Oof ya....

has it really been 5 days since I last posted? Work is eating my life. And tomorrow is parent-teacher conferences - anyone with the least amount of affection for me, pray that it goes well! I'm awful at talking to parents.

This is my first at-home night this week where I'm not passed out asleep by 8 pm, so I'm knitting, finally. I think I'm ready to start the cuff of the Crazy Tropical sock, but I want to weigh it and I forgot to do so before I left work today, so it's on hold until tomorrow. I'm currently swatching for the Claudia's Handpainted from my last post, and am working on a toe out of my Yarn Pirate Rosie - it seems like a good "bridge" colorway for the transition between color groups in Project Spectrum; white and blue for March and pink and green for April.

Weekend Update

The "Crazy Tropical Luxury sock" has been moving along insanely fast - the toe pictured before was indeed too big and everything was frogged Thursday, and re-cast-on on Friday. The heel has been turned and I'm moving up the leg. Here's a picture of the back -

I have also now, despite myself and my social phobia, been to TWO NYC yarn shops, purl soho and The Point, plus I broke my no-internet-shopping-for-six-months vow, and so I have yarn -

Below is Schaefer Yarn Lola (ie sport weight) in an insane colorway called Frank's Folly. My camera can't deal with it; it's a slightly richer and less electric red in real life, but still pretty insanely bright.

Last is Claudia Handpainted (Sportweight) in Santa Fe, with Lorna's Laces Shepard Sport in Harvest for contrast. I was trying to get a picture that showed how the LL matched one of the colors in the CHP, but ended up with both either looking washed out or all yellowy; you can, however, see that they match! The LL looks heavier but if I'm using it for heels and toes I suppose that's a good thing.

I'm looking forward to trying sport weight socks; now I'm gonna go see how far I can get on that Crazy sock in what's left of my weekend!

New Socks in Action!

I like taking
these pictures - maybe I'll do it for every pair.

I also have this:

my next pair! (Besides a boring and non-descript plain blue pair that will be my first heelflap socks, hopefully) This is Great Adirondack Yarn Company's Soxie in Tropicana. I'm looking forward to it! The black is Louet and I love it so far - so soft and squishy! And it doesn't split at all! Comfort and luxury all round. Although I think I cast on too many stitches and I might have to frog - but I always think the short-row toes are too big, until I start working up the foot. We'll see.

Grade me like a kindergartener

...and my sewing skills will get a "needs improvement."

But for a first time, I'm decently proud. Also, considering that my "batting" is a cut-up old sock, which I'm telling myself excuses most of the lumpiness.
That's supposed to be an ipod cozy from this tutorial; it certainly won't be my last attempt!

I'll have to practice taking pictures of my own feet.

Yarn: Mountain Bearfoot in Wild Raspberry (Knitpicks Essentials for heels and toes), on size 0 needles. Short-row everything, 2x2 ribbed cuffs (they roll a bit where I started the ribbing, maybe I should have put some on the foot too).

Phew

...they're done. Awful picture, but I just couldn't wait. I'll try to post a better picture and the details tomorrow. Debating whether to post on SAM now or until I get a better picture... I just want to be DONE!

Plugging away...

I know it's boring, but it's all I've got...

Sometimes I like people. And then I don't.

Warning: I've been emotional on the 'extreme' end of the scale lately.

I saw this snowman today and thought it was so cute, especially in Brooklyn... then on the way back, saw it had been stomped into the ground, carrot nose and all. Maybe that's why it looks so sad - it knew its destiny was heartles and cruel destruction? Anyway, I'm lucky I didn't start crying in the street. This past week, reading Little House in the Big Woods to my third graders made me tear up, as did a little kid mispronouncing Sweetie's name (I have privacy/paranoia issues, so if Sweetie's name was Mustafa, which it isn't, the kid would have been calling him "Mr. Mufafa" and it was just so cute.)

I've been busier than usual, so I'm just knitting along on the Bearfoot socks, trying to get them done for Sock a Month (I explained it to my students when they asked why I whipped out my knitting every break; they got excited and asked me what prize I would get if I "won." They were so disappointed when I told them yarn - "That's the lamest prize ever!" At which I can only laugh). I'm taking a weekend class in Manhattan, which, as much as I regret signing up for it the night before when I realize how much of my weekend it's going to take up, has been really good for me if only because it forces me to go somewhere besides work. More about that another time, maybe.

