Harumph

I successfully finished another pair of socks for my mother just before Mother's Day - with three days to spare, a new noteworthy record.  As it is May and Christmas (and all its associated sock knitting, a problem I have created for myself, sadly) is over six months away, I decided now was the perfect time to make myself a pair of socks and to try a new pattern.  A few months ago I got my hands on Alice Yu's Socktopus and eagerly paged through it, loving almost all of the patterns (some are beyond my capacity.)  So I started her pattern Vorticity on Monday, and started knitting.  Here's what it looks like this morning:

But that's not a sock, you say.  Indeed it is not.  I have started and frogged this sock pattern twice this week.  I started the pattern and switched from the cuff and started the leg chart, then examined the sock and decided it would be enormous and slouchy, not what I wanted.  So I frogged it (rrrrriiiip it back, for those of you who read and are not knitters), got smaller needles and started again.  This time, I knit three repeats of the leg chart and then took a hard look at it and noticed it was getting smaller the further I knit - I had cast on 70 stitches and after 63 rows (I know, I KNOW!) there were only 40 stitches.  That was a sock unlikely to slip over my foot, and when I tried to frog back to the cuff, I had an enormous amount of trouble picking up the k2p2 pattern.  Since it was only an inch long cuff, I decided to just start again.  I am determined to get this to look as it should.

On an online message board I am on, people speak in reverent tones about Ravelry, so last night I joined, searched for the board related to this pattern, and found over 300 messages from people who are working on this pattern, including some pattern corrections that mean I will be able to fix this sock and make it look like the picture in the book, something I never would have figured out on my own.

Third time is the charm.  Right?  RIGHT?

Socks! (As if I could knit anything else....)

A friend of mine was in a terrible car accident at the beginning of February in Texas.  Thankfully she is home now with her husband and children but she still has a long way to go to normal.  Rather than send flowers, I knit her a pair of socks:

They were mailed off to Texas on Saturday.  Be well, K.

Things Not Made By Me

So one thing I have not yet learned to do, now that I can sew, is learn how to quilt.  Why?  Well, I keep getting distracted by new crafting projects (see also: card making) but we already have a superior quilter in the family - my mother-in-law.  Just late last week we got a package in the mail with a note that said, "I felt like making something," and she made us two of these:

I put them out on the table immediately:

Last year we got equally beautiful heart-shaped placemats for Valentine's Day, which I put out this year with our other decorations.  We do not use these placemats for fear of ruining them.

My mother-in-law is not the only creative one in that family.  My husband took up working with stained glass a few years ago (although he's really into gardening now, as anyone familiar with our other blog is well aware) and occasionally gets a project idea in his head and goes out and does it.  This February, my beloved New England Patriots made the Superbowl, and my husband decided to make a countertop decoration for the party:

It took up the whoooooole countertop, and we put all the food out on it for the game.  He used indoor-outdoor carpeting, white duct tape for the lines, stick-on numbers, and PVC pipe for the goalposts.  Those goalposts fold down for easy storage, I'll have you know.  It's currently hanging out in our basement, waiting for next year's Superbowl party.

Hopefully the Patriots won't break my heart next year.

Just what I need....more hobbies

A couple of weeks ago I took a card making class.  It was really fun (I went with a friend of mine who makes the most amazing cards for people) but a lot of work.  The cards came out great:

Of course, the woman who leads the class provides all the materials and a mock up for you to work from, which is good, because I couldn't be nearly so creative on my own. 

