Two in One Day! And a Contest......

Sit down, if you aren't already, I'm posting twice in one day!!! Alert the media! I know I haven't been as regular at posting to ye ol' blog as I would like, but it's been in a good cause, really. My time is stretched pretty thin now that I've added the gym to my daily routine. That consumes 2-2.5 hours a day. A huge chunk of time~~once I get home, I shower, eat, and hit the books with the kids or catch up on housework. Doesn't leave a whole lot of time for blogging, but I do what I can. I still find time to knit, albeit less than before the first of the year, but progress continues. Let me share what I'm working on now.

Most of this week has been devoted to finishing up the socks in the previous post. I haven't picked up Hidcote or the Cambridge Jacket in days. As soon as I finished the Valentine's socks, what did I do? Dutifully return to the Cambridge Jacket? Print out the next chart (#4) for Hidcote and get back to work on that? Bite the bullet and start the Arwen that The Teen has been bugging me about? Nope, nope, and nope. I started some really fun socks for me. Call me selfish, you wouldn't be the first, nor the last I would imagine.

Aren't they great?!?! I had been coveting this yarn for way longer than I can remember and finally scored a skein during my destashing/swapping of a couple of months ago. It's Vesper sock yarn in the Aquamelon colorway. I used Sockotta for the toes, and will for the heels as well, even though it isn't a perfect match. I just liked the idea of having the toe and heel all one color instead of striping. I LOVE the nice wide stripes~~1st time I've knit with a yarn that gives a widish stripe. When I get to the place for the heel, I'm going to use an afterthought (some call it a forethought) heel~~run in a couple of rows of scrap yarn and just keep getting it with the stripes. I like my socks to fit snug and was planning on using a rib of some sort once I was an inch or so past the scrap yarn for the heel, but I'm really loving the cleanness of the stockinette and stripes, so it may be that once they are as tall as I want I'll just do a couple of inches of ribbing to hold them up, sort of like I did with my Chocolate Raspberry Truffle socks.

On Valentine's Day Mr Fix-it really came through with a gift card to each of three of my favorite store-front businesses: Knitting Sisters (my lys, which has now gone online. You can access the store by clicking on Login and entering the store as a guest. Not everything they carry is online, so give them a call if you're looking for something you can't find on the site.), Starbucks, and Books A Million. What a guy!!!!! The gift certificate for the lys wasn't even in my possession 24 hours before I had used it to purchase this:

Five balls of Crystal Palace Kid Merino in Fall Herbs. I understand that it is close in functionality to Kidsilk Haze. This will become a shawl. Which one? Who knows? I just couldn't resist it once I saw the colors. Even though it may not make its final home with me (my cousin is getting married in June, and I was thinking it would make a great shawl for her as a shower gift--my mom and I are having the shower for her.) I can't wait to get to work.

Suggestions as to the pattern you think would look great in this yarn? Let's have a little fun with this. Leave your suggestion in the comments or by emailing me (addy is in the sidebar). It must be a pattern available online either free or for purchase as a single pattern. PDF or pamphlet format, but nothing from a book please. I'll take them through next Friday night (cut-off is 12 am Saturday, February 24th). I'll pick the pattern I like best and the person who suggested it will get three hanks of KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud in the Stream colorway. If more than one person suggests the wining pattern, I'll pick the winner at random from those who suggest it. Sound good? Okay, start suggesting!

Valentine's Socks

Mr Fix-it has been wearing the socks I made him late in 2005 non-stop in the evenings since around November. He has terribly cold feet, and the alpaca socks I made him then have been just the ticket. They sold him on handknit socks, and he has been requesting a new pair since before the first of the year. Sure, he can only wear one pair at a time, but because his first pair was so well-loved he had already worn through the heel of the 100% alpaca yarn. (Note to self: 100% alpaca doesn't hold up well in socks.) I tried to mend the huge hole that had developed in each heel, but to no avail. It was with much sadness that those socks wound up in the trash can. I kept pulling my hand back, thinking that surely there was something I could do with the rest of the sock. If only I had made them with an afterthought heel. I could have pulled out the holey heel and knit in a new one easy-peasy. Alas, at the time I didn't know about the afterthought heel. So the old pair ended as landfill fodder.

The new pair was cast on around December 31st, but was too large. I ripped them out, knit a swatch (what a concept), and started anew. Here they are, finished the morning of St. Valentine's Day. I wish I had taken a photo of them with his card on his dinner plate. As soon as he saw them he pulled them on his feet. He had requested a taller cuff, and because I knit them toe-up I was able to try them on him several times throughout the process to make sure they were 'just right'. Verdict: two thumbs way up! What a relief.

Details:
Yarn: Tongue River Farms Sock Yarn An icelandic yarn (colors: cream, brown, bluish-grey[shown]) that comes in 8 oz skeins ($17.50)--enough for approximately 2 pairs of socks. This pair to fit Mr Fix-it's size 11 feet, with about a 10.5 inch leg took 110 gms. According to my scale, I have 99 gms left. Surely that would be enough to make a pair for me :o)
Needle: Size 3 Addi Turbo 40"
Pattern: strictly plain jane: Toe-up, two at a time on Magic Loop, Turkish cast-on, increased to 58 stitches, stockinette and 3x2 ribbing after decreasing to 55 stitches. Used the short row heel that Abigail developed. I didn't realize until I had already passed the heel that I should have knit in an afterthought rather than a short row so I could replace it if he wears through these too. The blurb on the site says that the heels are very wear resistant, so I'm hoping that these will hold up better.
Thoughts:
The yarn is rather rough at first, but softened even as I worked with it. He hasn't given me a chance to wash them yet, so I'm sure they will soften up even more after that. Other than that, he loves them. 'Nuff said.

Finally!!!!!!! Ist Mini-goal met!!

It's taken what seems like forever, but I finally met my first mini-goal for weight loss~~8 lbs. I can now order a ball of sock yarn. I think it will be a ball of Trekking in colorway 110, unless I can track down the numbers of the colors shown in the Spring '07 IK. Next goal is 10 lbs (9.5 really) away. Haven't decided what my reward will be for that milestone. My advice to those of you under 40 who'd like to lose a few~~do it now. It is murder to lose it after that magic age. Just saying.

Boring Knitting

I have three projects that I'm currently concentrating on~~plain gray socks for Mr. Fix-it, Cambridge Jacket for my dad, and the Hidcote Garden shawl. The first two are simply boring me to tears. So much so that I have had to reinstitute the knitting rotation plan in order to force myself to work on them. The Hidcote Garden does what lace does while it is still on the needles~~looks like one big blob of nothing. I worry that it will still look like a blob of nothing when it is finished since it is the first triangle shawl I've knit out of a true laceweight yarn. But I know that blocking does wonders. I just have to keep telling myself that.

No photos of the ultra-boring knitting that is going on at my house right now. Just know that I am knitting. And soon, hopefully, these projects will be finished.