Can you dig it?

Another pair of socks for the 52 pair plunge is done! These don't count for Summer of Socks, because I started them long before summer rolled around. They were "car knitting" for quite some time. I keep a small bag in the car with a small knitting project in it. This is very useful when I wind up somewhere that I have to wait. It has saved my sanity on more than one occasion. However, any project that winds up in that bag is worked on pretty sporadically while it's out in the car. And it has to be replaced when it's close to being finished. Imagine running out of knitting. I'd have to entertain myself without having something to do with my hands.

I'm kind of lagging on the knitting this week. This is because we are digging the Death Star Trench O' Drainage in the side yard. The Husband has decided that this will fix the water-in-the-basement-every-time-we-get-over-2-inches-of-rain-in-a-day problem. I'm hoping he's right, it makes a lot of sense. But I went to college so I wouldn't have to dig ditches. I suppose I could view it as aerobic ditch digging, or at the very least call it weight training.

We (and I use we in the very loosest term - I have not really done a lot of the digging here) started this exercise by renting a piece of equipment that I think is called a trencher. The Boy is shown operating this thing. It's apparently much easier to move around while the digging part (that's the technical term) is sticking up. Do you know that these things come with power steering? The next model down did not have power steering. Scary.

So renting this tool has made the digging easier. What it mostly does is loosen up the dirt and then dump it back in the trench, requiring one to follow along and remove the remaining dirt. Also, it does not like to dig out the rocks.

So today being Saturday, we are devoting the day to digging out the loose dirt and removing rocks. And then digging out more dirt and removing more rocks. My cunning plan was to go out early and dig for an hour or two, and then point out that it's pushing 90 degrees out there and we should perhaps resume later in the day when it's cooler.

Have I ever mentioned our neighbors? We have the best neighbors on planet Earth. They have 2 lovely daughters, who have grown up with The Boy, and they are in all but genetics brother and sisters. They are all charming and wonderful people, and we are beyond lucky to live next door to them.

They are also kind, helpful people. They have offered to come over and help dig this afternoon. Mrs. MarvelousNeighbor says that this will be far more productive than the trip to the gym she had planned. And Mr. MarvelousNeighbor and The Husband are always helping one another out with the major home renovation projects. So instead of showering and preparing for an afternoon of the normal weekend chores and errands, I am sitting here blogging, covered in sweat, and planning on heading back out in a little while. Because my mother did not raise me to let my neighbors work on my yard while I'm inside. Or grocery shopping. Or whatever.


DEATH STAR TRENCH

The photo of the trench here shows some 8 foot lengths of pipe that The Husband dropped in to make sure that the trench was reasonably straight. It is.

So I do not anticipate a lot of knitting time this weekend. I'll have to see if I can find any of The Boy's old X-Wing fighters. I think there might be an exhaust port down at the far end of that thing.

Can't post, busy knitting

Or at least, I'm letting that be my excuse for not posting. Since October.

It's the zombies. I never get a minute's peace.

Anyway, since last post, I've done Sock Madness 2, which was tons of fun. And, in the wake of that, I decided that since I obviously don't have enough to do, I needed to add some more knitting tasks to my life.

So, I've signed up for both Summer of Socks 2008 and the 52 Pair Plunge II. Summer of Socks just commits me to knitting socks over the summer. The 52 Pair Plunge means I'm going to try to knit 52 pairs of socks in a year. Ouch.

So, shall I show you what I've done so far?

This is the first pair for the 52PP. The fun part of that is, one can count socks that were started before the start date of June 1, 2008, as long as they are finished between June 1 2008 and May 31 2009. So, these socks were knit for my swap partner in the Loopy Ewe Swap.

The pattern is Swirls by Monica Jines, from the Loopy Ewe Sock Club March 2008 kit. The yarn is Dream in Color Smooshy, Midnight Derby.