This hasn't stopped me from going out and purchasing supplies to make my own, although at the moment I'm short on ideas for fantastic cards and will just have to make mediocre ones for the time being.   I mean, look at the detail on this one:

Ok, so it's a little blurry - but it's individual stamps, punches, ribbon, half seed pearls and some shading using an ink pad and a dry piece of sponge.  I bought some magazines dedicated to paper crafting so hopefully I'll get some good ideas.  I've also bought some new.......crafting supplies, such as this:

I like it because it looks like a purse, and was actually less than many of the other embossing/die cutting machines that were on the market.  You slip a piece of cardstock, or part of a card into an embossing press, like this:

......and it embosses the paper.  It's pretty hard to get a good photo of the piece I did.  I justify this new hobby by noting that I already scrapbook (vacations mostly), so I already own many of the products I need to do this.  And I'm sure, like scrapbooking, it will be one of those things I wish I had more time to do. 

Really, what I need are four-day weekends every weekend.

New Year, New Leaf

The holidays are over and that, my friends, is a very good thing.  I knit 7 1/2 pairs of socks as Christmas gifts this year.  Seven and a half, you ask?  Yes, it's only half a pair when your husband only gets one sock on his birthday, which was the 3rd of this month.  Here's my 2011 holiday sock gallery:

Goddaughter:

My lovely goddaughter opened her socks on Christmas Eve and immediately put them on.  Her mother later told me that she had to bribe E on December 26 to take the socks off to be washed before they walked away on their own.  I will be making her another pair for her birthday, in March, just so her mother can rotate them!

Cousin A (age 6):

Cousin W (age 4):

Cousin M (11 months):

A, W & M are all siblings.  One cannot knit socks for one child and not the other two.  Well, I could probably have skipped M, since he's not part of his siblings' sock craze and does not talk, but the goal is to be fair and equitable, unlike many things in life.

I spent the week between Christmas and New Year's pretending that mom would not be getting socks.  On Christmas, when she first asked about the socks, I made the excuse of having to knit for so many people this year.  Then the next day, when we were headed out on a shopping expedition, I brought over a bag of sock yarns I have stashed in my knitting bin for her to, "....chose a yarn for her next pair of socks."  She did, and it was similar to the yarn I had already knit her socks with.  Finally, on her birthday I showed up with those air-activated toe and foot warmers and a pair of SmartWool socks, layered on top of the hand-knit socks to leave them for last.  Of course, I don't have a photo of them, as I was too busy being devious about their actual appearance.  Someday a birthday or Mother's Day will arrive where she will not get socks, and that will be a dark, dark day indeed.  Probably for both of us.

I also lack photos of the matching pair I made for Stella Caroline and her lovely daughter, SuperG, but they are a spectacular set with a red base color and lots of striping, and they did me the honor of wearing the socks when they came to visit me last week.  They have discovered the secret to staying on the hand-knit gift list - wear what I gave you when I can see you wearing it.  Mom also adheres to this principal, but she's getting close to having enough pairs of socks to wear hand-knit ones every day.

Currently, I'm finishing the last pair, those of the man who is eternally shafted when it comes to hand-knit gifts, my husband.  While he chose the yarn for the socks, I was attempting to give him his pair as a surprise and thus could not knit in front of him.  So I struggled desperately to finish the socks before his birthday, knitting furiously on the train in and out of Boston, and getting up early on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to work on them before rushing to hide them when I heard him get up.  He was genuinely surprised by the sock when he opened the package: 



I photographed this going in a different direction, just for some variety.

It's a nice German sock yarn (Schoeller Stahl) 75% virgin wool, 25% polyester and I'm knitting it on size 1 1/2 double-pointed needles.  It's a very manly-looking sock - very sedate, good for wearing out in public.  I am so bored knitting it, because it doesn't make patterns.  I've fallen asleep at least a half dozen times on the train while working on it.  I have the same problem with "Pulp Fiction" - I've tried to watch that movie five times and I've fallen asleep every.single.time. 

I should point out that he did get a homemade gift for Christmas - new sleep pants:

Ole!

For some reason, Cinco de Mayo has become this HUGE holiday in our Western European-ancestry household, and when I saw this ridiculous flannel on sale, I could not leave it behind.  For what it cost me to make them, they almost qualify as a stocking stuffer.

