but I lost it. I hate it when that happens, because I sure could use something to make me look clever.

Upon blocking of Mother’s sock, the stretched out cuff did in fact shrink back to something that looks less annoying. There was much happiness in my world when I discovered that. I’m now really hopeful that I won’t need to knit three socks. (I’m also really, really hopeful that I will be able to make progress on the second sock before the seventh attempt, but I’m trying not to think about it too much, in a desire not to borrow trouble.) I have not yet started the second sock, because I’m just not up for it yet, and I have many, many other things to keep my attention.

The first of those other things is new goodies! I got some (well, okay, most — not such a patient person, I am) of my birthday presents early. (This is a really good think, because it’s keeping me from dwelling on the fact that I am about to turn 30, which I really truly was looking forward to until this month, when it all the sudden became NEXT MONTH that I’m turning 30, and I’m having a wee bit of anxiety about that.) First, I got an iPod. I’m really little girl giddy over this one — I like little gadgets, and I like music, and I don’t listen to it near enough anymore. So having an iPod is a fabulous thing for me.

Secondly (and much more interestingly, most likely, to anyone who happens to be reading a knitting blog, is knitting supplies. The most exciting of those is a set of Denise needles!!! I’ve been wanting these for soooo very long. I have already used them to start a new project, and so far I am completely adoring them. I can’t bel.ieve I put off getting them, for any reason — they’d have saved me a LOT of money that I spent on other needles. I also got a small skein of yarn to make a Sophie bag to try my hand at felting. I’ve been wanting to do it for a while, and thought this would be a good project to start with. Finally, I got a very large hank of black(ish) laceewight 100% merino yarn, to make myself a lacy shawl. (There are 2400 yds in the hank, so maybe even a shawl and something else.) This is so exciting to me!

I’m a little flummoxed by the black yarn, though. Hard to imagine that I’m going to turn this:

into something. (Of course, I always think that, and the magic always happens, so . . . ) The yarn is a variety of depths of black — it almost look like it’s been faded from sun exposure (it was on clearance at the yarn store), which I actually like because I like the variety in color. It’s very yummy yarn. I’m a little flummoxed by it, though, because there’s so much of it, and I don’t have a ball winder (yet), and I can’t find an end, in spite of literally hours of searching for it. So it looks like I’m going to be cutting it so I can just start winding from that spot. (Hopefully with a ball winder, but we’ll see.)

In other, non-birthday type news, I also got a nice little pick-me-up in the mail. Since I was participating in the Branching Out KAL, I was entered into a drawing to receive some yummy hand-dyed merino laceweight, and my name got drawn! So the lovely hostess April sent the yarn, and I have to say, it is utterly gorgeous. I forgot to take pictures of it before I wound it, when you could see all the lovely colors to their best advantage, but this is what it looked like after I wound it into balls (a mishap with a tangle led to two balls rather than just one):

I have utterly no idea what I’m going to do with this. If anyone has any suggestions, I’m all ears.

One last thing to share. I started (since I was avoiding starting Mother’s second sock) on Mother’s purse. (I’m still so glad that she decided this new purse was okay, and I could abandon the garter stitch project from hell purse.) This pattern is Via diagonale from Knitty. I’m finding it a fun and easy knit so far; I’m about 15 rows into it. It’s my first project on the Denises.

You’ll notice that it’s red and white. She did, in fact, see a picture of the bag and I did warn her of the possibility that she was going to end up with something that looked very much like a candy cane or a peppermint to carry on her arm. She was not dissuaded. It actually looks, so far, better than I expected. We’ll see.

I finished Mother’s sock. (And I’m trying hard not to think about right now the fact that “sock” is a singular noun, and that in order to be useful, it needs to be plural.) My very first sock ever completed! I’m so very, very excited. I tried it on (Mom and I have essentially the same size feet) and DAMN, I’m not real sure all the sudden about giving the thing away. (Of course I will, it’s for my MOM, but I’ll have another pair on the needles, all for me, faster than . . . well, I don’t know. Something fast.) Am I babbling? I think I might be.

By the way, I don’t think I’ve mentioned it since I moved my blog, so I should say that these are from the Retro Rib pattern in the winter 2004 Interweave Knits. I really, really like this pattern!

Okay, I’m thrilled. I’m thrilled with myself that I actually made a sock and it looks like it’s supposed to. But . . . there are a few things I don’t like so much. I don’t think I did a particularly good job on the grafting of the toe, and that bugs me. It doesn’t make it feel weird or anything; it just looks a wee bit wonky. This only my, ummm, third time grafting, so I’m hoping that gets better with practice. There also is a little bit of a ladder in the middle of the sole where N1 and N4 met. Not much of one (I didn’t even notice it while I was knitting), and again not something that I can feel when the sock is on, but it’s definitely there and that kind of bums me out a little bit.

