Updates about stuff

My original intent was to update everyone on my progress with Sock Madness. Then I realized that I had other topics that needed updating as well. So, yeah, categories.

Sock Madness

Sock Madness is over for me. That second round sock did me in. There are still (as if the publishing of this post) spots remaining on my team, but I ended up frogging the second attempt at the first sock. I got to about the same point as the first attempt when I realized that I was not enjoying the experience. The sock is pretty. (You can see it here.) It's a fairly simple straightforward sock with some ribbing and some cables, but I just wasn't loving it. I felt frustrated, fumbling, and as if I was peering into an abyss that had certain doom at the bottom. I had vowed to myself last year that I would not knit anything that I didn't love. And I didn't love this sock. I didn't love the yarn, the needles, the gauge, or the tedium. So I frogged it. And I'm good with that. I'm now free to move on to more interesting and loved patterns. Perhaps I will finally finish remaking the yoke on the sweater I want to love.

Project 333

It snowed yesterday. Tomorrow it is supposed to get up to 50°F. I'm told this is typical of springtime in Ohio.  Although, I've also read that this is atypically late for this sort of spring time. Friday I pulled out my warm weather clothes box (remember I'm from Florida where we have warm/hot weather clothes and cool weather clothes rather than four seasons' worth of clothing). A few things are going to be sent to thrift stores for someone else to find and love. A few things from last year made the cut for this year. And I have a few items that I have already purchased for this year's warmer weather. I'm pretty good on bottoms, although I retired my white peasant skirt as it was tired and had a tear and had become dingy. I am looking for a new skirt. I have a pair of long khaki linen pants, a pair of cropped khaki cotton pants, two pair of "boyfriend chinos" - one khaki and one olive - and yes, I like khaki pants) and an A-line skirt with multiple shades of blue dots. Shirts consist of a few camis, a new white shirt with bicycles on it, a new sleeveless shirt, my peach shirt with rosettes and my aqua shirt which is all flowy (both left from last year). Replaced was the khaki cardigan that I purchased last year that already looks worn and tired.

(This is where I go off on a rant about the clothing industry and manufacturing in general.) I'm not a small girl. I'm ... busty. Because of my "bustierness" I find that I have to go to more expensive stores or shop in the Women's section of stores for dresses and shirts most of the time. This means that I also have to pay more, and sometimes a whole lot more, for the same clothes that are slightly larger than the largest sizes in the regular women's departments (usually called ladies or misses). Last year I made a vow (I may have blogged about it) that I would only buy quality clothing. No more clothes with raw edges, sloppy seaming, thin fabrics, and more clothes with natural fibers, reinforced seams, and with cuts that were ageless and would flow from one year to the next without looking like the previous year's trends. I have yet to find such clothes. And paying two to three times more for clothes does not guarantee that they are made to last. I hate playing $40-$50 for a light weight shirt only to have it fall apart before the current season is over. I am angered at having paid $60 for a cotton cardigan that looks like something from the glad rag box less than a year later. This winter I purchased a few sweaters from various stores and all of them have pilled to the point of being thin under the arms or along the back.

To prove that this is not just me purchasing cheap clothes, I have a few items that I have had for several years and they are just starting to show wear. I even have nice pieces that I bought used that are still quite lovely. The past few years, though, even the clothes I have purchased from upscale department stores are not holding up to any sort of wear. The clothing manufacturers are creating clothes that are only meant to last for one season (if that) and are forcing us to purchase clothes more often. It's a huge cycle of "stuff" buying. I've watched in action in clothing, footwear and home appliances. There is a fantastic short movie about this philosophy at The Story of Stuff. I encourage you to go watch it if you haven't.

The one thing I am looking for is a lovely pair of flats or low heels to wear with my (previously unmentioned) white polka dotted black dress and my skirt(with a hopeful pluralization). I have a thin heel, wide toes, high arch and tall instep. It means I cannot wear your typical cute flat shoes. I end up in things that look more orthopedic than trendy. I'm still hunting, though.

So that's my bit of an update. I'm sure there is more that I wanted to say, but got slightly side-tracked by my little rant. I'd love to know how your spring is shaping up.

