And...fresh starts!

I dithered around trying to decide what to cast on last night, before deciding to stick with this one. I'm very excited about the sock it's going to become!
I'm also wondering why I spent the last month or so continuing to mess around with the figure-8 cast on that always results in the cast-n stitches bagging out (at least for me it does) when I had found and noted, but not tried, this genius tutorial, which is amazingly wonderful! (Don't mention it to Sweetie, or he'll get started on the "Of course it's wonderful, it's Turkish!" thing again.)

The Santa Fe sock is doing alright too - it has significant spiraling stripes in this incarnation, but there's no way I'm ripping again. It's currently stalled because I want to weigh the yarn before continuing - did I mention that skein, which was supposed to be 100g, was only 85?

Lost Possibilities

I had high hopes of casting this on during school today, since I was giving so many tests. No luck though... I decided yesterday to make this cotton blend a pair of Project Spectrum Socks for April/May, in anticipation of summer.

I'm still almst half done with the swap sock...the sock legs always seem to take forever.

In other news, I guess I've decided NOT to quit my job and keep teaching next year. I've tried a new tactic with the rude older kids - last week two boys tried to hide from me in the boys bathroom, probably assuming I was too demure to follow them in there. Wrong! Unfortunately for them, I'm too stubborn for anybody's good. But I do find that kind of thing just a little soul-killing, so... I started "innocently" assuming that they don't know better, calling them back and well-meaningly "teaching" them polite language, then making them practice it in made-up dialogues with me. It's the first time I've seen any of the punk kids embarassed. Other than when those two boys slinked out of the bathroom after I told them I was coming in. Anyway, my point - I guess the school needs me. There might not be any female teachers next year if I quit, and I think that's something really important for the students, and also I like being an example of a working, car-driving, etc etc "covered" woman because stereotypes about that are rampant, even within the Muslim community. But I'm still asking for a day off.

Okay, okay

I'll post something. If I have to. The thing is, I don't have much to show for myself - the swap item is almost half done, but I won't be posting about that until it's done, packed off and received.
I cast on again for the Santa Fe socks - only not with the size 3's. On a whim I tried 1's, and Oh My Goodness the fabric is so soft and squishy! I can't stop fondling it while I knit and fantasizing about how it'll feel on... I *may* have cast on way too many stitches, but I just can't tell yet. The pooling doesn't seem to be a problem...

I've acquired some sport weight sock yarns lately, and after this sock I can't wait to use some of them! Although it may be time to start knitting cotton blend socks so I can wear them in the summer.

If the third time's not the charm...

maybe size 3's will be? I've now knit and frogged these darn socks THREE times. I need 60 stitches to have them fit without adding increases -which mean pooling - as I move up the foot. Unfortunately, 60 stitches on size 2's cause the. worst. pooling. I have ever seen - all of the blue on one side of the sock, and all of the red-orange on the other. No spiraling, just two completely opposite sides on one sock. So today I went to Seaport Yarn and picked up the size 3 dpns you see here.

This had better work or I'm going to give up on ever having a pair of socks out of this yarn...

This is why I love kids

They get excited at the most random things. They're coming into my room, talking and playing around, and when they see "Good Morning. Today is No Talking Day." on the board I hear several gleeful "Yesss!"s. If I knew it was a *treat* I sooo would have been doing this before. The silence lasted a good 25 minutes, way longer than I thought it would.

Well.

I woke up this morning with a killer sore throat, and more relevant to my job, no voice above a whisper. (This is a big fat postcard from my body telling me it's had enough of the late nights and stress.) So home sick it is - although I promised to come in tomorrow no matter what, since so many teachers are out. I have 3-5 grade tomorrow and I think I can handle them even without a voice - I'll write on index cards and pantomime and they'll get a huge kick out of it - ooh, maybe I'll do a "No Talking Class" where we ALL have to pantomime! Anyway, it's 6th grade I was worried about.

So I'm off to the couch with my knitting and Netflix movies... I hope everyone has a restorative and restful day!

They're done!

But they slouch. Darnit.
After I see how they wear I'll write up a thing about the yarn and everything. The basic details are:
Great Adirondack Yarn Co Soxie, Tropicana colorway
Size 0 dpns, toe-up, 2x2 rib
I threw some random garter ridges in for interest but they're overshadowed by the bright colors so I really shouldn't have bothered - it would have worked better in a plainer yarn. *If* you notice them they look cool, but they're not very noticeable.

I've already cast-on for the next project, but they're for a swap so no pics or details. I'll have to find something else to blog about!

I don't have much going on, but I felt obligated to post since it's been awhile. All I've got is this picture of my in-progress second Tropical Sock:

The yarn is Great Adirondack Yarn Company (Soxie) and it's my favorite out of all the sock yarns I've knit with so far (Claudia's Handpainted would come in second). I can't pinpoint what it is that's so great about it - it doesn't look any different than the Koigu or Yarn Pirate I'm using for my Rosie socks, but the fabric it produces is softer and somehow draws me in more. It was the colors and not the quality of the yarn that led me to buy it in the first place, but I'll definitely be seeking this yarn out in the future.

