It would also be nice if they had something other than pastel pink, blue, yellow, white and green. Sure, those are the ‘most popular’ colors and all, but what if you’d like to make something a little less Easter, huh? What if I’d like a nice natural sort of color scheme, like rich browns or greens? Huh? What then, Michaels?!
(In related news, we need a yarn store here in town. NEED. ONE. If nobody steps up to the plate before this contract is over, I may just have to open one myself. Because I am civic-minded that way.) (GASP! I cannot believe I heard you muttering about “the lengths some people will go to gain more yarn stash”! Listen, I would open this shop purely and only to serve my community, because I am a giver that way…) (ooooooh, I can’t imagine the tedium involved in having to sit around knitting up this and that with sexy yarn and patterns that just came in, so that I can serve my customers better by giving them examples of what they can expect…) (and hosting those boring old knit nights, and putting together classes, and being forced to surround myself with every conceivable publication right when it comes out…oh…the horror…) (heh, actually, the part that horrifies me is the same stuff I don’t love too much about running our Enterprises…the paperwork and taxes, dealing with assorted governmental agencies that all want to jam their fingers into our pies, arguing with insurers and banks...not to mention that having a physical retail store would add having to keep regular hours especially on weekends, plus the added fun of dealing with a landlord, and of course, dealing with That Customer (every retail store seems to have at least one of these) (our local pharmacy has, like, a hundred of them), who wants to come in, be weird and/or argumentative and/or confrontational and/or excessively stupid for hours and hours and then stomp out without ever buying so much as a pack of mints. Yeah. Those are the things that make me go, You know, on second thought, a five hour daily commute isn’t THAT bad, right?)
ANYWAY. So, I’ll be on the hunt for baby yarn at Stitches (I was going to order it over the Internet and even had it in my cart online but then suddenly I was all, DUH!, because Stitches is only a couple weeks away…of course, this means that daddy will have to do the adult-supervision-at-Girl-Scout-cookie-selling one day that weekend but oh well. If he wants the socks – and he does – he better be nice to the knitter, yo…), and casting on Turid for the Olympics.
Tonight.
Assuming, of course, that I can get gauge with this yarn, and that it doesn’t knit up poorly at said gauge, and…well. The Imponderables, they are many.
So here, let me distract you with some socks! Because guess what? I found the camera! Yay, me!
These were made with Opal Sockenwolle, in ‘Tender Dinghi.’ A friend bought it for herself, but wasn’t feeling the love for learning to knit socks just yet (she will be assimilated, eventually) so she shoved it at me and asked me to make them. Sweet!
This is just your basic sock pattern for a women’s medium-large sock. 2x2 rib at the top, straight stockinette down the leg and foot, the slip-one-knit-one heel flap thing (which pulls the heel in a bit for fit and seems to make for a harder-wearing heel, which I like), and my usual lazy toe decrease, which I use because it is easy for me to remember: Decrease round, knit FOUR rounds plain, decrease, knit THREE plain, decrease, knit TWO plain, decrease, ONE, then decrease like mad until you’ve got sixteen stitches left altogether. Then Kitchener and you’re done. Unless Kitchener still requires cussing for you, in which case, cuss and you’re done.
The thing I marvel at with these little babies is that they are identical twins. See?
This yarn had a wickedly long pattern repeat, is the thing. And I was making them a little longer / bigger than my norm, and when I realized just how long the pattern repeat was on these I started thinking, Hope she likes fraternal twins… because you know how that is: You get to the end of the one, and have to pull out 1,800 yards to get to the same starting point for the next one, and then you get, like, to the middle of the heel and whoops, now what…?
But then I got to the end of the first sock and lo!, it was mere feet from the starting point!
You would think I won the lottery, y’all, I was so excited. The whole train car was cheering for me! Probably because I looked somewhat dangerous with all those shiny metal needles in my hand. But who cares? THEY CHEERED!!! YAY, ME!!!!!!!!
(OK, not really. But the lady sitting across from me at the time did say ‘congratulations’ and I don’t think she was being sarcastic. Being a little bit deaf does have its benefits, and having trouble hearing inflection [or anything else for that matter] when there’s other noise going on [like, say, a moving train] [or a party where lots of people are talking…I can’t hear roughly 65% of what is said to me at parties…so I nod and go, “Oh, right on!” a lot and hope I didn’t just say it was totally cool that their dog died or something] can sometimes be one of them…)
Right. Well, it being legal for me to do my gauge swatch before the opening ceremonies, I suppose I should use the rest of my sittin’ around waiting for my appointment start time to do that, instead of blogging.
…betcha Shaun White wouldn’t spend time blogging when he was supposed to be warming up…
…then again, betcha Shaun White can’t do Kitchener stitch without having to look it up, that’s right! In yer FACE, Shaun!!!!!!!!
(That dude seriously amazes me. I was watching him on X Games not too long ago and was just amazed by two things: The way he makes flying without wings look easy, and how he seems to know when he’s not going to make it long before it should be obvious, and “crashes” without, you know, crashing. It’s like, anybody else would be taking a major face-plant…he just sorta bumps his butt lightly on the ground, bounces right back up and coasts out of there shaking his head and muttering to himself…graceful even when he’s blown it. HOW DO HE DO IT?!?!) (Ya, ya, youth and skill…and I am sooooooo glad nobody can see me doing the skateboard thing on the Wii Fit. I’m the ranking champion around here [nobody else has even unlocked the ‘free style’ on ours, but if and when they do they will have trouble beating my CHAMPION RANKING, bwahahahahaha], but I suspect I look like a drunk turtle on a unicycle while I’m doing my thing.)
1 comment:
Ooh! What day will you be at Stitches! I'd love to cross paths and meet the woman who has the best way ever of telling stories (that would be you).
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