Kiss My Knits!

Socks!

Or, more accurately, sock. Singular. I’m calling these my “two year socks” because I did finish the first in 2006, and I’m hopeful that I’ll actually buckle down and make the second in 2007.

This is the Crusoe pattern from Knitty. I cast on 64 instead of the called-for 48 in order to get gauge on size 1 needles, then sized all the numbers up appropriately. I probably shouldn’t get too in-depth so that I actually have something to post on that glorious day when I actually finish the second one. Or, you know, start the second one.

My kitchener stitch on the toe is the best I’ve done, I think. However, there is a small line down the sole where my two needles met. Eh, I’m okay with it. It’s a very small flaw.

And one for my mom: over the holidays at the in-laws’ I finally saw the TV program she’s mentioned to me, “What Not To Wear.” I thought she’d be pleased to see that thanks to her other grandparents, Emily now has a nice structured jacket, which the show says that every woman should have in their closet. She looks quite stylish playing Zoo Tycoon 2!

“Work, work, work.”

Well, now that it’s too late to get in line for a finished Jayne by Christmas, the kit orders are coming at a rate of several a day. Fortunately, those can go out very quickly.

There are still some non-Jayne orders in the queue, like this Space Invaders hat at left that someone custom ordered in black and blue. Click for larger pics. I actually had to redo it twice. The first time I was flying through it, and as a result got my tension far too tight on the charted portion. I put it on and it was like I had a vise around my head. The second time, it looked fine, but because I’d used more blue yarn I’d spliced two pieces together and it made a noticeable bump in one of the “pixels” of the chart. Maybe he wouldn’t notice, but it was bugging me. The third time’s the charm, though. The inside looks quite even, too, not that the recipient will care. 🙂



This is the Crusoe sock I’ve been working on. I actually put it aside last week to focus on Christmas knitting, but am looking forward to picking it back up since I’m so close to finishing up the first one. Maybe by Spring I’ll have some very festive socks.

Back to work – even with the built in “hit by a bus” time in my estimates, I’m falling a little behind on orders!

(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin’ up an’ down again!)

Actually, Kipling not withstanding, it’s been an excellent day for feet!

I got a phone call from my mother. She has a store credit at Wide Shoe Warehouse. She’d buy a pair of shoes, get them home and realize they weren’t quite right, and take them back for credit (the store doesn’t offer refunds). Then she’d get another, slightly more expensive pair and have to take them back too. Long story short, she wound up with a big ol’ stack of receipts offering credit, and a growing frustration at actually finding any shoes there that she’d actually keep. Since I also have wide feet, she snagged me and we went shoe shopping. Normally I hate shoe shopping, but this was actually fun. And I wound up with the little beauty of a low boot at left. Well, I wound up with two of them, but that’s probably implied. Size 8 1/2 WW and they fit like a dream. Thanks, Mom!

As for the socks, I did the gusset and am ready to plow through the foot portion. It’s a good knit when I want to just do a row or two of something different. I’m enjoying it. I’m also a little worried that I’ll have enough yarn to make it to the toe, but I suppose we’ll see, eh?


On the Jayne front, about five more kit orders came in today. People who must have a Jayne by Christmas are bravely knitting their own. Godspeed, brave crafters!

Finally, the weather’s been so good that I’ve spent a fair amount of time outdoors with my daughter lately. Here’s a piece of sidewalk art from yesterday. This is Ava, the Cold Elf. Note the snow, the hat, and also the pointy ears.

Have a great night!

Yesterday I was feeling low, and rather than inflict my germs upon any of my knittees, I decided to lie on the couch, eat tomato soup, watch some DVDs, read some library books, and rest. Anything else made me heave great sighs while my body tried to get enough oxygen. I sounded like I was trying to get attention for poor pitiful me. But I did have enough energy to intermittently knit, so what the heck, I decided to knit for myself. I can count on one hand the number of things I’ve actually made just for me. So I picked out something incredibly bright and cheery and had at it.

Behold! Marilyn Roberts’ “Crusoe” from Knitty! I’ve had this very colorful Koigu in my stash for a couple of months now, and it reminds me of Spring. The best day to indulge is surely a day when the weather is awful and I’m under it.

Modifications so far are that I didn’t do the roll-brim cuff, which seemed bulgy, but instead did some ribbing, so it’ll stay up better. The gauge was supposed to be 6 stitches per inch on a #1, but I was getting 8 stitches per inch, so I cast on 64 instead of 48 which it seems many other people on the web also did. Knitting is so math-y that it’s no wonder so many geeks enjoy it.

I would have preferred to work this on two circular #1 needles, but apparently I don’t have any #1s! Quelle horreur! It’s a pretty astonishing lack in my needle collection. So DPNs it is.


And while I was feeling sick yesterday, what arrived out of the blue?

I got post! From !

At the top is a Tall Card deck! This is a reproduction of the one featured in the Firefly episode “Shindig” where Simon, Book, and Jayne played cards until River went crazy, as she was wont to do. Too cool! I just need to cut it apart and then I, too, can barter for chores. Knock it off, Jayne! I saw that!

Upper right is a card holder made of fabric. I can use this, as my current methods of “stuffed in my pocket” or “loose in my purse” leave a little to be desired. Note also super cute winter-themed emery board.

Lower right is one of Mel’s cool garland kits which looks like a fun project which shouldn’t tax my limited paper-type skills.

Lower left is four big crayons, thoughtfully included for my daughter! How sweet is that? She was excited to get them and has them in with her other craft supplies now.

There was also another little knit-related surprise tucked in for me, which I was very happy to receive.

The timing of this unexpected package was great. Getting a little pick-me-up on a day when I was laid low was perfect. Thanks so much, !

