Pathetic May

I completed only one pair of socks this month. That was less than a quarter of a mile toward my goal in the Lime & Violet Sock Marathon.

It wasn't just knitting. My Blogoversary was three or four days ago, and I just noticed. I was going to rearrange some things in the house at some point. I pulled out the vacuum cleaner and it has moved about 3 feet in 3 weeks. A box of things I was going to take to Goodwill has been in one spot so long, a cat decided it was a good sleeping spot. Sleeping might be part of the problem, because I haven't been doing that very well, either.

Since May is about to slink off for another year, I shall look forward. I declare June to be Just Do It month. My sock goal is one pair per week. I am going to get those things to Goodwill and finish tidying the house. Maybe I'll sleep more than 5 hours at a stretch. Maybe I'll find a job at long last. I'll start a new pair of socks tonight. First, I'll spray that suspicious-looking plant outside. I spent all of may wondering if it really was poison ivy. Whatever it is, it won't be around for much of June.

Lost Doll

barbie
Originally uploaded by Paula knits

Crawling forward

quiltshawl
Originally uploaded by Paula knits

The shawl's finally done. I've moved on to Cookie A's Twisted Flower socks. I'm using the Jonquil yarn from Lisa Souza that I got at Stitches South. So far, so good.

The quilt? It's from a learn to quilt class I took several years ago. Obviously I'm not obsessed enough with precision to get into quilting.

Stalled

The KnitMeter is only kind of correct. I've knitted but finished nothing so far this month.

There's the shawl I've been making out of the yarn I dyed. There was so much of it left over, I ripped out the border and did an extra repeat of the main pattern. When I got to the end, there wasn't enough yarn to finish the border. I think I know how I'll finish it, but just haven't had the heart to rip back to that point yet. Yarn with mohair in it does not want to be frogged.

Every sock that was in progress has either been completed or completely undone. I attempted to start a pair from Cookie A's book yesterday. I've apparently lost my ability to count, which is a particular disadvantage when doing any Cookie patterns.

I wanted to play with yarn and knitting seemed to be out, so I made a swift out of Tinkertoys. I ran into a few problems, but eventually got something that works okay. I'll take a picture next time I have some yarn to wind. It is silly looking, but functional.

Stay tuned to find out what I come up with next and if I actually get something on the KnitMeter for May.

Erlbacher in English!

Meg Swansen announced that Schoolhouse [Press] is working on an English translation of Überlieferte Strickmuster by Maria Erlbacher.

I spotted this on Ravelry a little while ago. It's wonderful news for anybody into twisted stitches. It's at the top of my Most Wanted list.

Happy Mail Day

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Originally uploaded by Paula knits

Mmmmmalabrigo sock in Abril (purple) and Solis (green). The Opal yarn is from the Harry Potter und der Halfblut-Prinz series and the colorway is Lupin. It's more practical than in might seem. I can choose a sock pattern inspired by Harry Potter or Monty Python.

Heh heh heh.

Vacation from knitting

I'm going through a phase where I've been frogging more than I've been knitting. Well, maybe exactly the same amount. I've decided to take a little vacation from it and do some other things for a while.

I used to do a lot of counted cross-stitch. I was excited to find that Anna of Mochimochiland is doing a free chart of her Stackable Cats. The cats were originally a knitting pattern for a stack of three cats.

I was cleaning up and found a pile of smallish pieces that I've never gotten around to doing anything with. In the same cleaning frenzy, I located a really nice box that was designed for some needlework to be put in the top. One of my pieces was the exact right size for the box.
It was made from a kit I bought in Paris a few years ago. It's a reminder of having seen the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries.

I was browsing Knitting Daily recently and happened upon a Pincushion to make in Irish Crochet. so I tried it.

Note to Self

There is no reason to knit ugly socks. The next time you think socks are coming out particularly grotesque, frog immediately and knit something else.

I got all the way to the afterthought heel on these before I came to the ugly conclusion. D'oh!

Naughty Friday

It started out fairly well. I had a couple of errands to run plus I wanted to get a copy of the new knit.1. I know I'm not in their demographic, but even a pre-geezer can want more groovy sock patterns. I tried Cast-On Cottage. They didn't have it. I figured, what the heck, I'm not that far from Borders, I'll try there. No luck. Since I'd driven all that way, I decided to pick up a copy of my favorite British knit magazine, Simply Knitting. It wasn't too naughty to do that. I hadn't gotten a copy for months.

The next shopping center down the road had a Michaels, so I tried there. No luck. I picked up some crochet cotton for a little pincushion pattern I'd been wanting to try. It wasn't too naughty to do that.

Since it was going to be a drive to get anyplace from there, I decided to head to Woodstock and try The Whole Nine Yarns. No luck. They used to carry knit.1 but they don't now. I was not remotely naughty and did not buy anything.

I decided to take the scenic route back (Arnold Mill instead of the dreaded Hwy. 92). Since I would end up within a mile of Only Ewe and Cotton Too, I headed there. No luck. That's where my self-control started to break down. I picked up this:
Looks a little like Noro sock yarn, doesn't it? The minute I touched it, though, I knew it was something else. Instead of having my fingers fall off from the roughness, it was soft. It's a superwash/nylon blend. It is called Poems Sock from a company called Wisdom Yarns. It was relatively inexpensive, so I bought it. It was a little naughty, but not horribly so.

Then I got home. My search for the magazine led me to Webs. The shipping on the magazine was less than the cost of gasoline in continuing to hunt for it locally. However, it nearly doubled the magazine's cost. I figured that I could offset it a little by buying a little yarn. That's when naughtiness took over. Webs has these really tempting discounts. Lime & Violet listeners may remember Miss Violet buying yarn for extra sweaters because it was like getting it for free. I fell into a similar, though smaller scale, trap. I've got a ball of Opal's Harry Potter yarn and two skeins of Malabrigo sock on the way with the magazine.

I'll be in the corner with my dunce cap and the fourth Sock Madness sock.