On my mind....

I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a clapotis from unattainable Koigu. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock. I'm knitting a sock.

A catching-up day

Well, it's back to the daily grind tomorrow despite the fact that I could probably more than fill another month away from work. Oh well.

Spent the day tidying up and finishing up. Look what's done:



They're comfortably snug on, and just the slightest struggle to GET on, but not as bad as some reported. I'm pretty happy with these. Love the Socks That Rock yarn. This is pair #7, and Pair #6 also made it off the needles on Friday (the Out of Phase socks, now in the sweetie's hands.. er, feet).

I've also finished a baby quilt (picture soon before I send it off) for a now-9-month-old, so that is off the to-do list. And I heat-set all of the dye painted fabric I made yesterday. Those aren't really worth picturing - it's apparent that I'm a stitcher, not a painter, though I like some of the colours I got.

I'm partway through a closet clean-up and pondering the next projects.

Sidewalk Rage

Dear Idiot in Minivan:

The bright, RED, round thing which is on top of the column of colourful bright round things at street intersections means STOP. Yes, you. STOP the vehicle you are driving.

Even if you are about to make a right turn.

If the instruction isn't quite clear, STOP means fully depress the left pedal, until such time as your vehicle ceases ALL forward momentum and is motionless. Only lifting your foot off the right pedal so you slow down and take the corner based on inertia does NOT constitute the STOP action. Failing to fully enact the STOP manoeuvre is, in fact, a violation of law in this Province.

Also in relation to the above, you know the little white lite-brite man sign? That means that the Pedestrians, that would be, ME, get to walk across the road. Yes, walk. I don't have to bust a knee to run out of your way, jerk, just because you have a horn and happen to think the rolling not-stop is a convenience option you have. Stuff it up your tailpipe, thank you.

In other events of today, I have in fact proven that I can walk and knit, while still being alert enough to avoid caffeine-hopped soccermoms (or soccerdads, didn't get that close a look) in minivans who don't know how to drive. I did also discover I cannot walk and knit IN THE DARK, as evidenced by the dropped stitch on the way home. Next week, we may progress to chewing gum in aerobics class, but I'm afraid I'll be taken out by the floor polisher.

Today's fun sock thing:



I wonder if anyone else in the RSC is finding their socks can stand up on their own? That used to mean they needed a wash, but apparently in this case it means Kaci's Inside Out pattern really has structure.

Blog Socks the.. umm, what the...???

Warning! RSC/NSK spoiler below, even though I think we all have our kits by now. Cruise on by if you don't want to see...




I'll wait...........



Yarn Harlot had a really sweet story to post today. Go read that....










OK, so this didn't completely surprise me, as I had read of/heard of some of the other Rockin' Sock Club members seeing this:



It makes me laugh though. Yes, this is A SOCK, it is meant to go on A FOOT. That is all.

The tension difference in the two knit patterns is quite funny though.

Sockumentary

It's handy having your own personal photojournalist around.

The Gallery page has been updated with some really quality photos of my knit works (and a couple of the cat) thanks to Adam. I helped a bit, buying white fabric and arranging, but he's done some spiff workup on them. Check the links to the right.

I also rearranged some of the quilty stuff to reflect the Works in Progress now finished, though I don't have the best Finished photos of all of them.

Vacation! Hurry up and relax!

For the next week, I'm not going to work. No big plans, nowhere else in particular to go, but Adam has this week off because he has to book all his time in July for the coming 12 months and just picked random times. So a few weeks ago I booked the same week off.

And I'm feeling stressed about it. There's so much neglected "when I get to it" stuff in my life, that I've cognitively cluttered the week already now I'm wondering how to get it all in. Well, I admit it's my issue, I'm working on it. I want to finish a now-8-months-overdue baby quilt and get it to New York. I want to clean. I have booked endocrinologist, physiotherapy, and massage appointments. I've picked up a couple extra classes to teach at the gym... all these should be good for me and not stressful. But I want to go hide in the closet. I'm fighting off a meltdown back into social phobia over a "girls night" invitation I've accepted for tonight, because I have homework - that I probably wouldn't do anyway, but it's preoccupying me.

Anyway, relieving the too-busy-ness a bit is the fact that I FINISHED the alligator socks. They're not back to Angry Alligators but they're close to "more trouble than they're worth" Alligators. While finishing the ribbing on the second one, I thought I'd pop the first on one of my cold feet, as hey, my feet were cold and there was at least one sock lying around with nothing better to do. I pulled it on, it fits ok... and ZZZIIIPPPPPP, oh look, a ladder in my knit, through the ribbing and all the way back down the leg. I had somehow dropped a stitch out of the last couple rows of ribbing and not noticed.

