Three!

I got over whatever was bugging me yesterday and finished the second Koigu sock. This makes three completed socks, and one official matched pair. Yes, matched, even though they look as if they are two different sizes in this picture. That's just my rush job with the camera. The socks are as close to perfectly matched in size as any that I ever knit.

So that makes:
One pair.
Three finished socks.
One sock-in-progress.
NINE days.
(Holy crap!)

I did cast on that jaywalker, and it jayworked. The slight knit-aggravation caused by trying to work that double decrease on those tiny (and oh-so-snappable) Takumi needles pulled me out of my funk. Well, that plus a stash dive and a long, long swim through my patterns.

It occurs to me that yesterday's mood will probably repeat itself. If it does, I'll be ready. I formulated a plan last night, and who knows ... it just might work. Only one way to find out. Knit on!

Self, Meet Wall

A funny thing happened today.

I lost interest in knitting socks.

The day started like any other. My alarm went off. I ignored it and went back to sleep. Eventually, a construction worker showed up and rang my doorbell, at which time I realized I was late for everything.

In other words, a totally normal day around here.

I was scrubbed, dressed, and out the door in ten minutes flat. I remembered to bring my sock, the second Koigu sock, which is just at the point where I need to pick up the gusset stitches. I made it through my morning agenda and never once touched that sock.

Instead, I started thinking about sweaters.

Oh, the treachery of a rebellious mind!

I thought about my husband cardigan. I debated with myself whether to take another crack at those short row sleeves or to wait for my Stitches Midwest class on short rows taught by The! Lily! Chin! Of course, I will wait. It only makes sense when you are a total short row doofus and are about to breathe the same air as a certifiable knitgoddess. I'm bound to absorb something good.

But I could knit the fronts of the cardigan, right?

Wrong. The back is pulling in. As it stands, even though I am on gauge, the cables are drawing the piece in so much that I'm not getting anything like a piece of fabric large enough to swathe my rear view. I want to block it and see if that improves things before knitting the fronts, because I might have to do some adjusting to those fronts to compensate for the surprising tininess of the back. Which means fooling with water and blocking mats and waiting for the whole thing to dry. In this humid climate. That could be a while.

And (said in a whining voice), I want to knit todaaaa-aaaay!

But not the sock. It still sat in my bag, ignored.

After I finished my morning agenda, I went to the bookstore to buy "The Dangerous Book for Boys" for Number One Son*, who is celebrating his ninth birthday. While there, I bought three knitting magazines. Did that satisfy my rebellious heart? Nope. Nothing would stand but for me to go to the library and check out a bunch of knitting books.

All are books of sweater patterns.

I've spent most of the evening poring over sweater patterns. Damn, those arans look good. I want to cast on every single one of them, right this minute. I keep rolling through my mental rolodex of the yarn stash, thinking about what I could cast on. The possibilities are infinite. I adore infinite possibilities! Not to mention my cable needle! Oh sweet cable needle, how I miss you!

Then it occurred to me what's going on here. I usually use socks as my knitting pressure valve. I always have a sock going, but I always have something else going too. Something a little more challenging. Something with teeth that just might bite me on the ass.

Socks are my mindless knitting -- you've all heard me say that before. But the weird thing is that I don't think I've ever focused on socks exclusively, not since I finished that first pair and got the gist of the construction method. They've just always been in the background. Like wallpaper. What happens if you stare at nothing but wallpaper for nine days? Well, if you're me, you start jonesing to knit a sweater.

So I cast on for the jaywalkers in the hope that a patterned sock will feel a little more challenging and get me over this hump. Maybe my mistake was casting on two plain pairs at once. Maybe socks with a little bite are what I need.

Or maybe I just need to cast on a sweater.


*Don't think too poorly of me for buying the kid a book for his birthday. It's a really special book, and anyway, he's getting more than just that. I'm the cool aunt, remember? I've got a reputation to protect here.

Two!