In other news, I meet with a new speech therapist today who specializes in conversational and interactive skills. This is the same speech therapist Emily had when she was about three, who later left to start her own practice. My mother forwarded her name to me, not realizing the connection. I’m feeling good about this. We’ll see how it goes.

After calling Scout HQ on Thursday and Friday and getting no response, I called someone else on Monday, only to have the first person call me back apparently about five minutes later. It was a message on the machine, and she was very interested in finding out what was going on and getting the girls taken care of. I wasn’t able to catch her before she left the office yesterday, so I’ll be calling her back shortly. I’m glad there’s progress on that front.

Jayne hat orders have picked up again, although I can no longer guarantee Christmas delivery on finished hats. The queue’s up to 28 as of about ten minutes ago. Atsa lotta hats.

All in all, physically I still feel like someone’s paving the inside of my skull, but aside from that, life is good. I’m satisfied.

Look what the lovely and generous gave me!

Sock yarn! And the colorway is S’mores. How perfect is that for me? I had admired it on her blogspot blog and joked that if she ever wanted to get rid of it, think of me. And she did! Which was good, because I wasn’t joking, I was gonna put on a ski mask and come over there and get it myself. These’ll be some lovely, lovely socks. I’m all about the socks now.

In other news, the electric ice-cream maker works like a dream. And my daughter learned a valuable lesson in why you don’t eat rock salt. Yikes. Well, at least the ice cream is good!

I’m taking prednisone for the poison ivy, which had better start working soon before my hand goes all evil on me and starts doing things of its own volition. It ain’t good. And of course, since I’m on steroids now, I can’t compete in the Tour de France like I was planning. Darn the luck!

Off to sit with Salty Boo.

Finito! Click for my insufferable braggadocio!

Zoo trip, Jarritos, and socks.

Today I realized that I know how to play all the chords for the chorus to Hero of Canton (The Man They Call Jayne) on my grandmother’s guitar. I got quite excited, even as I realized just how geeky that was. Now I want to learn all the rest of the chords for the song. I can pick and strum “Wildwood Flower” (mostly haltingly) but that’s only got three or four chords, so it’s not exactly rocket science.

I love the song “Wildwood Flower,” which you can hear here, and used to drive my college roommates crazy playing Carter Family albums. Yes, children, there were once these things called “record albums.” They were made out of vinyl and were several times the size of a CD. We played them by torchlight as we worked on our cave paintings between wooly mammoth hunts.

In fairness, my roommates could have said something. I mean, c’mon! What late 80’s college girl didn’t love scratchy acoustic country music from the 20’s and 30’s?

Oh, hush.

However, one of my other two roommates made me crazy by playing the soundtrack to CATS over and over and over again. It put Andrew Lloyd Webber on the short list of people who had better not ever step out in front of my car.

The third roommate had no freakish musical tendencies and turned out relatively normal. She’s a vet, so I’m going to count a specialty in small mammals as “normal.”

So, do you have music you enjoy that is fingernails on a blackboard to those around you? Or vice versa – something someone near you loves, but which you want to hurl out the window?


In crafty news, The Sewing Bird has now gone to 40% off everything in the store. I have successfully resisted their siren song all week. Probably being broke helped. But really! There’s still enough of individual colors of Debbie Bliss Cathay or Noro Cash Iroha or Louet Gems Topaz to make a sweater! Cathay for $4.50 a ball? Hold me back! However, it’s worth remembering that if you’re getting it cheap but you don’t need it, it’s not actually a bargain. I have no specific projects in mind that would require new yarn. And so, I stand firm.

As you can see, I’ve started the leg of the socks. Let’s just disregard that little gappy hole there at the turn of the heel. It’s… uh… ventilation! Yeah! At any rate, a simple k2p2 rib on the leg should make for a cozy fit. I’m thinking about just working one at a time from this point on, because a) it’s getting awkward to flop both socks around, and b) Mom’s only got one sock-worthy foot at the moment anyway. Of course, by the time I’m done, she’ll no doubt be back to two good feet again. Decisions, decisions.


The daughter has been very talkative and extra expressive the last few days, and told us today she wants to go to the zoo to see the kangaroos and tigers and heffalumps and woozles. We told her she’d have to settle for elephants and weasels. Regardless, we’re going to try to hit the zoo this weekend, so let’s all keep our fingers crossed for lower temperatures!

And with that, I’m off to eat dinner and settle on the couch for a night of knitting and DVDs!

Today, among other things, I swept the hall and shook out the rug, and gave the bathroom a quick once over. Late this afternoon, I put my daughter in the bathtub and gave her a quick once over too. Then the hubby came home about a half hour early, so he watched her for the rest of her bath while I went to the grocery store.

When I got home, he said, “We had a fun bath! Umm… the bathroom might be covered in white powder.”

Wow.

I know where this came from. One of her Disney movies, Piglet’s Big Movie, has Kanga giving Piglet a bath. After the bath, he gets sprinkled with baby powder, represented by that typical sight gag of the character being colored totally white. She apparently decided to recreate this with all of her Disney princesses. And possibly herself.

Piglet also gets perfume sprayed on him, so let’s all be thankful that I don’t have any spray bottles of perfume laying around.



But the fun doesn’t end there, no! Are these little white footprints I see on my computer chair? I think they are.

I’m sure it’s completely unrelated.

Sweeping didn’t get it all. Maybe a swiffer will. Maybe a mop made of my husband’s thick Italian hair will. We’ll have to see.

In knitting news, the heel on the Koigu socks is turned. Mom’s pleased with the fit, and I have to say, even though these are a touch small on me, they’re still pretty darned comfy.

I’ve brought it in from 50 to 48 stitches. In another half inch or so, I’ll start a k2p2 ribbing.


Current Jayne hat: Raleigh! Can’t stop the signal!

We are… the Knights who say KNIT!