Here we have pair #2 for the 52PP. The pattern is Something's Shady by Corey Laflamme, and it was one of the lovely patterns we had for Sock Madness 2. It's knit up in Crystal Palace Panda Cotton, a bamboo/cotton/elastic blend, which is useful when you have siblings who can't wear wool (Hey, jrzygrrl, I'm talking to you). They were a birthday present for my sister, and they were only 4 months late.



Now, pair #3 for the 52PP also counts as pair #1 for SOS08. These are Pomatomus, by Cookie A. from Knitty, the fantastic online knitting magazine. It's at www.knitty.com, and if you haven't yet checked it out, you really should. Amazing patterns, great articles, just tons of fibery goodness. And the yarn here is Fiber Optic Foot Notes, in the Summertime colorway. This is a new yarn put out by Kimber Baldwin Designs, and oh my word, it is yummy. Check out her etsy shop, I've finally figured out how to add buttons & there's one in the sidebar. (Thanks, barefootchick, for the picture & helpful directions!)

Minor Disclaimer: Kimber is in the Tuesday night knit group I've been going to for years, and in addition to being an awesome designer and dyer, she is also a great friend. So I am perhaps not entirely unbiased on the topic of her yarn. However, she has some of the most amazing color combinations I've seen, and her yarn doesn't pool. Gotta love that. And her sock yarn is a superwash merino/nylon blend. Just a joy to knit with!


And here we have pair #4 for the 52PP, and #2 for SOS08. These are Spring Forward, by Linda Welch, and they're another pattern from Knitty. And the yarn here is Fiber Optic Foot Notes, in Over The Rainbow. I am in love with these colors. I am probably going to give the Pomatomus socks away to one of my sisters or a friend, but these socks are mine.


So now I'm knitting a pair of plain vanilla socks in Swizzle by Reynolds, and a pair of Monkey Socks (another pattern by Cookie A. also from, you guessed it, Knitty) in Yarn Pirate Merino Tencel in the I Want Candy colorway. Plus a couple of other pair that I hope to finish up sooner rather than later.

I'm thinking I'm going to be knitting a few pairs of baby socks later on this year, or I will never get 52 pairs done by next May. It's sure not excessive blog posting that's slowing me down...

ttfn,
happycat

I would totally survive a zombie attack.

Would you survive a zombie attack? You Did perfect! You made every move correctly.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Oh yeah. Who's your mama?

Solid proof that all that time I spent watching George Romero movies and Shawn of the Dead was not wasted. So, how will you do when the zombies come?

Take the zombie attack quiz.

Then again, quiz #2 only gives me an 80% chance of survival:

80%

Quiz #2, if you want a second opinion.

I still think I could take the zombies.

More scary WIP's, or What Was I Thinking?

Sometimes, I start projects just because I want to play with the yarn. I started a pair of socks out of Rowan's Wool Cotton. This yarn is really nice to knit with. I developed a crush on this yarn. I started looking for a project to make with it. I found one, in Miss Bea's Band by Louisa Harding.
Louisa came and taught a couple of days of classes at One More Stitch here in Cincinnati a few years ago. She is a wonderful, creative teacher. She also has some really good books of children's patterns. This is the Plink Plonk sweater, knit in a size 3 - 4 years. I have no particular child in mind for this sweater, I just wanted to play with the yarn. This sweater has a drawstring at the bottom. So, silly me, I decided to do i-cord instead of a twisted cord for the drawstring. I have stalled on the i-cord. This sweater has been sitting for a couple of years, and all it needs are a couple more seams sewn, and a few feet of i-cord. I need to find a child I have to give a present to, that might give me the urge to finish it. Unfortunately, all the young boys I know would much rather have Hot Wheels than a sweater.
It sure was fun knitting with that Wool Cotton, though.

So, I decided to knit another children's sweater in Wool Cotton. This is the Child's Placket-Neck Pullover, from Last Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. This was fun to knit, too. I knit it in a size 0 - 6 months. At that age, you can give a sweater to a child and not have them think that you're completely out of touch with reality. All it needs are buttons. Three of them, at the placket, and this sweater is done. I'm seeing completion of this in the near future, though. I have a friend who is expecting... this might be just the inspiration I need to finish this thing.