Two socks, zero pairs, seven and a half days. I ought to put some kind of counter on my blog to help keep track of this. It feels like it's going really fast so far. My hope at the outset was to knit six to eight pairs of socks, or twelve to sixteen total socks. This makes two, and number three (the mate for number two) is at the heel flap. Number four (the mate to number one) will be cast on later tonight or tomorrow.

I won't be able to keep up this pace for the entire three months. This week I spent some extra time reading manuscripts, and I can knit by feel while I read. But I'll have to put the needles down to do some actual editing soon. If I could figure out how to type and knit at the same time, believe me, I would do it! But short of growing another pair of hands, I don't see how that can happen.

I think after I finish these two pairs, I'll have to do something patterned to break up the endless spiral of stockinette. Maybe those jaywalkers, eh, Kris?

Naughty Yarn

So, I had a little extra time this morning. (Read: My brain decided to sleep in even after my body got out of bed, and I couldn't focus on the editing for anything.) Might as well break out the swift and winder and wind off a few skeins of sock yarn just to have them ready. I started with the Lorna's Laces, mistakenly named "Bee Sting" when we all know it should really be called "Boiler Up" or "Hail Purdue." Because, obviously, this yarn needs to be made into tall socks to wear to cold fall football games. My plan was to cast on at the toes and knit up until the balls ran out.

Problem is, I only have two feet.













Meet Papa Ball, Mama Ball, and Baby Ball. Goldisocks must be around here somewhere, because someone's been snipping in my yarn.

It was the strangest thing. I got the first hank of LL onto the swift, unknotted the end, and started winding it off. Before I got thirty cranks into it, I noticed two loose ends of yarn dragging on the table top. Two? sez I. How can there be two?

The yarn was broken in the middle. It wasn't even knotted. Just broken and left dangling. I'm not sure that I would have been any happier to find a knot, but this was flat bizarre.

So I wound two balls out of one hank. And now I'm not sure what to do. I suppose I can continue my plan to knit two tall toe-up socks, and just have some kind of join in the middle of one of the socks. Doesn't seem right somehow. I mean, one of the advantages of sock knitting is there are no joins. This whole thing irritates me.

What else can one do with three balls of graduated size?

Build a yarnman!




















Let this serve as a warning to all my other yarns. Try to hold yourselves together, or I will make fun of you. Because I am a child, and I can't tolerate disappointment.

...stoopid broken yarn...

Uno!

Here is Sock #1 from Pair #1 for the SOS07 challenge. I started it last Thursday morning and finished it today. That's six days. Normally, I'd be pretty darn happy with that, given that I generally spend a week, maybe even eight or nine days, per sock.






















But I didn't merely knit that one Bearfoot Cherry sock. I also knit most of the leg of a Koigu sock, and the leg and heel of a second Koigu sock.

I never would have believed I could knit that much sock in six days. I haven't added knitting time to my day. In fact, I take the same number of short knitting breaks throughout the day as always. I'm just making a more concerted effort to use the spare minutes to knit a round or two. On hold with the cable company? Knit. In an endless line at the bank? Knit. Reading slush submissions? Knit while scrolling through the pages. (This can be a little tricky. I'm half-tempted to use the Harlot's method of putting the keyboard on the floor and scrolling with the toes.)




















In other news, my yarn barfed. Who said center pull balls were a good thing?

Fuzzy Math, or, My Weekend By the Numbers

Seven-One

That's the height of the man in this blurry photo. Yes, he plays basketball. Yesterday, my cousin married into his family. And though I don't talk much about it, I am a huge college basketball fan. So my experience of my cousin's wedding reception was one of furtive glances and intense dilemma. Should I walk up to him and give him a hearty "Big Ten Represents!" as a way of congratulating him on his NBA success? Or should I (more likely, thank you Madame Merlot) walk up to him to tell him how much I hated him when he played against my beloved Boilermakers? Dang, but he used to beat us up out there. The man is huge -- and hugely talented.