What saved this one was the sheer coincidence that the dropped stitch was in one of the two columns in the whole pattern repeat that was, indeed, just a column of knit stitches. So I didn't lose any of the maddening yarnovers I could never find - I could pick it back up with the crochet hook. PHEW. Once I got back to the ribbing, of course, I had to un-do the bind off and the first couple rows of ribbing, as not only had I not noticed I dropped the stitch, I somehow compensated and I could only pull the ladder back up to about halfway through the ribbing, then there was no ladder - I'd knit two together to close it without noticing.

For the record, un-knitting takes alot longer than knitting.

Here's the cranky Alligator masterpiece:



Here's a close-up:



I'm not sure they're my favourites, but they're OK. One toe is pointier than the other as I used more stitches in the cast-on on the second one, but I don't think up I'm to the hassle of taking it out. Beside, I'm on to something new again.



Despite my utter failure of a crochet chain cast-on, Toe #1 on the Rockin' Monsoon socks tickled me so much, I started toe #2 from the other end of the yarn ball and I think I'll knit both socks simultaneously. For Toe #2, I even found out how to do the chain - rather than crochet the chain and try to pick up bumps, you crochet the chain AROUND the first knitting needle! MUCH smoother. I found an illustrated how-to at that just made it seem so simple.

Now, I have yet to unzip that, but we'll see. Upward into the sock feet we go!

Today's Socks and Cats

Caution RSC/NSK - Spoiler Below!

So as of the 10th, here are the current two sock projects:



The one on the right is now finished, and looks big because my foot is a W size 7 and the sock is for a Men's 13. The one on the left... well, if you look back at last week, the 2nd Red Alligator sock doesn't appear to have progressed, does it? It has, it's just that half of its progress was going backwards.

Shortly after ripping it out the 3rd time, I came across one of those knitting tips that is so brilliant, and so obvious, I'm absolutely mortified that I hadn't thought of it. A knitter on the RSC/NSK Blog explained a "lifeline". You thread a piece of contrasting yarn or thin ribbon through the stitches on a row that is complete and correct. Knit on from there. If you make a mistake - you only rip back to the row with the ribbon, then you CAN pick up. So if you can see the little line of white that is NOW in that sock toe - that's my lifeline. No more ripping the whole sock out because I can't figure out how to pick up a yarnover.

This will be a very handy tactic in the complex project that arrived yesterday:



Yes, the Blue Moon Monsoon finally landed! This is installment one of my knitter's decadent indulgence, the Rockin' Sock Club from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. The yarn colourway is named "Monsoon" and the pattern, "Inside Out". I can't wait to start but I have to finish at least one of the two current socks - probably the Alligators as they're currently on the needle size I need. Mom, sorry, I'll start yours right after but I realized the RSK kit has some techniques in it that might make a nice cushy-foot sock for sore feet, so I want to try them out first. I can start one for you as I work on those.

Finally, cat status: I'm pretty sure that Maui is NOW at last gaining a little weight. He can't get enough of the junk food, and he gets fed a few times a day (whenever we're home to fight off the girls).



He is completely in love with the halogen lamp. I'm going to have to get the original one fixed, so he can have one (because he shadows everything else on my desk) and I can have one to read by.

Small milestones...

After several hours of intermittent hacking about, I have approximately half of my next homework assignment working. I'm hoping to make that 2/3 before bed, at least.

Here we have a photo of My Own Starry Night, reclining in the winter sunshine, as complete as it seems to want to be, for now:



I still think it needs more quilting, but I haven't got the skills to go with my ideas yet, so we're going to call it "done for now" and claim to have finished a quilt. I have to, because it's been stalling some other as-yet-unfinished ones.

Here we have the 2nd flip-top mittens:



Which have been done for a while but not photographed. This was a "kit" for which I threw out the pattern part and used the yummy yarn. The yarn is a handpainted silk from Sweaterkits, and almost matches the handpainted silk in the sweaterkits toque for which I did follow the pattern. I decided to partly re-engineer and partly improvise the flip-top pattern based on the one from "Not Just MORE Socks" that I used for Adam's Jitterbug flip-tops. It's not great - the base of my pinky is occasionally exposed - but it's close enough that I don't so much feel like pulling it out as doing something better next time.