Now, these socks are not scary because they have been languishing unfinished for the past two or three or seven years. These socks are scary because of the size. It's sort of hard to tell from the photo - next time, I'll have to include a normal size sock or something. These are Opal Dreamcatcher socks, for the husband. The husband has 12EEEE feet. I didn't even realize that was an actual size before I met him. He also likes the leg on his sock to be at least 9" long. I can't knit him a pair of socks out of 100 grams of sock yarn - there just isn't enough yarn there. So I knit the ribbing, heel, and toe out of a coordinating solid yarn. It takes a lot longer to knit socks for him than it does for me, though.

And I haven't unearthed the scariest of the projects yet. Fortunately, there's still time before Halloween.

Works in Progress

I've noticed that a lot of knitterly blogs contain a list of what people are currently knitting. I started listing mine over on the side there, deciding to only include those items which I've actually put a row or two into during the past week. It's becoming obvious to me that the whole short attention span thing is definitely a problem of some ki.... Oooh! Look! Shiny!

Now, where was I? Oh, yes, it's a kind of problem when you're as easily distracted as some of us are. Because there are a lot of other WIP's that just didn't make the list, because I haven't worked on them lately. I can actually move the Opal socks to a completed projects list, because I finished them thanks to a lot of time in cars this week. You can see them over on the side.

Since they're done, I of course had to cast on a new pair. Here we have the beginnings of a pair of Opal Tiger socks for The Boy, who is a major Bengals fan. This is only scary as I already have several other pairs of socks on the needles, and I'm am drowning in UFO's.




Last fall, I taught a class in the Wonderful Wallaby at my favorite LYS, Fiber Naturell in Montgomery, OH. Last fall. And, I knit a size 2T Wallaby as a class sample. Then, I cast on another Wallaby in size 2T, to have a sweater to knit along with the class. In Bright Orange Canadiana, one of the few acrylic yarns that I like to knit with. By the last class, I was almost finished with the hood. I am still almost finished with the hood. This sweater has almost had a birthday, almost finished with the hood. I seriously have maybe an hour's worth of knitting and finishing work left on this. I am going to try to get this done & put it out of my misery very soon.

I love this pattern. It's Snowflake's Chance in Hell, from the AntiCraft.com. The designers are Renée Rigdon and Zabet Stewart. These are just completely cool. They are also duplicate stitched. I think I might have finished them by now if I'd done them in Fair Isle. As it stands, I'm still on the first arm, and these have definitely had a least one birthday. Possibly two, by now. I want to finish these because I am knitting them in the local school colors, and I think I need to wear them to at least one football game.
By the way, if you go to their site to check out the pattern, you owe it to yourself to check out the knitter's guide to an emergency survival kit for when the zombies attack. Because you never know.

Now, these socks being unfinished is just plain sad. I bought the yarn for these from Cider Moon up at the Knitter's Connection earlier this year. It's their Glacier yarn, a superwash light worsted weight which is completely fun to knit with. They had small sample skeins of lots of their colors. I like their colors. And, having listened to Cat Bordhi's presentation on different ways of knitting socks, I decided to try my first pair of toe up socks. I finished knitting the first sock while I was still up there. I finished knitting the second one soon after I got back. I finished another whole pair of these for the brother in law that I like, and gave them to him while I was out in Jersey. I still have not sewn the ends in on this pair. To be fair, I do not ever wear socks in the summer. I have warm feet, so I did not anticipate wearing these soon.

This may actually have worked out ok for me in this case. While wasting time, I mean doing productive computer work, on Ravelry earlier today, I came across a post in the Socknitter's Anonymous group. Kemtee has a young friend who likes socks, and who needs to perhaps a little fun in her life right now. And she likes socks that don't match. In bright colors. Hello, it looks like this pair of socks might have been made with her in mind. Plus, her feet are the same size as mine. Coincidence? I think not. Obviously, the reason I did not finish these for several months is that they apparently were not made for me, as I thought at the time.