On Sock Madness

Each year I participate in a little knitting competition called Sock Madness. It had brackets. It has speed. It has Norwegians. Everything a good sport should have. The premise is fairly simple. Qualify (by knitting an assigned pattern in two weeks) and then knit your way through each assigned pattern as quickly as you can to beat out the other people on your team. The first year I participated there were four teams. This year there are ten or eleven. My team is somewhere in the middle. We are all "average speed" knitters. I'm supposedly matched with other knitters who knit about the same speed as I do. The nice thing about this competition is that it is one of the friendliest games I've ever been in. People cheer you on and encourage you when you get down.

The current sock was supposed to be knit on size US 0 (2.0 mm needles). I made it half way through the first sock before I had to quit and frog it (I had a missed cable and the small diameter needle along with the very rigid fabric made my hands ache so badly). I have since recast on (recasted on? recast onned?) the sock on larger needles with larger yarn. It is going a bit more smoothly this time. I'm hoping to make it to round five this time. (I have never made it past round four.)

I used to knit with size 0 needles all the time, but in the past few years I have found that they don't play nicely with my hands. I also have problems knitting with needles that are too large (size 13's, 15's, 35's). I guess my hands prefer my 6's, 7's, and 8's. I guess I should be knitting more sweaters and fewer socks. Every year when sock madness comes around, though, I can't not knit with them. I have to know what is in store for this year's patterns. We've had zippers, buttons, funky vikkel braiding cast ons, socks knit side to side, tape (!), and the dreaded nupps (two row bobbles for the non-knitters).  Each year when you think that you have knit all there is to knit someone comes up with a new technique that, well, knocks your socks off. It's fun and I love the people I have met in this madness.

It's too late to sign up this year, but head over to Ravelry and check the group out or go to the patterns and search for Sock Madness patterns. They are fresh, unique and down right fun.

The problem with UFO's

I honestly think sometimes that aliens come and abduct not our bodies but our knitting patterns when we are half finished making something.  I started fantasizing yesterday about a new knitting project.  A nice vest with waist shaping that buttoned in the front or perhaps it was a pullover with a deep neckline that would be perfect to wear over a crisp shirt.  I even think that the gorgeous silk/wool blend that I got at Stitches would be the perfect yarn for such a venture.  I went as far as to go to Ravelry and search for vest patterns.  I doodled a bit.  I looked through my own library to see what I already had.  And I considered swatching to see what gauge I was getting.

And then I came to my senses.  The aliens had come back and stolen my patterns to all my UFO's  (For those of you who are not knitters, UFO's are UnFinished Objects as we have FO's as well ... sometimes if we actually get to finishe something prior to alien abduction.)  I tried to reason with myself that I didn't really have that many UFO's.  In fact I went over to my Ravelry project page and counted them just to prove it.  See?  I only have my second Little Slipped Stitch sock, the second My Little Bit of Lace sock, the second Kimono sock, the second Rick sock, my second Regency sock, the Argus Panoptes socks, the Pea Vines shawl and the green cabled summer sweater which is 45% finished.  I could lie and say that my way of dealing with socks missing their mates in the wash is to not knit their mates, but the honest truth is that I have every intention of knitting their mates because they are beautiful socks and deserve to be worn in pairs.  I could just wear Dobby socks, but again, these are great socks and as much as I love that mischievous adorable House Elf, I like pairs of socks. 

I have decided that I will not cast on anything new until I am caught up with what is already on the needles.  Well, except the shawl.  That's a Big Project and complicated so I may end up having that as a work in progress even after I have finished everything else.  Oh and maybe after I finish the cabled summer sweater I will cast on another sweater project because one can't have just socks to knit.  And while I really shouldn't, I may end up casting on something with some of that sock yarn I got at Stitches before I forget all the cool things that Anna Zilboorg taught me in the sock class I took from her. 

See?  This is why I really think it has to be aliens!  No knitter in her right mind would have this many UFO's hanging around.  What is that green glow I see on the horizon.  Quick!  Hide your patterns.  The aliens are here.

