A Sock With an Agenda

This sock has it in for me. After all the attention and almost monogamous knitting I've given to it, you'd think it would be grateful. Loving. Appreciative. But no. It hates me. How do I know it hates me? Let me enumerate.

1. No matter how I twist the stitches, I still wind up with holes where I picked up the instep.
2. The first time I finished it, including grafting the end, it was too short. The above picture is at the point in the pattern where I am supposed to decrease for the toe. Really?
3. The second time I finished it, it was still too short.
4. It makes my hands hurt. Normal yarn doesn't do that so easily.
5. I set a goal of finishing the PAIR by November 29. It's trying to drag me down.

I think it knows I put brown in contention, along with orange, for my least favorite colors. I thought I had disguised my, at best, ambiguity towards that color by giving it a sweet name: Chocolate Kisses. Clearly, it's on to me. I think it's time I take it out into the woods and have a little "hunting accident," never mind that I don't hunt. Maybe a "hiking accident."
Speaking of hiking, I'm up to 97 geocaches found--almost to my first milestone of 100. One of the most recent was amazing: Pirate Landing. The cacher went over the top on this one: burlap and leaves were glued to the top of the container and the whole thing had a serious pirate theme. Very cool!
And then there are hiking socks: these are the ones I knitted from Wick: 49% soy yarn. I must be wearing them a lot because I'm washing 'em every week. They're comfortable inside my hiking boots and my walking shoes. And Tiny said, "Those look like real socks." That's success.

Holy Sheet!

My favorite blue sheet has become holy. Not that it's been beatified (Saint Sheet!)--I mean holey. Serves me right for buying the pretty one! Well, I decided to be a thrifty gal instead of buying a new one. I searched the net to find out how to patch it--not much luck. So I used a clothes-patching tutorial and a piece of quilting scrap to take care of the job. I pinned the patch in place and zig-zagged around it with good old Molly. I thought I'd be doing it by hand but I couldn't find anything in that way. We'll see how it launders. I was going to say, we'll see how it comes out in the wash, but that seems just too cliche. Aren't you glad I refrained?

Soy-Lent Green socks got finished on a long drive to the mountains with my family. Here's the story: The Man of the Place hadn't been driving much, so I've been the driver (which I dislike: I'm a much better passenger than he is... or just about anybody. It's one of my special skills.) I had got it into my head that I'd be driving, so I packed up the car and my nearly-finished socks (just in case I had some spare moments at the picnic area) and, when I went to sit in the driver's seat, he was already there. I was so flabbergasted I didn't think to go inside and get more handwork: I just sat down in the passenger seat with a shocked-yet-grateful look on my face and closed the door.

Needless to say, the socks got done when I still had above an hour's worth of riding time. So I just cast on some of the very small amount of remaining yarn and knit. It's the start of another soy sock, but just the start. I tucked it away when we got home and may or may not finish it with more soy scraps. At least it kept me from twiddling my thumbs.

Not in the Tiki Room

Chiloe asked who the designer of In the Garden was: Linda Gillum from Kooler Design Studio. She's got quite a body of work and seems to be a dedicated artist.I finished working on the parrot quilt. I've decided to call it Rain Forest Serenade. Turns out that's the name of a piece of music by The It. Who knew? It's kinda nice. Here's a link if you want to take a listen. (Actually, I thought it was the name of the music from the Tiki Room in Disneyland. Turns out that's "Tropical Serenade.")

Here's the Juice Purse. This Noro Kureyon is freaking me out, though. While the colors are, well, juicy, there's hay or something stuck in every now and then. I pull it out and keep knitting, but also there are a lot of knots: that doesn't make for easy knitting. Even with those oddities, I like the yarn. The color progressions rock. And the yarn spit-splices really easily. Yes, that's exactly what it sounds like. Don't think too long about it.

I found these blue sparky handles for it at my LYS. There were two other handle sets that looked good with it, but after putting some weight on them and holding 'em like a purse, the bamboo and the bead handles just didn't feel that comfortable to me and, after all, I plan to use the purse, not just leave it on the shelf!And Soylent Green sock numero dos is on its way. Yay! And remember, Soylent Green is made from the best stuff on Earth: people!

Words Not Good. Pictures Better.

Not communicate thing. Brain fuzz. No drugs. Just... fuzz. Mile-a-Minute blocks. Tiny liked it. Good. Named "Shout" when brain was working.Had one skein of this super-bulky yarn. Tried the Unoriginal Hat pattern.

Ran out of yarn. Looks like a brain.

Big needles got stuck. Unscrewed tips and pulled 'em out. Not completely dmub.

Score from stash party. (Not the bear.)

More score.

I think I already put this picture up. Griffindor arms.

Soy-Lent Green socks. Some progress.

Sweater Workshop sampler piece. Looks like a Fish Cozy. With elbow patches.

Knittin' Sittin'

I'm not a slug. I'm not. Really. I have a good excuse for not blogging and it involves doctors (not mine) and beds (okay, mine). But I'm not tellin'. So there.

I will reiterate my blog commitment: I commit to bogging three times a week, with absolute forgiveness if I don't. So there. Again.

In the meantime, I've been getting a fair amount of knittin' sittin' time. I finished the Koolhaat, and Tiny loves it. Yay!

I got the yarn for the Griffindor arm warmers, but I'm still waiting on the pattern. (Boo.)

I've started on another pair of soy socks, since I LOVE them. I'm calling these Soy-Lent Green, seeing as they're soy, it's lent, and well, green. These are my TV watching project, although NonSense has been there for a while.

Speaking of which: Yay. Sock #1 is almost done! Almost toe-time!

And here's the weird one. It's a headband. It is too. Really. I started out following a pattern but was running out of yarn. Um. Trust me, it looks pretty good on. Okay, but it only took two days.

So, yes, knitting galore. But hospital light is too freaking dim for stitching. And they frown on setting up a sewing machine there. They get really upset when you start up with the iron and rotary cutter. (But doesn't it make sense to be in a hospital if you're going to burn and/or cut something off of yourself that you normally have attached?)