I’m so awesome, sometimes it hurts. I finished poor A’s socks. Luckily, it has taken me so long that it is almost an appropriate time of year to gift somebody with a pair of socks. I’m going to block them tonight and probably put them in the mail on Wednesday (or once I get A’s new address).

Yippee!

Will post pictures soonish.

It’s a good thing that I finished tonight. Tomorrow begins the September phase of the KAL to Cookie A’s patterns. I already have her book, so I will start with Angee, which is in her book, which I already own. The other pattern is Marlene, which is cute, but which I do not yet own. I’m not going to buy that one until I can properly determine my level of commitment to the first pair. I may never finish at all, so I’m holding off on purchasing another sock pattern.

I love Cookie A.’s socks. Like, a lot. I’ve knit two of her patterns, and bought her first book. I went to her web site today, and it turns out that a lot of her patterns are now for sale. No more freebies. Even the monkey pattern, which was free when I first made those socks, are now $6.00. Sad! I understand that people have to eat and live, so no begrudging here, but I hope that intro sock knitters are willing to pony up for these patterns. They’re a great way to learn socks, and make a pretty awesome product, no matter how otherwise uninspiring your first attempt is.

Satanski, for all of his evilness, is actually pretty biddable when I try to get him to do something. This is true of them times when I enlist him in one of my schemes, and especially when the joke is going to be on his father, who is our favorite victim. One time Satanski wanted his dad to do something for him, and Eric was slow to do it, so I taught the kid how to shame his dad. It involves going up to the shamee, making sure that you have his or her attention, holding your index finger out in front of you, then bringing your whole hand up and down whilst repeating, “Shame.” I think it’s the thing that I’m proudest of teaching the kid (video below).

But I noticed the other day that I have not knit any of the socks from the Socks that Rock club this year. Considering how much I spent to join, it’s a little ridiculous, no? So I will do my best to catch up (unless I think the pattern socks are not interesting to look at or to knit, and then I will just repurpose the yarn). And I think that the next one should be coming out soon, so I will try to do that one along with everybody else. Otherwise my little man will have to shame me (which he would love to do, I’m sure).

I was having trouble forcing myself to finish A’s no-purl Monkey socks, and for a while there, I thought that I’d never finish them. Then I was working on them last week and realized that I was pretty frustrated with doing them 2-at-a-time. So I thought about switching to double-pointed needles, but I haven’t worked socks on those for so long that I really wasn’t looking forward to it. I didn’t want to do my socks on the same needle, but I did want to use circs, and I did want to work them simultaneously. I looked through my box-o’circs, and saw that I had another size 2 needle in there (I do not know why I have 2 47″ size 2 needles, but now’s not the time to complain)  so I took one sock off of the original needle and left the mate behind.

Now that I’ve changed to doing the magic loop on two circs, I got a ton finished last night. I really just think that the two-at-a-time method was killing my joy and slowing me down. I finished the final two repeats of the leg (after all those months, I’d only done 4; THAT’s shameful) on the socks, one after the other. Now that I’m doing the heel, I expect these socks to go much quicker.

My good friends J & J are expecting a baby this coming March, and after a few minutes of excitement, my first thought was: what can I knit? I’m obsessed.

Jeez.

But I’m still looking at patterns! I’m considering another blanket, but thinking of how my OptArt went (hint: still not finished), maybe I should do something else.

Here’s a photo of the cover of Knitting With Dog Hair, the book that I mentioned yesterday. The best part is the subtitle, which I neglected to include before: “Better a sweater from a dog you know and love than from a sheep you’ll never meet.” Link again goes to the Amazon.com listing for the book.

Out of curiosity, I checked on Ravelry to see if anybody had made any of the patterns featured in this book, but the only person who has done so is…Kendall Crolius, the woman who wrote it. This is not a shocker.

In other news, my Alpaca Silk Bow Scarf is coming along swimmingly. After delaying the start of this project for a day to buy straight needles, I am calling myself an idiot, since 1) I had size 5 circular needles [which I knew but never even considered] and 2) I discovered that I find straight needles stupid and useless. I used them for the baby hat I made last month, and I don’t remember feeling the same frustration, so maybe I just find them unappealing for this project. I’m just about to get to the chart on the scarf, which means that I will need to start paying attention, but so far the intarsia thing is really working out for me. We’ll see how I feel about it a few rows into the chart.

