Random thoughts

that have nothing to do with knitting!
*Sweetie is back from a week in our old stomping grounds in Central Asia, safe and sound, and I am SO HAPPY! Although being forced to do things like drive myself around, bring my own packages to the post office and run out and buy random groceries myself when I want them was probably good for me.
*Whoever dented my driver's side door so that it won't open more than 6 inches, I usually try not to use such crude language, but YOU SUCK! Because I'm soooo happy to have to climb over from the passenger's side in an ankle length skirt while everyone in the parking lots of the supermarket, Dunkin Donuts, and the JFK Airport stares at the girl in a headscarf who knows how to drive, which is apparently an exotic creature worthy of being in a zoo. (I have had people point and laugh! Although maybe I should mention that that was in New Jersey...)
*Getting a sunburn only on the center of your face, with a pale ring around the edges where your scarf was, looks really freakish. I have to stop doing that.
*Turkish people are everywhere. In the past two days, I have had a car full of my students scream my name while I walked down the street, run into two people I know while buying groceries, picked up two girls from a bus stop and driven them home, run into two other people in the airport, and most memorably had a random Turkish ice cream truck guy sell all of my students ice cream at a steep discount while we waited for our school bus to pick us up from a field trip. Then there was the elderly Albanian guy who stood and watched us for quite awhile on said field trip before asking if any of us was Albanian - and of course, one of the Turkish girls was half Albanian! I've been using the term "Turkish Mafia" to describe this phenomenon but maybe I need something more all-encompassing.

Well...

"6 Flags with a bunch of tweens" wasn't bad. Although towards the end it kind of fell apart. But I did work on this:

A toe in Regia Silk. The figure-8 cast-on came out really wide this time (I can never tell how wide it'll end up after I've knit the yarn wrapped around the needles), and I think I'm going to leave it that way for now and see how it fits - pointy toes bother me.

It's a curse...

The closer we get to the "red" Project Spectrum month, the less I feel like working on my red socks and the more I feel strangely drawn towards blue (intense, rich, royal blues) and orange. It figures. Anyway, the Geranium socks are maybe halfway up the foot, and the Electric Red one's heel has been turned. And I'm shopping from my stash in my head...

I'm feeling really low over the swap socks - it turns out they didn't fit her - too small. They do fit her daughter, but still - I was really disappointed and annoyed with myself. And I'm not sure how to make it up to my swap partner!

We're in the busy phase of school, which is why I haven't been around posting (or commenting, sorry!) lately, and tomorrow I have to take a bunch of tweens to an amusement park - which sounds like my own personal hell. But who knows, maybe I'll have fun... it's always possible, I do surprise myself sometimes!

Swap Socks!

These are Trekking Pro Natura, the new bamboo blend. I really like the texture and look of the yarn:

The only issue I had was that it had tufts of what I'm guessing is the bamboo bit that weren't fully twisted into the yarn in spots:

Which obviously isn't thrilling. (That was the worst spot in the whole skein; there were one or two other similar, but lesser tufts.) But I'll still buy and use the yarn again.

Return of the Red

I took some better-lit (whatever else might be said about them) pictures of those socks.

These are Knitpicks Memories (again!), this time in Geranium. They do seem to be striping well - I've found that Memories does really well at not pooling, as long as your stitch count is consistent. The pooling I had on the one Cape Cod sock must have been due to an odd number of stitches on one sock - that's why I'm doing this pair 2 at a time!

This is fantastically bright - my camera can't handle the electric redness of it. It's Schaefer Anne, and the colorway's named Frank's Folly. (The toe is Louet Gems.) It's striping a little too, the camera just isn't able to pick it up - it varies from plain old red to a kind of electric, brighter than hot pink red. I'm obsessing over the red lately, and it's reminding me of an old coworker who was a little "woo-woo" urging me to meditate on something red when I was having trouble with anemia. Miss you Nuriya!
Anyway, as is probably evident from this post, I'm feeling much much better, and it's looking like tomorrow's the day to drag myself kicking and screaming back to work.

I feel dumb, but after five and a half hours and about $200 spent getting a prescription from a doctor today (ironically, I think I was getting better health care when I lived in the Third World) I FORGOT to take my update pictures while there was still daylight. So sorry for the awful pictures...
I am now officially in a state of Project Spectrum rebellion:

I couldn't resist the red. I'm also obsessing about blue, which I had to force myself to knit during the February/March part. I'm sure as soon as it's June I'll be all over the pinks and greens. For whatever reason (I'm way too stubborn and hate being "told" what to do, is what my Mom says) I feel zero urge to knit the colors when I'm "supposed" to. I guess I'll try to focus on knitting a variety of colors over the entire project instead!

Success! And failure.

Well, I did the heel flap successfully! Except that now I can't fit it on. I'm persevering, since I often can't get short-row heeled socks on right after doing the heel either - somehow continuing up the leg makes it go on better. I hate ripping back, so much so that I might find someone they'll fit to give these socks to, even though they're only about 33% done. Beh. At least now I get how heel flaps work!

I finally have a picture! And the swap sock is done, too.

I decided to try and make this sock (which I've been calling Candy sock, because the colors remind me of some half-remembered kind of candy) with a heel flap instead of a short-row heel, so I'm following the instructions in Sensational Knitted Socks even though I can't get my head around how this is all going to work - I always was bad at spatial things. I'm trying to just have faith and do it.

I've also been off work since partway through Tuesday - I got sick, AGAIN, and have a disgusting hacking cough and no voice. Fun. But I should have seen it coming - my body pretty reliably gets sick when I'm overloaded and overwhelmed, and forces me to rest. So I am!

Still no pictures

but after saying that I was having a nervous breakdown, I figured I'd better post something. There's no real progress on anything but the swap socks, which are not-yet-to-be-pictured. I don't think I've made any progress on other projects - the motivating factor of my nervous breakdown being feeling overwhelmed by work, I've been too busy.

So far this weekend I've spent my free time on housework, cooking, moving furniture with Sweetie (which prompted more tears when he asked, while shifting part of my stash, if I was going to use up all my yarn before buying more - honestly I don't know what's wrong with me, but I burst into tears and sobbed "You don't like my yarn!" And of course, poor guy, he swore up and down that he did like my yarn, that he loved my yarn, so I would stop crying. Sigh. I don't know what's with me but I can't wait until it's over!) and going through household junk to recycle. But I'm planning on getting some knitting done tonight so hopefully next week won't be as boring a blog week as this past one was!

Oh, and I forgot

... to respond to people's comments about that cast-on and cotton sock. I don't think I'll ever use another cast-on again, that one is just really ingenious (maybe Turkish is better!). And the yarn is Lana Grossa Meilenweit Cotton Fantasy, I think. Like I said, I just did housework so I think I "cleaned up" the ball band, but it's Lana Grossa cotton and it was on sale at Webs and probably still is. They had a lot of other attractive colors too.

And a nervous breakdown!

I have almost no new knitting to show, because I'm basically having a (work-related, and possibly hormone-related) nervous breakdown this week, but today they sent me home early to "rest" and I managed to actually get some housework done! and also noticed this new sock pattern. I feel really good about having an actual pattern in my "queue" rather than just yarn. And now I can ponder which yarn to use for it and hum to myself during my "mental health vacation" and be glad that I'm at home, alone, with no one to make me feel self-conscious about my eccentric nervous-breakdown behavior. Sigh.

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.