The end is in sight, maybe just maybe

The yarn that's left seems ever so slightly smaller, and they're off the Magic Loop and onto dpns because I went up a size for the cuff.

Project Spectrum and SAM3 are both starting tomorrow (sorry I'm not linking those - my class starts in 5 minutes so I'll do it later) and I might possibly just be actually ready! And my latest Knitpicks order with two sets of 0 and 1 circs is scheduled to arrive today, just in time to try socks on two circular needles.

Ooof ya...

I am still not done with those stupid socks! Project Spectrum and SAM 3 start February 1st. I do not anticipate having whole evenings to while away knitting before then... I do hope I'm wrong. But I'm so annoyed that I haven't finished yet! (Um, actually I'm annoyed at what I had to spend my weekend on instead. But we won't go there, not in this supposedly public forum (like anybody reads) at least.)
At least the right front of the baby hoodie is done, and I'm plugging away at the back. But there's a slight stain on it - I think it might be chalk from my hands, from knitting at school. Hopefully nothing that won't come out with a quick wash!

Do you see a difference?

In the size of the yarn to-be-knit, compared to Monday? Because I can't. I knit and knit (well, not that much because I have one new project) and it just doesn't diminish. It's the never-ending ball of yarn.

Here's the new project - a baby sweater for a friend. I'm using a free Lion Brand baby hoodie pattern and Bernat Cottontots.

Six miles

Yeah... and the Me Socks STILL aren't done.

It just won't end!

I guess that's a good thing. I could just bind off now, which is what I ended up doing on my mom's socks out of sheer impatience, but I'm forcing myself to keep going until I run out of yarn. I mean, that's the whole point of toe-up socks!
I had been planning on knitting another pair before Project Spectrum starts, but it looks like that isn't going to happen. Assuming I actually finish these within a week and a half (I can't BELIEVE how long it's dragging out) I guess I'll have to pick up a UFO...

Scratch that

I'm up to 5.73 miles. Does it count if it hasn't been shipped to me yet? I think it does.

Leaving me to ponder whether it's the various KALs/group projects enabling me (some of that extra mileage will be just PERFECT for the March/April Project Spectrum colors! And it's sock yarn so it'll work for the Sock Marathon AND the Sock-a-Month thing I just signed up for!) or whether I would have bought it anyway, left in my personal knitting vacuum as it were. What is the sound of one hand clapping? If a tree falls in the forest... you get the picture.

I'm home sick today and a little punchy. Time to watch Tyra and knit on my Me Socks - it's the home stretch now, working up the legs. I haven't had as much time as I'd like to work on them, so today's the perfect opportunity.
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Eta: So I see here that the yarn marathon is a 3-month challenge... I'm assuming that starts when one casts on for one's first item. Alright, after my Me Socks I'll start my marathon. I just have to decide which yarn is next - poor Sweetie, I'm putting his socks off because they're just too perfect for Project Spectrum. He has 2 more weeks to wait - I'll probably do some Me Two socks after I finish these. (Oh, and I was happy to see that apparently "anything less than 15 miles doesn't qualify as a problem!")

5.42 miles!

After seeing this post, I was inspired to add up my own mileage. It was easy since I have a lot of multiple colorways of the same yarns, so for a lot of them I just had to multiply. I have 9539 yards, or 5.42 miles of sock yarn. That's not counting what's on the needles, or the little bits leftover from socks I've knit, unless it's both a substantial and an estimatable bit.

Wow. So should I join the marathon?

One (almost all the way) down...

One heel is (almost) turned. I have some thoughts about heels and variegated sock yarn...I don't like the thicker striping on the short-row heels and toes, but I DO like how the consistent number of stitches keeps the color patterning the same on yarns with consistent color repeats. Heel flaps would look nicer on the heel bit, but the gussets would mess up my pleasingly consistent stripes. Is there a happy medium? I don't know much about heel variations, unfortunately.

Anyway, I'm (possibly unduly) extremely excited about these socks because they're FOR ME! When they're done I can wear them! Don't laugh...giving away my first three pairs didn't seem hard, but now I think I was repressing the psychic pain. Here's hoping I'm done with them soon... although my plan is to take them as high up the leg as I can get them. I had quite decent amounts of yarn left from my other Knitpicks Memories socks, so we'll see.

Guess what I got in the mail today!

