Sock Humor

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Suzanne

Will: Do you have a hole in your sock?
Will’s teacher: No, I don’t think so.
Will: Of course you do! How else do you get it on your foot?

(edited to add: sock and pattern are from the 2011 Rockin Sock Club March kit — the yarn is Socks That Rock Lightweight, colorway: Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Pattern is called Intrepid Traveler, but the original is cuff down. I’m using the stitch pattern from the Intrepid Traveler pattern, but did it toe-up and used Cat Bordhi’s Riverbed Architecture for the “shape” of the sock. Sock club is not inexpensive, and if you want just this particular yarn or pattern, you’ll have to wait until next year…. https://sockclub.bluemoonfiberarts.com/)

And you thought MY feet were big…

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Suzanne

Flying to New Jersey and hanging out with my sister and her family made for lots of knitting time. My flag striped socks got finished. Aren’t they great? I love them. Although, I didn’t realize until I took these pictures that the legs aren’t quite the same length. Sheesh. Oh well. Close enough.

I knew I’d finish the 2nd sock, so I took plenty of backup knitting, so I would have choices, and my choice was to start a pair of socks for my sweetheart on Valentine’s Day.

Dude’s got big feet.

I’m working on the first heel, and yes: that’s how much knitting I have been able to do since Monday. I have felt that my knitting speed had recently increased to a point where I felt like I could make socks for a size 14 foot and feel like I was knitting for eternity…

Unfortunately, I had plenty of knitting time yesterday: I spent many hours in an airport, although, thankfully, not as many as was threatened. My 12:15 flight out of Chicago got canceled, thanks to terrible visibility in Cedar Rapids. I found this out at 11AM when I landed, and was headed towards my next gate. There were tears.

There were even more tears when I was informed that I was confirmed on a flight leaving at 9:50PM, but was on stand-by for earlier flights. Thankfully (thankfully!!!) I was the last lucky person to sneak onto a 3:15 flight. Which they then said was going to be a 5:15 flight, but which miraculously turned into a 3:45 flight.

The most miraculous thing was that my checked luggage was actually on the plane with me, too.

See, I packed my purse in my luggage, since I didn’t need it on the plane — I just threw my wallet into my carry-on bag.

Only, it didn’t occur to me that my CAR KEYS were in my purse.

!!!!!!

Note to self: DO NOT PACK YOUR CAR KEYS IN YOUR CHECKED LUGGAGE EVER AGAIN. Next time, you probably won’t be so lucky.

Speaking of lucky: I was pretty lucky to get to hang out with my 3-year-old niece and 5-year-old nephew for a few days. I was especially lucky that they shared their cold with me. (That might have had an impact on how many tears there were yesterday at the airport: spending the day stuck in an airport with a cold wasn’t high on my list of Fun Things To Do…)

One of the things I got to do was go visit a yarn store (like I need more yarn, right?) and now, between that and the sock club I signed up for…I have yarn for my next THREE pairs of socks. (I tried to get pictures of the yarn but none of them turned out. Too blurry. I’ll try again in better light tomorrow…)

Oh, and I have two socks in progress (from different pairs). I’d better go get knitting.

I’m thinking maybe Mark’s red socks need to be shorty socks, don’t you?

Knitting for small people

Posted on February 5, 2011 by Suzanne

I was sick earlier in the month, and I spent a ridiculous number of days in bed watching Grey’s Anatomy and knitting. It was all I was capable of doing. I’d get up and try to be human, and then shortly thereafter I’d find myself wandering back to bed. It was all upper respiratory, and it wiped me right out. I kept thinking that I was being very unproductive, but in reality: I got a lot (a LOT!) of knitting done:

This is not an accurate representation of the color, it is a much prettier purple. This dress is Hannah’s, it was for her birthday. It was DONE on her birthday, however she didn’t receive it until this week. I’m happy to report that it does actually FIT, which seems like a miracle, since I was winging it, based on measurements my sister sent me. It matches the dress that I made for the knitted mouse doll that my Mom made for her. I hope to share a picture of the girl and her mouse and all of their knitted apparel soon, I’m waiting for my sister to get out their good camera, and for the girl to actually cooperate.

(The pattern I used is Cali Cargo Dress, I modified the neck and the hemline to make them match the doll dress).

Next up, a diaper cover for the littlest niece (who is, scarily enough, approaching her 1st birthday awfully fast…), who wears cloth diapers and needs cute knitted wool diaper covers:

How cute is that??? I even broke out the crochet hook and dragged some crochet skillz out of the back of my brain for the edging on the ruffle. This picture is prior to the addition of some ribbing on the leg openings. I’m a little nervous about the fit on this, as well, and hope it’s close. It knitted up pretty quickly, so once we get a verdict on fit, the pattern I used has a gazillion variations of skirts for the outside, and I think I’ll need to make some more of these adorable things!

There was also a pair of mittens for Mark in amongst all of that knitting for small people. I forgot to take a picture before he took possession, and I can’t find them at the moment, he hid them from me. At least I hope they are hidden. He better not have lost them! Not that he would. His children, on the other hand? I wouldn’t put it past them. A lot of my mental energy lately has been sucked up by dealing with pre-teen nonsense. At the end of the day, my children are good kids. I know this. But in the middle of the day when I’ve asked them a thousand times to do something and they look at me like I am speaking in tongues and have horns sprouting from my head, it’s probably no surprise that I like and need knitting so much lately.

Knitting doesn’t talk back and it does what I tell it to do. And it turns into beautiful, useful objects. My 11 year old children are not proving to be very useful at the moment.

Must make with the stripes

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Suzanne

Two things of note here: the awesome sock blocker that Mom gave me for Christmas (it has cherries!) and the yarn. You’d think after the first repeat of stripes it wouldn’t be so thrilling to see the stripes appear, like freaking MAGIC, but I’m obsessed. I need to MAKE MORE stripes. Because the stripes are AMAZING.

I’ve had this yarn for awhile, and even got part of a foot done awhile back, but wasn’t pleased with how it was going. And the yarn is expensive enough (and I love it SO much), I wanted to be really sure about the sock I made from it. Many people might just make a plain vanilla sock out of a self-striping yarn, but to counteract the fact that I have the attention span of a gnat sometimes, I needed it to have something with a little bit of pattern-y interest, thus the cables (there’s is a matching one on the other side). The pattern has a different heel architecture than I’ve encountered before: instead of increasing along the sole for the gusset, you actually knit a flat flap on the BOTTOM of the heel. It looks really nice (no holes!) and seems to fit pretty well.

And now, I have to go take the boys to school (yippee! after 3 snow days I’m happy to get rid of them!) and then I might have to make another stripe or 4.

Try to stay warm

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Suzanne

I have Reynaud’s Syndrome (well, it’s self-diagnosed, based on the fact that my Mom has it, and my symptoms match the syndrome perfectly). We keep our house coolish (63!), but I wear lots of layers, and always have shoes and socks on in the house, but I can’t predict when my fingers and are toes are going to overreact to the cold and I wind up with blocks of ice for appendages. I have read that it can also be stress related, so..there’s that…I’ve also read that some people say that it means they are allergic to the cold: which made me giggle, because…yeah, sounds good to me…I must be allergic to the cold, and moving someplace warm is going to be my only option, right?

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