And, the current two socks in progress:



I suppose you can argue that socks in progress do not count as milestones, but I put the qualifer SMALL in the title - getting the first sock of a pair done is a small milestone, as is getting the heel of a new sock turned via a new method I just tried for the first time (well, second, but first time successfully). I've decided the red sock is just the Red Alligator sock, because I didn't want Angry socks - my feet would probably not be happy if their socks were angry. The other one is a Straight Up Sock, something I started because the stitch pattern on the Red Alligator needs more concentration than I have when knitting while doing other things, but a Straight Up Sock can fill in as I can ALMOST do plain stockinette stitch without looking. Or when I'm tired. This will be Adam's next one and he doesn't mind at all that the sock seems to have a bit more pink in it than the ball of yarn appeared to at first.

I think I will stick to this method of having at least one challenging project and one more basic one on the go - it suits my can't-sit-still fidgetiness but also suits those times when I sometimes can't coordinate anything slightly complex while fidgeting.

Mom, I'll start you one as soon as the Alligators are done.

Sinking Feeling....

This little gizmo:



Is a piece of my kitchen faucet assembly. This little gizmo has A Lifetime Guarantee.

Contrary to what the naive might think, a Lifetime Guarantee is no guarantee that this little gizmo will function as specified for a lifetime - be it yours, mine, or its own. What "Lifetime Guarantee" means is that when this little gizmo spectacularly malfunctions, spraying water all over the inside of the kitchen cabinets, turning the kitchen garbage into a soggy compost bomb and the paper recycling into papier mache, pouring water out of the cabinets all over the hardwood, and leaving a sleepy coffee-deprived homeowner with surprisingly wet feet for being indoors on a dry day, you get a new one for free.

Claiming your new little gizmo has some prerequisites. First you have to turn off the water supply, and since you're crawling around in a half-inch of water in the kitchen cabinet anyway, you might as well mop up too. Then you have to find the malfunctioning part in the tangle of tubing and piping, a process which involves spraying more water all over to identify where the water is coming from, then turning the water supply back off again. Next step: figure out how to disconnect it. The disconnection process will be made more complicated by the fact that the gizmo appears to have been attached with a wrench, judging by the tool marks all over it despite the bright orange sticker on it that says "Hand Tighten Only" (possibly a cause of the failure, as the gizmo appears to have exploded along a spiral fracture line suspiciously following the tool marks). The disconnection will also involve skinned and bruised knuckles as it is wedged into THE most contorted position amongst the other pipes and tubes, and of course we must also endure the minor head injury that seems almost mandatory when any under-sink plumbing ventures occur.

Then, you're nearly home free. The last part of the Lifetime Guarantee replacement process is to find the plumbing supply place that has one in stock. In a fit of rational smartness, I got on the net and the phone and called before driving all over town (hint: Home Depot doesn't seem to carry this manufacturer!), and only had to go a few kilometres to the next-to-nearest Home Hardware. Today we love the GlenBriar Plumbing Showcase, the nice parts folks had even set the replacement aside for me after my call, and wandered out into the aisles to meet me when they noted a soggy perplexed woman with the gizmo in hand checking the shelves for similar looking parts.

From there, it was back home, and repeat the previous paragraphs all in reverse (minus the mopping up as I was not dumb enough to turn the water back on before reconnecting everything).

And this, dear reader, is why none of programming homework, quilting, knitting, or my taxes have yet been done today.

Mostly functional, again.

So after disassembling the computer case and poking every which way at my flakey Bluetooth, I relocated the CD I need and installed the right driver. Window says it doesn't need custom BT software drivers - but it does. My gadgets are now all conversing with the mothership, after an additional side-track into reinstalling the Palm software as well.

So, here's what my cat looks like lately:

And the back of him:

He's so cold with all that fur gone, that he's taken to sitting under my halogen desk lamp. Which I had to replace, as something shorted out my 12-year-old one that I loved.

But, at least he's continuing to eat and seems happy with the food tube removed.

In other adventures, what should arrive this past Monday but my shipment of Lorna's Laces from an Ebay-enabled dealer (that sounds so illicit!)

Guess which one is for socks for Mom? I don't think I meant to do that with the rest of the colours (the dark earthy tones) but they just happened that way.

And lest anyone think I'm just hoarding yarn, I AM being productive to merit my stashbuilding. This sock:

which some of you met last Saturday has been ripped out and re-started since that photo, and is a few ribbed rows away from done and will probably be finished tonight. I think I'm going to call these the Angry Alligator socks. The 12x8 stitch pattern, named "Small Capitals" in the stitch dictionary, looks more to me like the bumpy scales of some large reptile. I'm trusting since the bumps are on the outside I'll still be able to wear them. I deviated from the instructions and made the heel back in the same pattern, so they may only be usable as clog socks - which is fine, as I think the red/purple variegated yarn will go with my red-purple Naots or purple Keen clogs. I can't wait for this weather to get over with it so I can wear clogs again.

As the moment, the elements are doing their best to encase the condo in pebbly ice.