And these were only a few in the top layer of UFO's down in the dark, scary basement. I know that I have at least one project that is older than The Boy. The Boy is a sophmore at Miami University (in Ohio). I will leave it as an exercise for the interested student to do the math on that one. (And no, he is not the first 3 year old sophmore in the history of the university.)

In an effort to obtain a little focus on actually finishing things, I've signed up for the Stashalong Blog. I'm going with Option #3, the WIP/Numbers game. I'm going to commit to finishing some of the projects I have before I can shop for more yarn. This is going to be interesting, since the requirement is finishing, not just casting on and starting. I may have to dig out the Alien fingerless gloves and get the pattern finished.

Wish me luck. I'm going to need all the help I can g... OOoooh! Is that a new shawl pattern over there?

Ravelry

Woot! I finally got an invitation to ravelry yesterday. Of course, it showed up just before I have to leave town for a week for work. On the plus side, I've finally taken some photos of some of my projects and uploaded them.

I seem to have a case of project attention deficit disorder (PADD). I always have to have at least one sock project. Right now, I think I'm at four. Or maybe five. Possibly seven. I don't really always like to remember how short my attention span is. Anyway, one of them is my first attempt at the one long circular needle, or magic loop, method.
I love Opal sock yarn. And I'm liking the magic loop, too. I almost bought this yarn again last weekend. I'm glad I thought long enough to remember "Wait a minute, I already have that at home." Then I bought a different skein in blues and greens. Just so you all don't think I was actually exercising self control, or anything like that.


And here we have another WIP that I uploaded. A variation on the Chevron Lace scarf, using Cider Moon yarn that I bought up at the Knitters Connection this year. I am really loving how the colors are going together. I honestly think that you could grab any 2 random yarns from Cider Moon and have something beautiful come out. The colors I'm using here are Hot Rod on the left, and Positano on the right. It looks like the lavender sections of both yarns are kind of pooling on the right side of the scarf. I'm looking forward to seeing if it continues to do this.




I even have a finished object to post. These socks were knit on size 2's with ONline supersocke 6-fach winter color. They're a birthday present for my friend Jenny, who is a tiny person with small feet. I'm posting them because I''m pretty sure she doesn't have my blog url yet, and anyway, I'll be out of town for her birthday party on Monday. (Hi, Jenny! If you see this before I get back, surprise! Hope you like them!) Did I mention that Jenny has small feet? I think I have enough of this yarn left to knit her an extra sock. Or maybe a pair of wrist warmers, if I can let go of that silly matching thing I have when using self striping yarn.

I'm a little bit afraid of what I'm going to find when I start sorting through my stash to post things on here and on Ravelry. I think there are UFO's in my sewing room that may actually be alien in origin. And there are a number of things in there that I'm pretty sure the only possible excuse for is temporary insanity. I may have to post a few photos of some of the scarier yarn and projects. After all, Halloween is just around the corner.

I'm sure we all wake up every morning, thinking that this will be the day. The sun will shine, the birds will be singing, all the traffic lights on the way in to work or school will be green, and life will take on a shining new meaning. It will only take that one last little touch, that one thing that's been missing from our mundane, dreary lives.

Life, however, generally has other plans. It rains, you hit all the lights on red, and the birds, rather than singing, are roadkill.

So, is that one touch, that one special thing that's going to turn life around, another blog? Of course not. Then why am I starting a blog?

Because all the cool kids are doing it.

Because I have a severe case of "I want to show off my knitting" and the web is as good a place as any.

Because I think it might be fun.

Because I can always use more feedback when I start to go a little, shall we say, over the edge when I get enthused about something.

Pretty much just because.

So, with most of the obligatory first-post stuff out of the way, I'll be back soon with some pictures of the knitting I want to show off.

Knit on.