In the end, I remembered my manners. I asked the groom for an introduction. I never got it, but I did get to say hello briefly at the end of the night as we were passing through doors at the same time. And I didn't mutter "Boiler Up!" even once.

ps. This deeply disappoints my brother, who was really hoping I would make an ass out of myself. Maybe next time, Danno. I mean, the guy is practically family now, so the likelihood of my eventual ass-hattedness is virtually assured. And if we have a christening or something during March Madness? It's a lock.




















Eighty-Five With Three

Despite her advancing years, Granny still has the boogie in her butt. Just look at her smiling as she does the three-legged mambo! I hope I'm as full of life as she is when I hit 85, but I doubt it will happen. She outruns me now.

Also, yes, this picture is blurry. Funny thing, that. My camera seems to be just as affected by wine as I am. The more we toasted the bride and groom, the more fuzzy our view became.



















A Half Plus A Half Plus a Quarter = Zero

Zero socks completed for SOS. But I am making progress, so it's not too shameful.

I mentioned the other day that if I could knit half as fast as The Wendy, I would be doing cartwheels of ecstasy. She has knit two full socks in the time it took me to knit two half socks. I'd be doing those cartwheels right about now, except that the poor thing had to basically sprain her back and become immobilized in order to slow down enough for me to reach half her speed.

Reads like a freakin' SAT question, doesn't it? "If Knitter W knits at a rate of eleventy million stitches per minute, and Knitter K knits at a rate of 30 stitches per minute, by what percentage must Knitter W decrease her rate in order for Knitter K to knit at half her speed?"

::shudder::

::math-heebie-jeebies::

And We're Off!

This is not precisely how I planned to kick off the Summer of Socks. I thought I would cast on something plain and something patterned and have two pairs going at once. Instead, the siren's song of this delicious Mountain Colors Bearfoot lured me to cast on a plain sock to show off its incredible colors. I can't find the ballband for this one, but I think the colorway is named something like Cherry Bark or Black Cherry or Cherry Crush. Cherry something, anyway. Those little shots of fuschia-red are exactly the color of a ripe sour cherry. I bought this yarn for the heavy dose of burgundy, but I'm falling in love with the sour cherry and the occasional surprises of navy. Very, very beautiful.

This will be my carry-around sock for a while. It will be in my purse most of the time, though at the moment, it's sitting on my desk. I can't seem to put it down today, thereby giving new meaning to "carry-around socks." It's knitting at about 8 stitches to the inch on 2s.















I also started the Koigu. This yarn has been marinating in my stash for about three months, and it's a miracle I held out that long. My much-beloved purple mixed with teal a/k/a my current obsession? How perfect can it get?

I do love this yarn, too. The color changes are like little miracles. I swear they somehow manage to dye the core of the yarn one color, and the outer fuzz another, during those color changes. I only wish my camera could do it justice.

These will be knit on my favorite needles, the Crystal Palace 1.5s, which yields about 8.5 stitches to the inch.

Goals

We were asked to post goals for the Summer of Socks-along. I can't say I really have any, except to whittle down my sock yarn stash as much as possible. I did sign up for the "Most Socks" contest, but The Wendy is doing the Summer of Socks, and there's no way -- none whatsoever -- that I can hope to keep up with her. That woman knits like the wind. If I could achieve 50% of her speed, I'd be insufferable with pride.

They also have a sock design contest, which I considered briefly but rejected. Any of you who watched me tear out my hair -- and my stitches -- last fall with the disastrous toe-up-with-reinforced-heel experiment will be breathing a sigh of relief right about now. Some of us are better off leaving the designing to the designers.

So I guess my goals are, first, to be a good -alonger and post my pictures and cheer on the other -alongers. Second, I want to knit a lot of socks. Six pairs in three months would be a pretty good clip, and eight would have me celebrating. Anything more than that would be shocking, but who knows? I signed up for "Most Socks" because I wanted to push myself, and I don't really know how far I'll get.

Guess we'll just have to wait until September to find out. And until then, I plan to enjoy the ride.