We've got a pulse

If anyone is still out there, I'm not dead yet! It's been a crazy summer, especially when you consider that I'm a teacher and have summer's off! As soon as the school year ended, I found a house to buy, headed on the road with my drum corps for a few weeks, came back and began planning the rest of the wedding, getting ready to move to my new house and trying to line things up for my new job! Oh yeah, and reading all of the new Harry Potter!! (So excited about that one!!) Whew!

The wedding socks are going great, I have two pairs completed, and one sock left on each of the other two. I'll have pictures sometime in the next two weeks, at least after the move this weekend! Think good thoughts for me!

Long Time, No See

First, if there is anyone out there, sorry about the obnoxiously long break. Life got a little crazy. OK, a lot crazy. Between getting a new teaching job, leaving the old one, having a bridal shower and trying to buy a house, the blog went by the wayside. But, summer vacation is here as of tomorrow, and so is more regular blogging. (I say as I cross my fingers, knowing that in preparation for the move, I'm shutting off my Internet is about a week...) On to the important stuff, socks!! Above is my second bff sock. I'm loving the way that this is turning out! And I think I may have bought a second skein of jitterbug for nothing, but better prepared than not!! (After all today I was honored by an Eagle Scout as being an Eagle Scout mentor, so I guess the Always Be Prepared thing now applies!)

I've jumped on the monkey bandwagon. I'm liking the way this is turning out. It's Regia Cotton for a friend in a very warm state where wool just will not do. I'm going to need to block this some how before I gift it, but without a sock blocker I'm not sure about the best method. Any advice out there?

This is the Uptown Boot Sock from Interweave's Favorite Socks. I tried my hand at dying with Kool-Aid, and I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Luckily the person I'm knitting this for has extremely skinny legs and feet, cause I know this sock will not get on my foot. Note to self: when you knit your own Uptown Boot Sock, use a much larger size. (I should have known better, all those cables, of course there's not going to be too much give...)

And I'm not sure what these are yet. I think I'm going to rip this back and make it a Cable Rib Sock. Just once, I'd really like it if I could make up my mind about what I was going to knit before I started. That really would save so much time.

So why all of the socks? Well they are presents that are all going to be delivered on one day in August. That means I have roughly 2.5 months to finish 5 pairs of socks. Totally a reasonable goal, except the whole moving into a new house and starting a new job thing. Oh, and I'll be on the road with my drum corps for a month, and two of the people that will be receiving the socks will be with me. Here's what I have accomplished so far...

BFF Socks - 80% finished
Monkey Socks - 25% finished
Uptown Boot Socks - 30% finished
Cable Rib Socks - negative 5% finished
Still undetermined socks - not even conceived yet...

Wish me luck, and speedy knitting!!

Here it is!

Well, here it is, one BFF sock. Thanks for the comments about the toe, I decided to knit the last four rows with out the knit all rows, and it seems to have helped considerably - so thank you! I think I learned a blogging lesson on these ones though... never say that something is going well. The moment you do you'll realize that you weren't paying nearly enough attention to the heel of the sock and have to rip out an inch or so of the sock that was going so well. Grrrr....


















And here were my little knitting purchases from the last few weeks. First a lantern moon bag to keep my socks in so that I don't end up with yarn tangled in my keys and anything else in my purse. The striped bag is my new notions kit! I knit at my fiance's all the time and end up without darning needles, stitch markers and a myriad of other necessary objects. I love them both!!

Socks Galore!

Well, here's the new socks I've started on. It's the bff pattern from Knitters Anonymous. which can be found here. I decided that instead of continuing the cable pattern onto the instep, that I would just make the foot plain old stockinette. This was mostly for time since I plan on making pairs for 4 people by August. This is just the first pair. I'm pretty happy with them, since they're technically the second pair of socks I've ever made! (Now, lets see if I still say that after I knit the toe...) The picture didn't quite show the color the way I hoped it would, it's a little less purple in real life.




And here's my yarn purchases from spring break. I love
all of it! It's all to make gifts, so I feel no guilt about it!! (As you can see, all but one of those will be becoming the four pairs of socks that I will knit by August.)











Here they are - my first socks!! I'm pretty happy with how they came out. The toes came out waaaayyyy too pointy (notice they are missing from the picture...), but I think I know how to fix it. If you have any advice on how to control the elfishness of the toes, please share!!!














And last, my cute pup checking out the most recent additions to my stash. She was most interested in the cherry tree hill yarn - wonder what made it so interesting?

