Doin' the happy dance!

I finished the second Thuja sock just before the clock struck twelve and I turned into a pumpkin last night. That last stretch was a little hard - I was falling asleep and had to keep getting up and walking around a bit, going to the kitchen and snacking on Olympic energy foods (yogurt-covered pretzels and chocolate, mmmm); and my hands finally started to ache (I'm surprised that they didn't become sore much earlier in the day, but I'm thankful that they waited until I was nearly done!). No matter - I stayed awake past my bedtime, I got them done, I crossed the finish line. On time. I can't believe how good that feels, especially because for a few days there, I really didn't think I was going to finish. And of course finishing my first dpn project and my first socks ain't so bad, either.

Would I do the Knitting Olympics again? I don't know. It was fun to think of all the other people in this giant KAL, but I think I might be happier cheering from the sidelines next time.

Here's another picture of the socks on my feet - they're way too big for me, but I had to put them on, anyway (in the picture, the left one looks shorter than the right in the leg - they're actually the same size):

And another picture, this time of the ugly gusset holes on the second sock. I'm not sure why that happened, or how to fix it (if it's fixable?), or how to prevent it from happening again. Anyone?


One more - this is the first sock as a ladies size 5. Kind of cute, wasn't it?

Also, you might have noticed the ugly concrete background in the shot of the socks on my feet. That's because my husband ripped up our carpet in our hallway and our livingroom last night. He spent most of the day yesterday pulling up tile and chipping off grout in our entryway - no easy job. He's putting in Dupont flooring today - that stuff that just clicks together, and looks like hardwood. This is also why I have to go get ready to leave our house for the rest of the day - baby and I will go visiting and shopping, and when we come home, there should be a new, beautiful floor. So exciting! I'd show you the fifteen foot crack we found in our foundation that went from our front door to the wall in the livingroom, and that is wide enough to fit at least four quarters into, but who really wants to see a picture of my crack? (I know, I know... Bad Pun Police will be after me now...)

Unsportswomanlike Conduct.

I am maybe 3/4 of the way through my pair of Thuja socks, thanks to knitting every chance I can during the last 24 hours. I would have been further along, except for that I inadvertently misread the chart in Sensational Knitted Socks and made a ladies' size 5 rather than a men's 10 1/2. Wouldn't have happened if I would have taken the time to read the chart a little more carefully - the information I needed was actually in the next column over. I'm smarter than this, really I am. Anyway. I realized my mistake after I'd kitchener stitched that bad boy shut, and woven in all ends. Another little display of my stupidity, since it was only obvious looking at the thing that it wasn't long enough. Even more obvious when my husband stretched it over his size 9 foot. My state of denial was then, irrevocably, shattered.

My husband said, "Hope you have a friend who wears a size 5." Uh, no. After sitting and fuming for a few minutes, I decided that I may as well try to pick it apart, frog, and reknit it to the correct length. And so I did. And I was able to get back to just before the toe, stitches all picked up and ready to go, in about an hour. That might seem like a long time, but for a new knitter who has never knit a sock, nevermind had to frog one, it was pret-ty scary, so I went slow.

But the worst part? You'd think I'd be happy with my success at salvaging the project. Ohhh, no. I was irritated with myself because I lost time that evening reknitting the sock, instead of starting the other one, and I considered the set back fatal. So, I went and whined on Yarn Harlot's site about how I goofed and had to reknit and lost all kinds of time and can't we have silver and bronze medals too so I won't feel so bad about not finishing???

Yeah. And there are no takebacks on blog comments, so when I wanted to eat my words and myself for having spouted them onto her blog, I couldn't. It was an embarrassing post in a number of ways, and I can only hope that it got lost in the other 600 comments: embarrassing because she's trying to knit a freaking sweater, in two weeks, with color, and charts, and steeking, and what look like fairly small needles, and I'm crying about a sock, and an easy one as far as sock patterns go; because who am I to think that my little whine is actually going to have Stephanie, who doesn't even know me, saying, "oh, okay, poor thing. Here, let me change the rules for you"; because there it is, nailed to her website for eternity, for the world to see what I crybaby I was being, if anyone is bored enough to actually read through all the comments.

And now you know, too. But, okay. It was a pathetic moment for me. One of many in my life, and I'm sure not the last, even though I would love for it to be. It's not really that bad, anyway, right?

Anyhow, that's my little Olympic update, and I even have a picture of the sock when it was a size 5 that I can post later. Right now, I gotta go knit.

Sadistic dpn bracelet.

This is my progress as of last night on my Knitting Olympics Thuja socks. I'm a bit further on now, by maybe an inch and a half. It's my first time using dpns, and once I got past starting over three times, I sort of got the hang of it - although I'm still dealing with uneven stitches with the seed stitch ribbing in some places. I'm itching to get to the heel, where it should get really interesting. If it comes out lousy, well, I hope the other sock is equally bad so they will match! They are a present for my dad, after all, and I either want to give him two socks that suck or two socks that rock - not one of each.

Also? Thanks to Whit Larson of the About Time podcast for inviting me to be on Team Dpn! (Does this mean I can't be on Team Merlot, now? Well, can I still drink Merlot, at least?)

Oh! How could I forget? Happy Valentine's Day!