(A few hours later): Okay, figured out the chart, although I could probably do without the constant yarn changes this pattern requires. I had qualms about the bow before, because I’m really not a bow type of person, and then I saw this post at Reckless Glue, which has pretty much decided me on making some changes. So I will continue with the ribbing throughout, and will not make the scarf 9 feet long, which seems excessive on so many levels. I have no intention of tying this thing in a bow, but maybe I’ll do some more intarsia patterns and deviate from the chart.

I spent a lot of time today photographing yarns that I’ve been hoarding and then uploading and cataloging the yarns on Ravelry. I also FINALLY figured out how to add a progress meter and a gallery of my finished objects to this site, making it a little bit more interesting to look at. Hope you enjoy it!

Today there’s a post on the front page of MetaFilter entitled simply: Amazon wtf. It includes a link Amazon.com, showing items that have been tagged “wtf” by Amazon.com users. To me, that’s funny enough, but the things tagged therein are truly insane. The first was this  poorly-described (and probably equally poorly-written) pamphlet regarding the evils of Christians using birth control and killing their future priesthood (!!!!). The blurb is in ALL CAPS so that you can feel the combined wrath of the Lord and the holy vessel of this who wrote this. All for the bargain price of $135 for the pamphlet. As usual, come for the crazy, stay for the customer reviews.

I thought that the pamphlet would be the most awesome wtf thing I saw on the site, but then I stumbled upon a book that is far more relevant to me: Knitting with Dog Hair, by Kendall Crolius. Upon seeing it, I almost didn’t know what to say, but then I remembered that speechlessness isn’t really my thing and said “WTF??” The marriage of this product and this tag seems almost cosmically designed, it’s so perfect. Honestly, I can think of about six hundred things I’d rather clean and knit with than dog fur. Who would this even occur to? And to take it as far as writing a book? And publishing it? And then seeing it on Amazon and buying it? This seems like some sort of elaborate joke to me.

I’d intended to get a decent amount of knitting done tonight,  and I think I succeeded. Of course, I probably would have accomplished more if I hadn’t gotten Walking Dead in the mail yesterday and decided to read the first 80 or so pages of that. Still, I’m pretty please with what I did do. For the next little bit (I hope), I’m going to be making the Alpaca Silk Bow Scarf from Boutique Knits (out of wool). I decided not to let the intarsia part of my new scarf scare me, so I Googled intarsia techniques until I felt like I understood what I was supposed to do (if not exactly how to do it), and plunged in. I’m going back to Continental knitting and doing the Norwegian Purl, so there’s all sorts of learning and adapting going on here. I had to frog twice; once because I still can’t count, and another time because my knitting was too loose. Luckily, I hadn’t done more than three rows either time, so it was no big loss. Seems like the third time is the charm, and so I’m going to quit while I’m ahead here and get some rest!

Pattern: Alpaca Silk Bow Scarf

Source: Boutique Knits

Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Greenline DK in Grapevine and Lilac

I meant to finish weaving in my the ends of my OpArt Blanket. Really, I did. It was too hot to do anything outside, so it seemed like a good idea to try to be useful in here. Unfortunately, I seem to have left my tapestry needles at work after my last In Stitches meeting, so that idea went out the window. Then I tried to work on A’s socks, but by now I sort of hate looking at them. I think I’m going to go back to one sock at a time. Aside from the first pair I made, when I was still learning what I was doing, I’ve never let nearly this much time go before finishing a pair. I considered starting my Buttony Sweater that I bought the yarn for last year, but I haven’t ever made a sweater before, and I wanted to learn more about sweater construction before I start; it seems that the pattern is pretty bare, and others who’ve knit it stated that they had or wished they had added some shaping. So that was out the window. AND THEN I decided to do the gauge for a new scarf that I wanted to start, but I couldn’t find any size five needles, which at first seemed insane, until I realized that most of my size 5s are circulars, and I think the one straight pair that I own is in use by an In Stitches member (not like I know who, though).

Well, there’s always tomorrow, right?