourway makes me smile every time I look at it. It reminds me of my childhood. My mother had a watermelon citrine necklace that I really loved when I was little...I think it was close to these colours. So these socks remind me of my mom and me and how much fun we had when I was a kid and how I aspired to be like her and wear jewelry like her and smell Beautiful like her and be as grown-up and well-liked as her.

That's a lot of work for one little pair of socks to do, but look at them go! (The yarn, by the way, is Artyarns Ultramerino 4 in colour 127.) It even makes me happy just lying around in a ball.



Kamikaze Subject Change! Once upon a time there was a little Catghan I made for Susan C.'s new kittens (no photo, sorry, I was too anxious to give it away and I forgot) and now there's a new kitten, Snigglet. This one keeps trying to get onto the first Catghan, but the established kittens gnaw on Snigglet's ears whenever he tries to perch - so I've been charged with creating another one for him. (He even picked out his own yarn - a kitten after my own heart.)

But this one is on a surprise "trade". See, Susan reads my blog and has a mind like a steel trap and creativity to match.

Remember how I said that the theory that wearing hand-knitted socks should be your own little happy secret was total bunk and I wished I had a way to broadcast my handiwork?



She actually had this shirt made FOR ME. Wads of cash would have been less exciting than this. Seriously, I bounced around like I'd just hit the jackpot on Plinko. (I love me some cheesy Price Is Right games.) I even obtained special permission to wear it to work. (See, we're not supposed to wear clothing with writing on it, but I promised to wear a jacket.)



Meanwhile, Rooster is not happy with how much time I've been spending with WendyKnit's Lucy.

Note To Self:

Things I Need To Work On:

1. Knit faster. (This is the primary goal.)
2. Cable. (I've had cable needles for ages now, but it's a skill I just haven't bothered with yet.)
3. Figure out another way to get the working needle back. (I tend to push it through the stitch with my left pointer finger, which leads to little red not-quite-puncture-wounds, and which I'm sure one day will leave me with a wicked callous.)
4. Make knit friends. Can be in person, internet, or mail pals. (I want readership! I want to be on blogrolls! And other blogs are always bragging about their recent packages from other knitting friends...I want to exchange neat yarns and markers and other nifties with knit friends too! If I can't find any, I'm going to have to determine who is my most pliable friend and force him/her into a knitting obsession.)
5. Not be stupid. (Seriously, the Jaywalker pattern is NOT hard. There's no reason I should have to frog back two needles in a row because I increased instead of decreasing. Nor should I look back a few needles and see that I forgot to pass the slipped stitches over. Knitting 101. This skill goal could also be designated as "Pay attention, dummy.")
6. Ego. (I waste a lot of time admiring my work. I can't tell you how much time I've spent stretching out my four inches of Jaywalker and just gazing at it. I've always been easily impressed.)
7. Stay up to date on knitting goings-on. (You know, Knit-Alongs, Secret Pals, all that stuff. That seems like fun.)
8. Counting. (Especially when casting on. Someday I'm going to have to cast on several hundred stitches and I'll go insane.)

Things I'm Improving On:

1. Knitting faster. (Alright...)
2. Picking up dropped stitches. (Because I've had plenty of practice.)
3. Gussets. (My gusset join-holes aren't gone, but they're getting smaller.)
4. Managing all these damned needles at once. (Whee. DPNs are fun.)
5. Multi-tasking. (I can knit while having a conversation - which probably seems rude and I don't make as much eye contact as I should - as well as while mostly-watching television or a movie. My proudest so far, though, is all the progress on Ken's sock that I made while at the King Tut exhibit - turns out I can examine artifacts, maneuver large crowds, and read history snippets while idly knitting stockinette. And I didn't accidentally stab anybody, not ONCE. Though I did almost knock someone down with my purse while I was trying to tug more yarn out of there...)
6. Gauge. (I don't swatch socks - what are socks but giant swatches? - but I'm getting pretty good at figuring out quickly whether something's gonna go or not.)
7. Yarn Acquisition. (I'm going to call it a gift, my ability to exponentially increase the number of skeins of yarn I have in my possession. And the harder to find/rarer the better. I want to find a skein of sock yarn hand dyed by a llama herder in Borneo using plant dyes obtained from indigenous trees and plied with the help of a herd of native tree frogs.)
8. Casting on. (Not the counting part, obviously - but I assess almost exactly how much yarn I need for a long-tail cast-on. I do, however, need to work on my other cast-on methods. That one is by far my favourite, and it's not good for everything.

Uh-Oh.

Shipped and on its way:

Knitpicks: Eight skeins of sock yarns and two sets of smaller DPNs. (Note: I don't like how long Knitpicks takes, even if the shipping IS free - I ordered last Monday and I'm still waiting. I also am not terribly crazy about how their Memories yarn stripes, but I do love how soft and washable it is, so I'm letting it slide and ordering more.)

eBay seller: A bunch of DPNs - about 50 - to sort and enjoy.

eBay seller: A bunch of straights/circulars/DPNs to also sort and enjoy (I need variety in my needle collection - I mostly have bamboo and my interchangeable set, which I'm not totally in love with.)

KYarns: Two skeins each of two colours, Lorna's Laces. One skein, Mountain Colours Bearfoot. Two skeins, Koigu.

So that's....yeah, EIGHT pairs of socks. Not counting the several pairs' worth I have in the trunk already. I think it's safe to say socks are going to be an obsession for a while. Besides the Jaywalkers, I have plans for River Rapids and a few pair I spotted in my Nancy Bush book (though they're a bit more challenging.)

And there's that Greenwood Fiberworks cotton/lycra sock yarn that I'm itching for, but I'm waiting for her to put the perfect colour up for sale, and hopefully I'll get to it before Grumperina (who already has THREE perfect colours, and I'm green with envy. Actually, I'm pinks/lavender/raspberry with envy).

And I have a DK weight bamboo yarn that I really had earmarked for another project, but I'm just dying to at least swatch it for a sock and see if it would work...

How Was YOUR Weekend?

Whew!

Travis' socks are DONE. One pair down!!





Thirty seconds later, I took them away to close up some gaps - and he hasn't seen them since.

I'm working on socks for my dad now - he loves shooting powder rifles and stuff like that, and he does this live-like-the-1800s weekend in Alafaya, which is somewhere in Central Florida, but an attempt to find it last time he was there failed miserably. I wanted to make a sock he could wear that would reasonably fit the guidelines for that time period - so I'm knitting up a pair in organic cotton, colour-grown, using wooden needles - AND I didn't use a pattern, just sort of winged it. Socks are just math. But I hate math. But I like knitting....and knitting wins, but only barely. So I get the triumph of making socks AND the triumph of defeating math AND a bit of pride from improvising, however simplistic.

Here is the first of "Alafaya":



It could have come out much, MUCH worse. At least we know it fits me:



And somewhere in between all of that, Travis and I drove down to Port St. Lucie to see Jessi and Jimmy, then to Fort Lauderdale with them and the family for the King Tut exhibit. I got to see her mom and dad AND brother and his girlfriend...it's been a really long time since I've seen the whole fam! What a fantastic weekend....



....yay!