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 decided to try a new project tonight, so I thought I’d work on making two socks at once. I’m not trying to be too ambitious, but I thought I’d get a jump on the skill, since I just signed up for Sit n’ Knit’s sock swap. So I’m cranking along, right? I’m starting with toddler socks, as recommended by the book, because, hey, Satanski and Sidekick would love to have socks to dirty and tear. I’m making the same sock, but using two different yarns, just to make sure I don’t lose my plaee. I’m feeling no pain, knitting while watching Chuck, then Gossip Girl, and finally Fringe.

I paused a bit at the beginning of Fringe just to catch up, because I’d started watching this particular episode last week, and was trying to remember what had already happened. So then I get a little into it, but not too much, because Fringe is deeply stupid, but then I realize: I have completely forgotten how to knit. Like, I looked down at my knitting, and had no idea how I’d done that, or where I should go from there. So this is what I’ve been doing for the last 20 minutes. Thinking: Fringe is retarded, and so am I.

Gracious.

I finished Satanski’s mittens, and am really pleased with how they came out. Mittens are great! Here’s the final product:

I finished blocking Satanski’s scarf, so all I need to do now is take a few minutes and weave in the ends. It came out really really well, and although it’s not terribly hard to impress a three-year-old, I’m happy that he likes it so much. I also started on what will be the matching mittens. This is my first pair of mittens, and I’m kind of cobbling together several patterns, so we’ll see how those turn out. Here are pictures of the finished scarf (undone ends and all) and the beginning of the mittens.

 
Today, the knitting Meetup group that I belong to had a trial yarn swap. I didn’t prepare well for it at all; I brought 300 yards of a brown striped sock wool, 300 yards of a sunny yellow sock wool, and 600 yards of blue alpaca. I probably shouldn’t have been so obvious about bringing things that interested me not at all! Anyway, I ended up trading the alpaca for some gorgeous light blue bamboo (cannot believe I got that), and the brown wool for some really cool blue cotton. I was also given about 200 yards of a cool white wool with flecks of yellow and orange (it’s cute; definitely for babies/kids). I couldn’t find any takers for the yellow wool, and although I may regret it later, since I still have several balls here and I have no idea what I’m going to do with those, I gave it away for a yarn drop. I hope that somebody can put it to good use!

I finished Satanski’s scarf, and it came out great! I love this yarn (Malabrigo Worsted, in Oceanus), and Satanski loves his scarf. That picture to the left shows what the scarf looked like last night, when I was about 60% of the way finished. I’m going to get started on matching mittens tomorrow, with a hat to follow soon thereafter. I need to block the scarf, as right now all it wants to do is roll itself back into a ball, but that means that I might as well block all the other stuff I’ve been ignoring for a while. Block party tomorrow!

Sorry, I’m groaning over here, too. 

This is what the OpArt blanket is looking like these days. That kid is due nigh on two months from now and I still don’t know when we’ll be having his dad’s baby shower at work, so I should definitely get the lead out and start doing a lot of work on this again. Even after I’m done knitting, I’m going to be weaving in ends forever, so I should just do it already.

I had high hopes for the scarf that I was going to make Satanski. I sat down, thought of a pattern, and charted it. All was well, until I realized that my chart was not taking into account the two decreases I need to work on each row to even out the two yarn overs I was including. I think I tried to get too fancy, too fast, and the whole thing just annoyed me. So I decided to modify a baby blanket pattern from Debbie Stoller’s Stitch and Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook and make it into a scarf instead. I’ve made the Big, Bad Baby Blanket a couple of times already (and I’m pretty sure I have a third one somewhere on a set of circulars), so by now the pattern is pretty much dead easy for me. I’m hoping that I will have enough yarn left over afterward to make the kid a pair of mittens, or even a hat. I can’t remember what the name of the yarn is, because I bought and had it wound in Vermont, and cannot find the label at all. I just started it yesterday, but it’s kid-sized and knitting up quickly, so I will upload photos once I get home from work.

My OpArt is coming along well. I’m up to 132 stitches in each section. I need to pay more attention though, because a couple of rounds ago I dropped a stitch about six rows down, and that was super annoying to fix in pattern.