No, not yarn. An ad for tractors. Because I subscribe to the Mother Earth News, despite the fact that I live in the city, in a little apartment, and don't even have a yard. I opened my mailbox, took one look, and started laughing; this is when you know you want to move. (Yesterday Sweetie was asking if we might want to move next year and I immediately said YES - no hesitation.)

The hat may have manliness issues. And it's a bit short over the ears, but adding length will make it too long over the eyes, and Sweetie strenuously objects to earflaps - apparently they are childish (but a bobble on top isn't! He has no objections to that). I do have to admit it isn't the most manly hat I've ever seen, but I'm not sure how to fix that. Maybe get rid of the bobble.

Finished!

I wanted to post a progress pic, and instead managed to post it as an FO. I knit this in slightly over 24 hours - it's currently blocking on an upside-down bowl on top of an upside-down jar. It's knit out of (juuuuust over one ball of) Knitpicks Ambrosia (which is AMAZING) in Night Sky, with the basketweave stripe in Lion Brand's cashmere left over from Sweetie's scarf. When it's done blocking I'll post a modeled pick with the scarf.

It may be a bit short, in which case I'll add earflaps with the barely touched other skein, but I'm hoping blocking will take care of that. Although earflaps would be so adorable that I may just have to add them anyway - I want to put a bobble on the top, too, if Sweetie doesn't object.

I knit it on size 2's - an Addi Turbo, and then bamboo dpns towards the top.

Me Socks, coming soon

I've made decent progress on them since yesterday's picture. I'm also swatching for Sweetie's hat... maybe tomorrow I can get a progress pic on that!

Oh, I probably should've tried to keep my dinner (the lemon and soup on newspaper...yes, I have a table...I just don't want to use it) out of the picture but oh well.

Knitting is boring.

That's what a fourth-grade girl in my knitting club said. Very pensively, while knitting on her "horse" (which is still a swatch - I asked her to show me how she was going to make it a horse and she cheerfully said she didn't know) and swinging her legs.
This post reminded me of my reaction to that girl - I just started laughing - if knitting is boring, I wish I had more time in my life for boring things.

Now I have some pictures

of what I've been doing. I couldn't get any good light, so they're a little dark. Dad's socks, still unblocked and the ends not woven in.


And my socks, still not that far along.I still have problems with picture layout, too, but I'm not feeling up to dealing with that right now.

Minor Progress...

Dad's socks are done! (Well, the ends aren't weaved in yet, but.) I bound off while teaching an ESL lesson late last night - talk about multi-tasking. No picture because I took them out of my overfull knitting bag this morning.

Now I'm looking for a suitable hat pattern for Sweetie, and worried that I don't have enough yarn. I have two balls of Knitpicks Ambrosia, based on nothing but my random assumption that that was how much I needed. Oh, and a little ball of Lion Brand Cashmere leftover from a scarf someone else knit for a stripe. He apparently wants a roll-brim with a little bobble on top (too cute!) but the scarf I'm matching it to is basketweave (I think? The one that looks like a checkerboard. Like my Dad socks) so I'm still tossing ideas around and would love suggestions.

I also got a pattern that I LOVE in my e-mail and wondering what from Knitpicks I could substitute without it costing more than 40$. It's looking like nothing, sadly.

So I'm still working on my Me Socks, and next in line to get cast on is Sweetie's Hat. Then I'm thinking Sweetie's socks for Valentine's Day AND Project Spectrum (multitasking again!) and after that I'll be done with all of this planning, and open to personal whims and suggestion.

The path to hell!

I had every intention of posting an FO - Dad's socks - today. But instead, last night I feel asleep at 8 pm (even my favorite tv show couldn't keep me up) so I have nothing finished. Maybe tonight, and then I can get cracking on my own socks. And sweetie keeps asking about his hat, now that the weather got cold again...

Oh, and no development on the knitted horse - she forgot to bring her knitting stuff on Tuesday. Maybe today.

Am I paving my own path to hell with all these "maybe today"s? I haven't finished correcting the 6th grade's Ancient India tests either. But for that I at least have the excuse that they couldn't possibly be handed back anyway, since some kids haven't even taken the test yet. For the knitting, there's no excuse.

Turning the heel on Dad's second sock. The first one went really quickly after I turned the heel - but I'm also becoming a much faster sock knitter. Practice makes perfect I guess - good thing, since my sock knitting needs to catch up to my sock yarn buying.

My Not-a-gift socks are stalled - I started feeling guilty about not having finished Dad's.