Fortunate-ness!

Well, now it doesn't matter that my husband always forgets the camera at work... I got my own! Thank you Dad, the check will be in the mail shortly! Here's a picture, a decent picture, and not only that but taken at work on a grey rainy day! (Have I used enough exclamation points yet?)

Those are my Bearfoot socks, one down and one with the heel about to be turned. Here's the cuff; this picture's blurry when you look at it bigger but that's okay.

Next up will be knitting (or maybe sewing...wouldn't extraneous loose fibers be bad for it?) a cozy for the new camera so I can carry it in my purse!

Unfortunate events

This unfortunate picture is all I have today - Sweetie left the camera at work, so I can't take pictures of my almost-done first Bearfoot sock. That's me measuring out the last few grams of yarn to be allocated to the first sock.
I also cast-on for a plain blue sock, with a figure-8 cast-on, planned to be my first heel-flap sock. I think I'll just do plain ribbing even though it'll make for a boring sock - I just want to get the whole heel-flap thing over with and figure it out for once. No pictures of that one either - I'm not thrilled with it, because the first two rows of stitches from the "figure 8" balloon out a little. I know I've seen tutorials on getting rid of that, so I'll seek one out - I just wish I could remember how I did it when I learned that same cast-on from a little old Turkmen lady when I learned how to knit Turkmen socks, because I didn't have that problem then. Beh.

Socks!

Few things are as nice as warm socks, blocked on top of the radiator all night. I couldn't resist another (bad) picture. You can see that one sock pooled and the other didn't - I guess I ended up with a few more stitches on that one. It was frustrating, but by the time it became painfully obvious ripping back felt more frustrating, so I left it. I'm curious to see whether these hold up better than my Me socks - these are knit on 0s, and those on 1s.

Quick and dirty

- here is a picture of my Cape Cod socks. (One of them, but they're both done.) There is a TON of ribbing at the top, because I consistently underestimate how far my yarn is going to go, and switched to ribbing way too early.

Now I have to decide whether or not to count them as my March socks for Sock a Month - it doesn't seem fair if I knit a significant amount of them in February, even if it is allowed. I'd rather push myself to finish the Bearfoot socks on time. Ideally, that won't need pushing, but who knows. I've been assuming the Cape Cod socks would be finished TODAY for about three days now so I don't think I'm a reliable source for these kinds of estimates. Now to block them, and hope that they're dry by morning so I can wear them to work tomorrow!

Another minor update

Here's a picture of how the Cape Cod socks are looking - one is ready to be bound off and I'm catching the other up - this time I'm determined to really knit until I run out of yarn, rather than until I run out of patience. I think they're going to be quite long.

Here's the Bearfoot sock - the colors are a bit washed out from the sun, it's more intense in real life and the brown foot doesn't stand out quite as much.

I'm currently mulling over what to cast-on next, and I think I've decided on Great Adirondack Yarn's Soxie in Tropicana (the bright blue and rainbow-y one from my pictures) with black toes and heels, but I might do something plain instead. Whatever appeals to my ADD knitting brain at the time.

I lied by omission on the yarn purchase...

there was more. It just felt like an embarassment of riches. But last night I sat down to pet and re-organize and contemplate my box of Project Spectrum yarn (I have it divided and bagged up by the color groups, with combinations and projects in mind for most of it) and I just want to share. Plus it's a low-effort blog post - I'm still feeling pretty miserable. But I think the end is in sight (and it's not a "I'm laying down to die" sort of end).

Did I say "mixed bag"?

Okay, maybe yesterday I could, despite being sick, still enjoy the fact that I was home and had free time.

Today I'm so sick that I don't care. I'm still knitting and watching tv, but I'm not having any fun doing it. Bleagh. Plus, Sweetie made me eat half a lemon. I might forgive him in a year or two, but not less, especially since it didn't even make me feel any better.