Hello Knitty Pillbox Hat

Sittin' pretty, now that my little knitting slump is over. I've neglected the blog for a couple of weeks because, well, all I would have done is b*tch about the you-know-what scarf anyway. I had decided that dang it, I am going to get that thing done before summer, and more importantly, before the Knitting Olympics start, if it kills me. I was determined. I was diligent. I was excruciatingly bored.

I finally succumbed to the temptation for some immediate gratification (hereafter called IG). Anyone who has had a project that has morphed into something akin to punishment or work understands the glory, the satisfaction, the ahhhhh of an IG project. It's like chocolate. Or wine. Or other less mentionable things. It might not get you any closer to your goal, but it does something to rejuvenate your spirit, thereby making it possible to continue rather than chuck everything into a closet to wait for the next decade.

So, my IG project was a little cutie called The Pillbox Hat from Hello Knitty. The fact that I had the yarn for this was due to yet another case of the color not being what I expected when I ordered from the internet. I had ordered the Cascade Magnum from Hello Knitty in Highland Green. On my screen, it looks like a mossy or sagey green. When it arrived, I discovered what I like to term Jungle Monkey Green. I don't know why. It just reminds me of monkeys somehow. In the jungle. The problem was that the color was too perfect for the intended project: the Elf Cap from Handknit Holidays. It was going to be for my husband, who said, "You choose the color. Surprise me" (I know the picture shows it modeled on girls, but there's a picture in the book that shows that can be equally fetching on men. Trust me. It's a cool hat.). I know he loves blue, but I thought I'd get a nice green because a) he already has a blue hat and b) it was $2 cheaper to get the green from Hello Knitty. In retrospect, it seems really dumb to have not gotten blue because I'd save a whopping TWO DOLLARS, but at the time it made the idea of paying so much for one skein of yarn AND the two pairs of needles that I didn't already have, a little easier to swallow.

So, done in green, this particular hat would have made my husband look like... an elf. It's the exact color that you would imagine Santa's elves would wear. That's why it's too perfect for this hat: my husband would prefer not to resemble an elf that closely. I don't blame him. It's one thing to dig on their style. It's another thing to have little kids running up to you asking you if the presents are almost done yet.

Since I couldn't use the yarn for the elf cap, it joined the rest of the stash to take up lots of room and to wait for another project. It's a nice, bulky, soft, one-ply wool yarn, and I was determined to use it for something else rather than send it back (more stupidity - would rather keep the ugly monkey yarn than pay for return shipping), but it waited for a while, because I still didn't love the color. On a whim one evening, I searched the internet for projects that might use this yarn, and... duh. Was pointed right back to Hello Knitty, where there are at least two hat patterns available in pdf format for $3 each. The Chunky Hat would be great because I had all the supplies at the ready, no further purchases required. But, I couldn't see that hat in that color. I loved the Pillbox hat, but didn't have the Cascade 220 to go with it. The nice thing about the Pillbox, though, would be that I could possibly tone down the monkiness of the Highland Green by mixing it with another color of worsted weight yarn.

Finally, my solution was to go to Michael's and purchase Lion Brand Lion Suede in teal. Mostly because I didn't want to make the 1/2 hour drive to the only yarn store in the vicinity that carries Cascade 220, only to possibly find out they didn't have a suitable color anyway. I didn't want to spend much more, so I cheaped out again.

Luckily, it was a good choice this time. The Lion Suede doesn't, in my opinion, really resemble suede at all, but is more like a worsted weight chenille. It does give a nice touch of texture in random splotches on the hat, giving it just enough blue to transform the color from Jungle Monkey Green to... Swamp Witch Green. That doesn't sound much better, but when I think "swamp witch," I think seductive, mysterious mixes of dark waters. So there it is.

The great thing about this hat? It took a very short amount of time. I made it over the course of two evenings, and had it not been for the fact that I had to put it down repeatedly to do my Mommy job, I could have gotten it done in one. There's the ahhhhh. IG. And it's a really cute hat; I love the way it came out, and as my first hat, it will probably never be tossed out.

The unfortunate thing about this hat? Well, I love hats, but hats do not love me. It's a proven fact, proven by the countless hats I have tried on and that have never looked quite right on me. This one is no exception. The model on the website? She looks adorable. Me? Not so much. I look like I'm wearing a lampshade. I do have to say that my son looks sweet in it, though. Will I learn my lesson and not make any more hats? Mmmm... not likely. I have reconciled myself to the fact that I am a hat girl that can't wear hats, so it's okay. I'll wear it around the house on chilly days. I'll make more adorable hats that will have the same around -the-house -only fate.

The bad thing about this hat? Well, about this pattern. Those k2tog and worse, k3tog decreases are a b*tch with a yarn this thick. My hands were seriously sore after all was said and done. My size #15 16" circular Clover bamboo needles have gouge marks in them. I did discover a few tricks by the end, which I pass on to you:

1. I found it helpful to slip the three loops to be knitted together off of the size 15 needle and onto a size nine straight needle.

2. I don't know if I can explain this properly, but I slipped the right needle into the three stitches purl-wise, which allowed me to then put my thumb through them knit-wise and kept it there to open them up, and that helped to be able to wedge the size 15 needle through them.

3. I twisted the two yarns together as tightly as I could before wrapping them around the needle.

4. I pushed really hard to get through those stitches.

5. If I split the yarn (and it's easily split), I went ahead and finished the stitch and then rectified the split problem. There was almost no way to not split while doing a k3tog, even with the two yarns twisted together. As long as you fix it, I don't think it hurts the yarn one bit.