Spring Break Part II

 
Well, here's a picture of what Traverse City looked like on Friday afternoon.
 
And, then friday evening (notice there's less green/brown patches and much more white)
 
And then Friday night - it looked more like the opening scene from a sci-fi movie than a nice April evening.

As you can guess from the picutres, the kayaking plans that I had made could not be carried out.

Spring Break Part I

So, here's the update that I promised.

Got home to Detroit, and some how convinced my mom to come and see the Yarn Harlot with me. (While my mother admires knitting, she is not a knitter, and wasn't terribly excited to go hear someone speak about it.)

 

I'll let you read the detailed post on her site, but here's what was going on while we waited for the delayed knitter.

 
Then, like a rock star, she ran in and began to speak. Even mom thought she was funny. She didn't get all of it, but did think it was funny.

 
Just a picutre of all of the hats that were collected. I feel like a bad knitter for not having one. I planning on sending one in to the hat collector, but I just didn't bring one with it.

 

And last, me with the traveling sock!And even better - Stephanie holding my sock! And I'm happy to report it's finally finished. It's been a year, but they're done, and have been worn. I'm on to the next pair, and will have to post picures at a later date, but I must say, I really doubt this pair ws going to take a year...

Consider this a temporary post

This one's going to be short, and there will be more later. I'm on spring break, and though it would seem like I have lots of time, there is lots I've put off and have to get done now.

Anyway,
The Harlot
was well worth the time. It was great! Meeting all of the other knitters, just wonderful!
OCD Knitting
was there and passing out name tags to all of the bloggers, and mine is up on her site! (By the way, the red sweater that's a few posts down is beautiful in person!) Even standing in line to get books signed was fun - there were between 4 and 6 of us in our little section of line talking, all about the same age, all knitting socks, and all knitting them differently, so it was neat to see how everyone else did it!

Like I said, there will be more with pictures later!

The reason for the name change

Here is the blanket that I showed everyone last week. The day after this post I decided that the blanket wasn't really going the way that I wanted it to. The ivory colored parts were raised, a little like a bubble. Besides that, the back was an absolute mess. So I ripped it out, as I have a tendency to do (several times) before I actually settle on a project. So, back to the drawing board on this one.

Then, I saw a mitered square blanket over at januaryone and I decided that maybe this would be a good idea. So, I made the squares a little smaller, and started with the Peaches and Cream Yarn that I had bought for the first blanket. Soon, I figured out that a blanket that was all ivory and white squares would not be nearly as exciting as it could be if I added pink to it. So, off to the local store to pick up some more cotton yarn in various shades of pink. The squares above are the product of this idea. There are seven of them, and while I love them, I was struck by an idea. This is my mom's, bosses daughter. She might think it's a little strange to get a hand knit baby blanket from someone she hardly knows. Nice but a little weird. So, while I love these, I think I'm going to save them.

Thus, this little, pink, ribbed circle and the new name for the blog. I realized this morning that I do this with just about every project that I knit. I begin either that project, or something similar and then rip it out several times before I finally decide that I've got it right, or am knitting just the right thing. So, the more appropriate title for the blog. Hope you find my adventures in frogging back projects can amuse everyone as much as they do my fiance!

Just wondering, does anyone else do this?

Also, the middle school knitting club got a wonderful, amazing donation of yarn and needles from eleven stitches. It was so great - she even sent along 2 balls of bamboo yarn which the 7th and 8th graders were endlessly fascinated with. Thank you so very much!!!

Spring has finally hit Michigan and has brought not only higher temps but also the loudest crickets I've ever heard. It's such a great sound! Becky (my dog) just stands on my back porch (if you can call the 5 x 5 cement slab a porch) staring out into the darkness trying to figure out what is making the racket!

She's Coming to Michigan!

The she would be the fabulous Stephanie Pearl-McPhee a.k.a The Yarn Harlot! She's going to be in Ann Arbor, and I'm going to be close enough to Ann Arbor to make it over there. And even better, Adam's flight doesn't land until later that evening, so I can make it with out leaving him with my parents for an extended amount of time!

I'm developing a plan even as I type - Ikea in the morning, Yarn Harlot in the afternoon, pick up the fiance in the evening! I'll be great!

Hopefully there will be another post tonight, but we'll have to see. If I do, you'll understand the new title. I think it's much more fitting.

It's been beyond nuts for the past two weeks - band festival, solo and ensemble festival, getting the worst cold I've ever had and playing at church. Just have to make it through 2 days of parent teacher conferences plus one day of school and then it's time for Spring Break!!!