After I finish his socks, I'll return to the pair that I was knitting in front of him over the holidays, the ones I refer to as my Cinco de Mayo socks.  The yarn is red, orange, yellow and magenta and I just love it.  Particularly after weeks of this Schoeller yarn!

The definition of insanity

I have recently requested several books of sock patterns from the library, just to see if I like the patterns before I buy them.  There's a new book on the market called The Knitter's Book of Socks and it was the first one to make it into the house off the library request list.  It's a great book, if you like to knit (like I do) and you like to knit socks (ditto.)  The patterns, though?  Whew, boy, they are not for the faint of heart.  Cables, ssk (slip slip knit) yarn-overs - they will definitely be a challenge.  More challenging will be taking on one of these patterns to knit a new style of sock as a Christmas gift.  And I'm only half-finished the pair I am knitting for my goddaughter E for Christmas, so those have to be finished before I can start anything new.  This is the definition of insanity - starting a brand-new sock pattern for a pair of adult socks with five weeks to go until Christmas.  I'll likely be bald by halfway through Advent due to tearing out my hair.....

Man, it's a total bummer about the expectations they have at my job.  I'd have so much more time to knit if they didn't expect me to show up and do actual work for my check......

(Knit) Wit

So I'm a knitter.  In some circles, admitting this is like admitting you have a fondness for crack cocaine or beating baby seals.  I have always been old before my time, and getting married and buying a house in a semi-rural area (we have no stoplights in town, so in my mind this counts as "semi-rural") was the best thing that ever happened to me - it's like society expected me to stay home and cook and craft, not go out to fancy restaurants and engage in late nights.  Which I couldn't do even if you gave me a double espresso at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.  Most people think my knitting is a quaint, cute hobby.  They smile benignly, like one does at a small child whose stick figure pictures look nothing like the dinosaur the kid is claiming it is, and probably resist the urge to pat me on the head.  Those that really embrace it get the benefit of my hand-knit gifts for themselves or their children.

One of my biggest recipients is my mother. About two years ago I took a class to learn how to knit socks.  Walking into the class, I didn't know how to cast on properly (don't even ask what I was doing), knit in the round, or pick up stitches.  I walked out of there 4 hours later able to do all those things and knit a basic sock.  Best $40 I ever spent.  Best $40 my mother ever saw me spend, too, since before I even sat down to knit a stitch she insisted I knit her a pair of socks.  Which I did.  Thereby creating a monster.  Now twice a year (Christmas/her birthday, which are 8 days apart, and Mother's Day) there is an expectation that socks will be part of the loot.  Which is fine, but the average pair of women's socks has 400 yards of yarn (four football fields' worth!) and can contain 20,000 stitches.  That's love, right there.  Because according to one of my favorite knitting bloggers, who also writes great books, when you knit a pair of socks you are committing to the creation of an item that will eventually wear out, since it takes constant abuse by being on your feet.  So far mom isn't wearing them so much that they've worn out, but I know that day is coming.  That will be a sad, sad day.  She does always wear socks I've made her when she comes to the house for dinner.  Maybe that's the only time she wears them?

So because I'm up to my elbows in the Christmas Crafting Extravaganza right now (I have target goals for completing various gifts - knit and sewn - on a week-by-week basis in the hopes that I make it) I haven't posted everything I did for Halloween.  I'm planning on photographing the household decorations (of which there are many) as well as the two projects (a light-up trick-or-treat bag and Halloween sleep pants) I started for the holiday.  Notice I said started.  Neither is currently finished.  I could use the excuse that we got whacked with a major Nor'easter the weekend before Halloween, but we never lost power at our house and I wouldn't have been done with these projects anyway even if there hadn't been a major weather event.  So my goal is to finish both this weekend, so I can photograph them, post and then put them away for next year. 

Or worst case scenario, hide them in a drawer until February and work on the furtitively through spring and still not finish them for next Halloween.  Which is more likely.