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?

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.

I have been sneezing all day long.  Since I’m pretty sure there isn’t any rogue ragweed around, I think that means that I’ve caught the crud and by tomorrow morning I’ll be on my deathbed.

At least I’ll have cute socks on.

These are my Absinthe socks, I’ve shown them before, but I just got a brand-new pair of Mary Janes last night.

My sister is probably cringing in horror at my fashion sense, but I think I’m cute, and that’s all that matters.

I totally wore this combo to church today.  Black pants, black Mary Janes and LIME GREEN socks.  I was wearing a black shirt, too.

I was showing my socks off to a friend, who is also a knitter, but she’s a more practical knitter.  She doesn’t understand making socks.  She actually said “Those are great, but why would you go to all that work for a pair of socks?”  I think her implication is that no one really notices your socks.

HELLO???  I’m wearing black pants, black Mary Janes and LIME GREEN socks.  I’m pretty sure people noticed.

Maybe they’ll remember me for my keen fashion sense, what with the lime green socks and all, when I’m gone.  You know, since I’m probably catching the plague and going to die soon.