I'm looking forward to knitting with and wearing a lot of different yarns in the near future, because I want to put reviews of them here on my blog. That's something I almost always search for before buying (except for those all-too-frequent impulse buys!) but never have much luck finding, and I've noticed that a lot of people end up here by searching for a yarn I've used, so I'd like to think reviews would be something useful to other knitters out there. Anyway, that's for the future - especially since I want to see how something wears before posting my opinion of it, so not only do I first have to knit all of these yarns, but then I have to wear them. Don't hold your breath...

These are my new stitch markers from Teal, and they're on top of the (old) table I just painted gold! You can't really see the metallic-ness of it because of the angle of the light, but trust me, it's glittery. The surface is still slightly tacky (maybe in both senses of the word; I can't help it, I really like gold-colored furniture) but I really wanted to photograph both together. Aren't the stitch markers pretty?

Today is the last day of my spring break, and I've been cleaning and reorganizing and decluttering and all of that fun stuff. It's just reinforced for me how much I'd like to quit my job and stay home, although I'm not sure Sweetie agrees - I called him today in tears over the "Meth Addict Makeovers" on the Tyra Show and I swear I could hear him *thinking*, over the phone, "If she's home all the time, is she going to call me like this every day?" So maybe it's for the best. But I do think that next year I'm going to request a schedule where I'm off one day every week. I just can't keep up with the housework otherwise; if we had a washing machine and dishwasher (they aren't allowed in our building) or if Sweetie wasn't so busy himself and could help out it would be different, but as it is I do all my work, but the apartment is a disaster and I just can't keep that up.

As for knitting, I've finished the first Rosie sock and am now on the toe of my second Tropical sock. I have a baby sweater I really need to get cracking on because she's growing up, but I'm just not motivated to work on it. But I'll finish my April socks for Sock-a-Month (looks like the Tropical socks will be first) before I force myself to get the baby sweater done.

The H Word

If today's picture showed something different than what it does, then I could call yesterday's post "confidence." But instead... I have to call it "hubris." Because this is the picture I have today:

I frogged it again. And I was up to the cuff. But I had had to put some increases in there (and some of them looked weird - fingering weight makes for a much more forgiving fabric, I think) and the increases led to pooling. And I tried to get rid of the pooling... partially frogged even, and re-knit, and it didn't work. And I decided I just couldn't live with it. So here we are again. I think I'll work on my Rosie sock for a bit and come back to sportweight socks another day.

Where have I seen you before?

Oh yeah, here (pre-frogging; it was cast on with 4 more stitches).
Out of the three pairs of socks I'm working on, I'm the least-furthest along on these but might finish them first - it's addictive, how fast they come together in sport weight!

Project Spectrum yarns

I took advantage of what light I could get today to follow Lolly's lead and take pictures of the next two months' yarn.

(There are notes on flickr labeling the ones whose labels aren't visible.)

I'm fighting with myself over what to do today - the weather is rainy and grey, the perfect day for lounging inside, but I really feel like I need to continue the spring cleaning and reorganizing and moving furniture that I did yesterday. It felt so good to be carrying bags of old papers and all the gunk from the vacuum cleaner filter out the door (not to mention probably every cardboard box that ever made its way into our apartment). But today the weather just isn't on my side; I think it's demanding that I sit and knit in my newly rearranged living room.

Here's what I've been doing

Here's the Rosie sock - I ended up striping the Rosie and the pink Koigu, just because I felt like it. It's the Garter Rib that I've been seeing everywhere lately (from Sensational Knitted Socks) - really just ribbing with an all-knit-stitch row every other row. I've gotten as far as the bottom edge of the picture.

The Crazy Tropical Sock was really hard to photograph - my camera doesn't want to focus on it. This is as good as it got before I gave up to eat my lunch, which was ready and waiting.

There's a small hole at the corner of the heel, because I haven't woven in the ends yet. I'm really happy with the fit and especially the yarn. I'm just being lazy about doing the toe for the second sock...

**oh yeah, and I changed the background color to be a little easier on the eyes!

Baby got back...

from Staten Island! Ha ha, was that too cheesy (or too stretched) of a pun? My weekend with the tweens wasn't half bad, although by 7 pm today I was so ready to be out of there. Staying in a three-story mansion filled with probably the same amount of material things we have in our two-room apartment has given me the urge to purge, though... it's my spring break and I think I'm gonna spend at least tonight staying up late having a cleaning party. While Sweetie's asleep of course, because he has work and because he's even more resistant than me to throwing stuff out (and that's saying something): the pile of cassette tapes (cheesy US and Turkish pop) that we 'unpacked' onto the windowsill when we moved here from Central Asia 2 years ago and have stayed there, untouched, ever since? He freaked out in the car when I used them as my example of useless clutter and refuses to even entertain the idea of throwing them out. Had I done so without mentioning it, he never would have noticed.

Anyway, I didn't have to frog the Rosie sock, after all, and in my rush to pack I brought everything I needed to cast on the other socks except the crochet hook for the provisional cast-on, so I managed to get quite a bit done on Rosie. No pictures now; I'm busy planning how I'm going to rearrange my living room after I've thrown out half my stuff.

Oh yeah, and the color change is in honor of the new Project Spectrum color group. I might change it every time, except I doubt I'll find something aesthetically pleasing for the "red black and metallics" bit.