We're all a little mad

I joined the infamous Sock Madness on Ravelry. What is Sock Madness? It's a race to finish a set of assigned sock patterns with no alterations as fast as you can. Eight pair of socks in something like six weeks. I'm half way finished with my first sock and thought I was really whizzing through until I logged on this morning and found someone has already finished the pair! Sweet Nelly, what do the drink in Norway that lets someone knit that fast? I knit fast for an English knitter and I know that Continental is faster, but that much? Or maybe it's a combination of knitting fast and not having anything to do. I mean I did take time to eat and shower and dress. I had to take the kids on a french fry crawl (maybe a topic for a later post) and I did have to stop to go pick up the new spinning wheel, but none of those things took terribly long.

I keep wondering why I joined this challenge and I think it is for the same reason I do NaNoWriMo every year. I want to see if I can do it. I have no grandiose plans of actually winning Sock Madness (unlike NaNoWriMo, there is only one winner), but I do have plans to get through as many rounds as I can. It would be fun to be able to say I made it through five or six rounds. For now, I just need to get through this first round.

Off to knit!

Socks in bed

I love my hand knit socks. They are the only ones I will wear. They fit my feet perfectly and don't have any annoying seams rubbing across my toes. They are soft. They know me. But then comes the problem of wearing them in bed. When I go to bed at night I usually am freezing. I have my socks on, my flannel jammies, sometimes an undershirt, and on the coldest of nights maybe even a hat. I am cozy under my sheet and two quilts. I'm like a little caterpillar in her cocoon. Safe. Snug. Warm.

And then it happens. HOT FLASH! When I first started hearing my friends talk about hot flashes I thought those women were out of their minds. But then I started to experience them myself. When they say hot, they really mean HOT and when they say flash, it should be FLASH. Seriously, they hit you strong and hard and fast. You barely have enough time to take off your clothes to escape the inferno. Then five minutes later you are shivering. You feel like Wile E. Coyote has held onto a stick of "Dyn-O-mite" one second too long and have instantly combusted into a pile of ash. And then the arctic wind blows.

The problem with all this is that in the process to relieve yourself of anything that might retain heat (including covers, clothes, and lovers) your socks end up at the bottom of the bed. Retrieving them is no small feat. Trying to get them sorted out of their post strip jumble is nearly impossible in the dark and you are so tired that you forget about them. Until you get up in the morning and your feet are freezing. I do not recommend trying to find and put on crumpled socks in a pre-caffeinated state. It's just easier to pull on a new pair from the pile.

You do this for many nights in a row and then suddenly you can't find any of your hand knit socks because they are all at the bottom of your bed, intertwined like some sort of sock orgy. There in the wedge of your sheets are merino consorting with bamboo and colorwork going at it with lace. And you don't even want to know what the gansey is doing to the stockinette plain Jane. They look up at you like it is your fault.

Honestly, I don't care what my socks do under the covers. I just wish they would start having babies. But then, I'm not sure if I would like the product of this:

and

True friends!

Sometimes you don't realize how good of friends you have nor how much your friends think of you until you receive something totally unexpected in your life. For me it was my friend Lori and a package that she created from goodies she picked up at Sock Summit. She knew how much I was missing it and this little treat was almost as good as going (but not quite, I didn't get hugs or the ability to squish all kinds of fibery goodness!)

Nothing says "I love you" like receiving stitch markers made from ninjas, kitties, and flying monkeys. Why ninjas, kitties and flying monkeys? Why not! For some reason there is some secret connection between knitting and flying monkeys that I haven't quite understood yet, but that I am not willing to dismiss just because it doesn't all make sense.

Everyone needs a superhero. Even knitters. Perhaps especially knitters. So who better to be a knitter's superhero than Alex Miller. Mild mannered high school kid by day. Tireless knitting savior of the world by night (who just happens to knit). If you are a knitter and you haven't found your way over to Handknit Heroes then march yourself right over there and get a subscription. Then you, too, can make super cool dude handknit glasses just like Alex's! I can't wait to cast these babies on. Who knows? Maybe I, too, can become part of a league of superheros. I can wield knitting needles with the best of them!