A Mixed Bag

I'm home sick today, I think with the flu. I'm imagining it as a cat: it's been stalking me for a week, following me around, occasionally batting me with a paw - and then last night it chomped my head. (Ironically, just yesterday I was telling the 5th graders about the 1918 Spanish flu, and explaining the immune system to the 3rd grade.)

But that does mean knitting time, and also being home when there is good light. I also found a solution to not wanting to take my knitting downstairs and outside in full view of my sometimes-judgemental neighbors: I have a fire escape! (Note that I put the knitting on a tray - the drama of finding the camera and opening that window were plenty while my head is being chomped by the flu. I didn't want the added drama of losing a dpn five stories down.)
So here are my Mountain Bearfoot Wild Raspberry sock, newly cast-on with a brown contrast toe and future, imagined heel (I'm doing them one at a time, since I have one mongo yarn cake which I don't want to un- and/or re-wind to turn it into two) and my Cape Cod socks, which I took off of the circular needles. After I turn the heel I know everything's identical, and it's a straight shot up the leg, and going around and around two at a time with the circular needles starts to feel like it's getting in the way, with all the double lengths of foot and the heels and what-not flopping around too.






So that'll be my day - knitting and tarhana soup with plenty of red pepper, perfect for stuffy icky head-sicknesses.

I'm so scientific!

Using a triple-beam balance to weigh cakes of yarn. I wonder what the science teacher thought I was going to use it for? Interestingly, the Opal Sock Magic that was supposed to be 100 grams was only 94. The other two were both above-weight.
I've turned the heels on the Cape Cod socks, and I think I'm going to cast on that Bearfoot Wild Raspberry (the one being weighed in the picture, not that you can tell) today if I have time, thus today's weighing.

A little advice...

Don't go yarn shopping when you're bored of your knitting plans the way I just said I was... I'm "relaxing" in Hartford with my sister, and went to a real live yarn store for the first time. Now, I'm really happy with my purchase - but it's a lot of yarn, and a lot of money. (I took good pictures, too.) I'm crazy about every bit that I bought. But it's a lot. My sock marathon mileage is up to 7.13 - good thing they're extending the marathon 3 more months!

I bought some fabric too - I got a sewing machine in November and have been practicing a little, but it's time for some more intensive stuff. I'm really excited to get back home and start knitting and sewing all this. Maybe that'll alleviate the fact that going home also means going back to work...

Title? What's that?

Thinking of titles always was my weak point. Anyway, I figured I might as well post the progress on my sock, since there is a little and also, since I got a site meter I've realized that way more people than I ever thought are actually reading this - or at least glancing at it briefly - even though I haven't been getting comments. It's actually kind of freaking me out - people from Switzerland and Chile and Beijing? Wow. The site meter thing is really neat, I recommend it. Back to my original point: if there are people actually looking at this, I might as well give them something to look at.

The socks're moving along well, and I'm trying to decide what else to cast on. I think I want something bright, and I'm considering bright green. Knitting has made me realize I have some ADD tendencies, and to be honest although I'm really enjoying Project Spectrum, the 2-month thing is driving me nuts. Maybe once we get into a color combination where I like more than one of the colors it won't seem so limiting, but I have all my sock yarns divided by color groups and I really want to "keep" them until it's "time"...but I'm bored! And it won't be "time" for green for more than a month!

Anyway, here are the (not-stellar) pictures (my apartment gets daylight strong enough for really nice pictures for about an hour, and that's on sunny days. I could go outside to take pictures of partially completed socks but the elderly Russians in my building who have nothing to do but observe their neighbors might change their minds about me and my husband being a cute young couple, and decide that we are hooligans instead - people have actually been driven out of the building after similar decisions. Of course, they would probably approve of knitting socks... perhaps someday I'll risk it.)





(Oh, and the background in those pictures is my sleeping husband. The bedroom has the best lighting, and then I thought the white background of his t-shirt might help. Does it say a lot about me as a wife that when he wakes up to find partially knitted socks on him, the camera pointed at him and me saying "Don't move" he doesn't even question it? Even though he can probably infer that the picture is then going on the internet? I think we may have the perfect marriage. Now do me a favor and repeat a quick supplication that the evil eye not touch us for that! Thanks. I probably shouldn't blog late at night...)