Randomness on Saturday morning

1.  The self imposed sock club is dead.  I think I got burned out on socks during March Madness.  Plus I fell behind.  And then I knit almost a whole sock in one pattern and didn't like the yarn/pattern combo,  switched to another pattern and didn't like the combo again, switched yarns (stealing from a future self imposed sock club kit) and the pattern wasn't showing up... Then the second yarn said "I want to be a baby sweater" so I started knitting a baby sweater and now I'm completely obsessed.

2.  This sweater has seemed to temporarily suppressed my horrid case of startitis, but I have a feeling the real reason I haven't cast anything on since is because I don't have the right yarn for the patterns I'm itching to start on, and don't have the time to get to a yarn store. 

3.  Right now I technically have 15 projects in the works.  I think.  It's getting really hard to keep track of them.

4.  2 of these are Jared Flood patterns.  I can't believe it's only 2.  I really thought it was more.  I'm working on my second Tweed Baby Blanket and my first Rock Island Shawl.  Oh wait - I also have a Girasole on the needles, but it's been so long since I worked on it I'm afraid to try to figure out where I am on that one... it might need to be a frog and start over.  And I'm dying to cast on Bridgewater but need to pick out some yarn for that one.  And Koolhaus  is getting cast on as soon as I can manage to put the baby sweater down for a minute.  Ok... now it's more clear that I'm having a love affair with Brooklyn Tweed designs.  (I have a feeling the same thing might happen with me and Stephen West soon.  What is it with me and the boys?)

5.  I don't pay for cable and can't seem to figure out the bunny ears/converter box thing.  Plus I'm never home when the shows I watch are on anyway.  So I watch everything online.  Well, almost everything.  I've been seriously missing Criminal Minds all year so I finally caved an bought a season on DVD.  As soon as I finished my Nana found the seasons she had bought and let me have them.  Major score!  This is what I've been knitting too for the past month.  

6.  This morning I was reading Bitch magazine but then I got distracted and wanted to start a book but then I remembered the Rock Island shawl and the baby sweater and then... well it's just so rare for me to have Saturday off that I'm feeling overwhelmed with all the possibilities. 

7.  I keep talking about this baby sweater... maybe I should show you a picture:

 

Pattern of my own imaginings (with construction influenced by Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Sweater.  Yarn is Koigu KPPPM inn P827.  

 

Sick Day(s)

Well, I've caught some awful bug and am home trying to recover.  I know I'm really sick when all I can do is lie in bed half sleeping, half watching tv all day and don't even get any reading or knitting done.  The past few days have definitely been a lesson in not doing anything.

But it's practically the middle of April and I haven't shared the last pair of socks from March madness.  So here they are, in Malabrigo Sock, pattern is EZ's Moccasin Socks with Twisted Stitch Motifs:

These socks have not 1, not 2, not even 3... but 7 (7!?!?!?!) cables.  That means there are 7 cable charts!  Plus the foot is knit flat and there are cables on every row which means having to mentally reverse the charts (I'm not good at reversing things. I've been a dancer my whole life and to this day if you teach me a dance facing in one direction and then ask me to turn halfway around and face the back wall instead of the front wall - or worse do a quarter turn and face the side wall instead - it takes me an embarrassingly long time and several bouts of closing my eyes and flipping back and forth before I can adjust).

The reason the foot is knit flat is because the heel and sole stitches are picked up along the edges.  This makes it so that if you wear hole in the heel or the toe, the hole won't travel all the way up the foot or the leg.  It also means you can rip out the sole, pick up the stitches again and knit a new one using fresh, yarn.  It's brilliant.  Plus since the places you are most likely to wear a hole are the places on the sock that most people don't see - your "replacement sole" yarn doesn't even have to match the original sock.  (Actually you can have mismatched socks from the get-go if you like, but that's not what I did for these).

These socks were HARD.  I may have lost some eye sight staring at the patterns into the wee hours of the night.  But they were completely and totally worth it.  They are soft and squishy and beautiful.  I desperately want to keep them for myself.  Sadly they are not for me.  They go in the box of Christmas Future.  I need a break from those charts, but as soon as my eyeballs recover, I will be knitting these for myself.  Pretty, pretty cables.

I did it!

I'm attempting to do my taxes on my own, but it's looking like this is the year I might cave and hire an accountant.  Which pretty much means I need to file an extension because no accountant has time to deal with me this late in the game.  It's my own fault.  I'm the one who put the tax prep in time out because I didn't like what I was seeing.

So now I'm mostly organized and I need to step away until I can get some of my questions answered.  Which is why I'm here, prepared to show you the results of March Madness 2011.

I was right.  It was crazy.  And I didn't think I would make it.  In fact, I wouldn't have made it, except that I traded out a pair I had planned for some of these:

Ah.  Baby socks.  So tiny, so cute, yet still qualifying as socks - therefore still eligible to play.
And there you have Pair #1.  Here's another picture... just so you can see the proof that there are 2 of them:

And if this pair is wins for smallest contender, the next one more than makes up for it.  They are GIANT socks - men's size 10.5.  I'm sure some of you have knit larger men's socks - but when you are racing with the clock and the socks are plain stockinette and you're going around and around and around in the black hole of knitting... well - these got to be a little exhausting.

I sure hope they fit nicely.  (I should add that these were originally intended to be a Christmas present for my brother.  I had already finished one sock.  Then he requested a Fish Hat - at THANKSGIVING!!!  I have since informed him that all future requests should be placed 3-6 months in advance.  Not to mention that once I weighed the remaining yarn, it was less than half of the ball, so I had to rip it out anyway.).  Ok - that's Pair #2

Pair #3 also had a rocky start.  I knit a whole sock in one pattern and decided I didn't like it so I ripped it out and knit these instead:

Pattern is Bartholomew's Tantalizing Socks.  I've gotta say - every time I knit something with linen stitch I LOVE IT.  I'm not so sure how I feel about the heel/gusset of this one but I'm sure the person who is getting them will love them.

Pair #4 is beautiful.  Even if I did manage to misread the pattern and skip the cuff.  I thought it was a little weird that the cuff was only 2 rows.  I didn't notice the part that said - repeat these 2 rows  - nope, didn't notice that at all.  Not until I was starting the second sock.  I love them anyway, and that's good because they are for me.

These are Dusty Corners.  They fit soooooo nicely.  This picture does not do them justice.


And then we have pair #5, which you have already seen:

These are so squishy and fabulous and the pattern was easy and quick (especially since it was colorwork).  These are for me, but I imagine there are a couple more pairs in my future for other lucky people in my life.

Sadly, Pair #6, while finished, has no pictures yet.  These were the most difficult of all the socks but were worth every minute.  Sadly, the sun only comes out when I have to be at work and then hides whenever I have time to take some photos... soooooo you'll have to wait for those.

I don't know that I'll ever do this March Madness sock thing again.  But if I do, I will feel no need to finish by March 31 (did I mention I finished weaving in the last end at exactly 12am?!?!?!).  As it turns out, even though the NCAA has trademarked the name March Madness, they don't finish until APRIL!!