This was the cream of the crop, though! If asked what knitting superhero I would want to be when I grew up (realizing of course that I refuse to ever grow up) I would state without a moment's hesitation that I would be Anna Zilboorg. I have to admit right here that I assumed that the woman was dead. I mean her books weren't published that long ago and they were out of print and selling for four or more times their original prices. Nothing had been published since 2004 and in the knitting world that means only one thing. You are dead. So when I found out that she as going to be at Sock Summit I about flipped out. So, my friend Lori found a copy (at her local yarn shop no less) of Socks for Sandals and Clogs she bought it for me! Then she took it with her to Sock Summit and actually asked Anna Zilboorg to sign it for me!

AND SHE DID!!!

Now I just have to convince myself to finish the two pair of socks I already have on needles before breaking out the yarn and casting on yet another pair of socks. And I need to make those truly cool goggles for my night time superhero adventures.

Pity Party Reprieve

Yesterday I was really feeling down about not being at Sock Summit. I pouted for most of the day. I wrote for a while (nearly four thousand words) but then got halted by trying to find pictures of what I was missing. So I decided to go to the bookstore instead. For fun I wondered over to the knitting books just to see if they had anything new (which is rare) and found out that they did! Sitting right there on the shelf were about eight copies of the book Knitted Socks East and West by Judy Sumner. It is an entire book of socks with a Japanese inspired theme. The socks are knitted with everything from a very fine lace weight (on size US 3 needles) to chunky (on size US 9 needles). They are fresh and innovative and very very fun. I immediately came home (book in hand) and dug out some nice bright pink Debbie Bliss Cotton Cashmere (a worsted weight yarn) to make the Obi socks, which are heel-less, toe-less, foot-less yoga socks (they have a band - or obi to go around the foot to keep them in place.) They are knitting up quite quickly (almost ready for the "non-heel").

I'm having a lot of fun with this sock and a new technique (at least for me) called a pkok (which I call a peacock). It is made by lifting the third stitch on the left needle over the first two stitches then knitting the first stitch, yarn over, knit the second stitch. It gives a totally different look to a mock cable and is quite fun to do as well. And I'm quite sure that today pictures will start rolling in on the various blogs to prove to me that Sock Summit was very crowded, very hot and I would have had a very miserable time. (Please, just let me live in my fantasy.)

I'm not "there"

"There" being Sock Summit. I was going to go. I wanted to go. And the way I knit socks I should have gone. But I didn't. Instead I stayed home and was a parent and didn't spend close to a thousand dollars to go play and learn and shop with hundreds (thousands?) of other sock knitters and designers.

So I'm following them on Twitter, not that they have updated much this week! Grrrr. And I'm checking out the few really cool people who actually are posting updates and pictures over on the Ravelry website. I'm sure that various blogs will be greatly updated post the summit, but it sure would be nice for those of us that couldn't attend to be able to see a little of the goodness that is happening as it actually happens.

I have no desire to even knit the pair of socks I should be working on.

But I'm writing. And it is going fairly well. Susan (my MC - Main Character) is getting ready to return home and face the realities of what she left there. I've been anxious to get to this part. I love it when I finally get to write a part in a book that I have thought of often. It's like watching a much-loved movie and you just can't wait for the part where Joe Fox looks into the window of the coffee shop and realizes that his secret correspondent is his rival. That transformation in his thoughts about her is wonderful and I love that part of the movie every time. (For those of you who are scratching your heads, go see the movie with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks (no, the other movie with Meg and Tom. No, the other movie with Meg and Tom. You know, You've Got Mail.

And now I would like to take a moment for our sponsor, The Save Function. Yes; Mr. CTRL S. You know the one. The one you always forget to press then walk away from your computer and come back later to find your cat napping on top of it, having rewritten the entire last three pages with her butt. There's no recovering it. There's rarely the ability to rewrite it. The second draft never flows as nicely as the first. You forget the subtle nuances of banter that your characters had or you can't recall if your character was seeing her life flash before her eyes or watching the scene play out in slow motion. Or maybe it was both. Or maybe it was neither. How can such tragedies be stopped before they happen? CTRL S. That's it folks. Just move your left hand pinkie down to that CTRL button and then press the letter S with your left ring finger. Takes one hand and approximately .847 seconds. About the same time as it takes to type a capital letter A. You, too, can have one for the low low cost of remembering to just save! Save your document. It will save your sanity. (Do not ask my why that rant got started.)