AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

Let them make socks!

I've been researching. It is a long and hard process to make a flawless sock for a sockpal. It is a rigorous and unending search for perfection in a pattern that equals the average woman's foot (minus some variations for sizing). I don't want to do my normal socks (normal is either 2-1 rib or 3-1 rib all the way down the foot until the toe shaping, stopping at the bottom of the foot). I want to do something new that will actually stretch my abilities. Something that will be fun to wear and fun to make and not ever look like something they could have bought in a store. Something fancy. Something with maybe a little sparkle. Something like these.

Concertina lace socks
Beaded swirl socks

Elegant socks. Gorgeous colors. A little sparkle? I think I need to look at the email again and see if there is a clue. Oh, sock pal, my sock pal. Which would you like better!

Sometimes you just have a week...

Really. Nothing this week has gone right. It started shortly before the Superbowl party and it still feels like a Monday (though my calendar tells me it it Wednesday). When I am really stressed I just can't really knit. I start working on something and get distracted. Or I start off distracted and never get started on the knitting. The Knitting Olympics start on Friday. Friday I have both game and training session 2 at Au Chocolat.

I am working at Au Chocolat Monday and Tuesday to help with the Valentine's Day rush. It looks like it will be fun, and the training has been fun, but it does cut into my prime days of olympic style knitting. Heck. I haven't even pulled the yarn out of the drawer and checked to make sure that I still had enough and that I have the right sized needles to play with. Maybe tonight I will feel better and will be able to at least review this instead of stringing beads onto black Cashsoft. Heck, maybe I will even do the right thing and finish my socks for Dulaan (which are now bitterly complaining about the attention I have been paying to the Turtleneck shrug for my cold office).

I think after the Olympics I am going to take a breather. A nice restful time, a little break, and just vegetate for a few days before going to Intercon! Intercon is a gaming/LARPing convention, and I am in a game where I have to sing from beginning to end. I am ordering materials to make my costumes now, and it will be the first sewing I have done in over a year. *shudder*

Feep!

I brought in my Feeping Creature today.

Meet the Snootasaur. Imagine him sitting on my computer at work, one eye staring at me and the other staring at the Happy Bunny figurine. He looks at me and my work and goes, "Feep, Fweep, Feeep!"

(and having looked at the others offered by the artist, I now want to make my own. I want to see my desk covered by hundreds of these little creatures.)

Silly waving

I'm waving at my sock pal. Hello, sock pal! I hope you get cool socks. I am going to start knitting cool socks for my own sock pal soon (I've been researching great yarns this afternoon between cataloging and processing books, exciting, non?).

I'm sorry that my blog doesn't really have any pictures. I moved it from Blogger-based to Movable Type, and there are quite a few holes that I haven't sat down yet and fixed. But I promise that I will do some cleaning up soon, making everything look really nice and clean and full of pictures. Do you like pictures? I hope you don't mind that my pictures are kind of the blurry and look like they were taken by the cat variety. Yes, I have a cat. Her name is Saru-chan, and she is our little monkey.

I am sure that by now you have gotten the size information and the general preferences, but really. I just want you to have fun, knowing that I will love whatever you make. Surprise handmade things are the best!

SockapalOOOza

I didn't have an email last night as I left work, and that was OK.

I didn't check my email last night, and that was fine.

I got into work, parked myself in front of my email. Bing! You have a sock pal. I have been reading their blog (because isn't that something one should do), and figuring out what is a good thing and an out of their mind thing for this person. Obviously my current socks are just a bad idea for this lovely lady, but that's OK. They aren't really right for me either. Thus, they are now birds, now planes...

Fine. I'll stop my lameness. I knit these socks for Dulaan. They are finely crafted with an incorrectly Kitchenered toe, but a correctly Kitchenered heel. They look fine for a first attempt at an afterthought heel, and I will do something interesting with the remaining yarn. I think I even know what I want to do with it (though I won't know for certain until I finish the Dulaan socks).

These Dulaan socks bring me to a total of ?? items (I think six) for the 2006 Dulaan.

Insulating fabrics

I have a number of knitting projects that I should finish before February 10th (start of knitting olympics). Most of these are to keep me in new clothes and warm me up, but as important as it is to finish projects some of them are becoming overwhelmingly necessary to complete.

Things to complete and soon:
Turtleneck shrug #2, black Cestari.
Scoop It, red Silky Wool.

I fear the Scoop It is going to be knit and knit and ripped and ripped. Then I will rip some more. But I am going to try to finish it the wrong way first (aka, no real gauge swatch, seeing what happens with fit), because this is something I actually do want to do the hard way.

I need to finish the turtleneck shrug. Most of my clothing is short sleeved. I am not sure that anyone really knows (or knows me well enough to notice sans hubby), but I have lost over 40 pounds. That is a lot of insualation and my hands and arms keep getting cold now. I am shivering in the back room, wishing I had finished the shrug and brought it to work for my emergency cold tech room wear. What else do you wear in a cold office?