Tomorrow I teach "knitting club" at school, and I'm curious to see what one girl's been working on. She's informed me that she's knitting a horse - so far it looks like a rectangle, which is all my most advanced students can knit. (All the average ones can produce is wads of tangled yarn.) I really want to see how she's going to form a glorified swatch into a horse - I'm sure she'll come up with something creative I never would have thought of. Kids are great.

Progress

Dad's socks are proceeding an eensy bit slower than they had been, as a result of my knitting ADD. I cast on for my own socks a little earlier than I'd planned - Dad's socks were the only current project I had going and I got bored.

The new socks are Knitpicks Memories in Morning Glory, and while yellow and purple aren't usually my favorite colors, I LOVE this colorway and how the different colors mix into each other. I'm knitting them Magic Loop, succumbing to the temptation of getting both done simultaneously and being sure they're identical. And of course I'm loving that they're actually for me!

I got started

on some of those plans - I ended up signing up for that "It's NOT a Gift!" KAL after all, AND for Project Spectrum. If it hadn't been for the fact that I just ordered some bright green and yellow Trekking last night, and it'll be perfect for the April/May green and yellow theme, I probably wouldn't have signed up for it, but the idea of knitting those socks for the project entranced me, and it seemed like fate. Now I have to start mulling over blue/white/gray so I'll be ready for February. The Knitpicks Yukon from my stash seems like a likely candidate - the timing will probably end up right for the Husband Socks I was planning anyway!

I stand corrected,

not about being a genius, but about Dad's socks being HUGE...because once they were off the needles, I tried them on...and they fit ME. Are a little tight, even. So I have giant freakish Sasquatch feet...argh.

One Dad sock is done, and I'm on the toe of the other. The Sister's Boyfriend socks are blocked and now I have to weave in the ends and send them. Hopefully that won't take longer than knitting them did, although with me it easily could.

I made myself a list of things I'd like to try in 2007 (knitting things, I mean):

*Try out non-Knitpicks sock yarn, especially: Trekking, Lorna's Laces, Koigu. I may be missing one or two here. Basically anything that IS NOT KNITPICKS! I love Knitpicks but I need to branch out.

*Cables! Still haven't done them, ever.

*More socks, and experiment with toes and heels besides short-row. I don't always like the appearance of heel-flaps, but I'm sure they have some advantages (um, anyone know what those might be?) and I should at least know how to do them.

*Dyeing my own (sock) yarn.

*Do some KALs and somewhat social things (even if they only exist in cyberspace - that's close enough, and possibly too close, for socially awkward me).

*Try Magic Loop on two circulars instead of one

*Elizabeth Zimmerman Moccasin socks. I have some pretty yarn that I've heard can felt on the soles, so these seem like the perfect solution.

*I have another sock idea I must try, but I'm keeping that secret until I see if it works!

Sometimes it's hard

being a genius. I was just staring at the pictures on here, wondering why they all get blurry in the middle so consistently. Then I realized the lens on my phone has a fingerprint on it.

This...

is an almost-finished sock for Dad! I'm on the cuff. Although it's HUGE, it didn't really take that long, considering how much time I really put into it and not someone else's socks (Mom and sister's boyfriend). I'm also impressed at how large of a sock I was able to get out of one skein of the Knitpicks Memories - right now I have a ball about 1-1.5" in diameter. Not bad!

The Promised Pictures

These are (bad, I'm sorry - my husband has the camera and I had to use my cell phone) pictures of my sock kit! The colors are a bit more muted than real life, and the yarn ends up blurry no matter what I do, but you get the idea.

The Sister's Boyfriend Socks Are Done!

Just in time to claim them as 2006 FOs and not 2007. And it does indeed look like blocking will take care of the identical-everything-not-matching problem, yay!

And I FINALLY got my very own Very Best Sock Kit and I love it. The yarn is Rosie, and the bag is a very pretty bright red/pink abstract swirly wave pattern with shimmery gold highlights. Maybe tomorrow (ie today in the morning) I'll try to post a picture. (I say I finally got it because the shipping ended up taking forever due to the big snowstorm in Colorado, then when it did finally arrive (at my workplace) I was on vacation and the office was closed anyway. But today there was a community event in the school gym and I managed to sneak into the teachers' room and *yoink* my package.)

My Rosie looks much less pink/red and more cream, green and blue than the picture I linked to...but I like it better this way. How it knits up remains to be seen, but it sure is pretty!