Finally, the top of the sock feels too “stretched out” to me. It’s almost like at the cuff, instead of coming in a bit to hold the sock securely on the leg, it actually stretches out a little bit. This, I can feel while I’m wearing the sock, and it really, really, really bugs me. There are a couple of things that could explain why it happened, but I’m hoping really hard that it’s a simple explanation — I have really, really, really muscular (read: big) calves, and I tried the sock on quite a few times as I was knitting it. I’m hoping I may have simply stretched it out by doing that. If that’s the case, I’m hoping it will go back into place when I wash the sock. I’m not holding out any great hope that I will happen, but a little hope. Looking at it, though, it looks like for that cuff part I should have gone down a needle size, just to draw it in a wee bit. So I’m debating whether to do that with the other sock. I know this would make the socks not “matched” and that might make me even crazier than the stretched-ness. The thing is, the sock feels just a tiny bit loose on my leg — and I know my mom’s calves aren’t as big as mine, so I’m worried it’s just not going to fit her.

Ah well. I guess I will wash the sock and see what happens. If worst comes to worst (gulp) and I decide I just can’t live with it (sigh) — I can always knit three socks, right?

This is the pair of socks I’m knitting for my mom, as they were a week ago.

This is the pair of socks I’m knitting for my mom, as they were ten minutes ago:

An entire week and not one stitch added. That makes me want, a little bit, to scream and throw things. I feel like I’ve been working on these socks absolutely forever (and I probably should, since it was the seventh try that finally made it to the heel). I was really hoping to be finished with the first sock and on to the second by the end of this week.

But my real job intruded. (How dare that happen in the summer, I ask you?) I was at a week long conference, driving the hour and a quarter there and back every day. And they were giving me boatloads of homework every night (and I did enough of it that it intruded on my knitting time, which was plenty even if it wasn’t all, thankyouverymuch). How frustrating is that, I ask you?

The answer is: very very frustrating. I’m sure I got a lot out of the conference (if nothing else, many materials that I might never have otherwise gotten) and I’m glad that I went because I learned things I never would have guessed — but I’m really glad that it’s over and I can get back to my real life. (Heaven knows what I’m going to do once school starts and all my time is sucked away by the real world . . .)

But. Enough whining. I am actually very happy with how my sock was going before this latest in the long line of bumps in the road in life of the sock. Some more pictures:

I tried these on for the first time the day before I took these pictures. My son was in the room, and he freaked out. He kept telling me “Take those needles off, Mama. You have to! Take them off! Take the needles off!” Even after I took the sock off and was ready to start knitting again, he was crying and telling me to take the needles off. I feel so bad for him; when you’re two, it seems like the smallest change in your world can be the biggest ordeal. I suppose it has to do with not having your expectations met, and not yet having learned the flexibility to cope with that. (Come to think of it, that’s why some of the worst-behaved adults I know act the way they do — they think the world should comply with their expectations all the time, and can’t handle it when it doesn’t.) He’s learning, though. A little at a time, he’s learning.

I am really at a loss as to the next project I am going to cast on. I have lots of things in my head that I want to do (lots and lots of things!) and just can’t decide which to start next! I think I want to do a hat for BJ’s baby, and a hat or sweater or something for Rachel’s baby, and of course I’ve got the Via diagonale to do for Mom (I’m so happy that we gave up on the oh so boring garter stitch purse!), and I am absolutely dying to start a new lace project for me (a shawl of some sort; I haven’t decided which yet). I really want to make a pair of ankle socks from alison’s ankle sock pattern. I still have three balls of mohair blend from my secret pal waiting to be knit into something and I have no idea yet what that’s going to be. And that’s just the tip of the “things I want to do” iceberg. How on earth do I pick which comes next? I guess that the two baby projects should be pretty soon on the list, as those are somewhat under deadline (after all, those babies are in fact going to show up at some point). Ugh. Who knew this new hobby was going to come with so many difficult decisions to be made?

You might notice the time stamp on this post. What that time really means is “why the hell are you up so early, why aren’t you trying to go back to sleep, and if you can’t, why aren’t you knitting?” Having some pretty heavy duty sleep issues right now, and I’m tired enough that I’m kind of scared to knit because I don’t want to just have to rip out everything I do. So instead I’m surfing the web searching for things that I can add to my ever growing list of “wow, I’ve gotta knit that!” items. Like I need that! They should keep people like me away from the internet.

. . . but I am. Oh, how I am.

I unpinned my Branching Out. It seems the blocking “worked” to do what it was supposed to do, and I am utterly, completley in love with this scarf.

A little more detail:

I am IN LOVE with this scarf. (Oh, did I say that already?)

Okay, some details:

• Yarn: Kidsilk Haze in shade 581, one ball
• Needles: US size 8
• Pattern: Branching Out from Knitty, 35 pattern repeats
• Finished dimensions: 5″ wide; 85″ long

I am just thrilled with how this turned out; though it is a lot longer than I expected it to be, I think I’m going to be really happy with the length. If I just drape it around my shoulders, it falls to my knees on both sides. If I wrap it around my neck, with lots of “drape,” it still falls to my waist in front and back. I think it just about the perfect length and I just LOVE the way it looks. (Have I mentioned yet that I love it?) I’m glad I chose the KSH to work with; I enjoy how it feels on my neck and face, and the gauzy look the scarf has really works for me.

I am still pinching myself over the fact that I MADE this. I’m so proud of that. I know I’ve got to get over it, but it’s really giving me a kick right now when not much else in my world seems to be going the way I want it to.

I am playing with this because I’m seriously considering moving my blogs over to WordPress, on my own webspace. Before I fooled with all the uploading and figuring things out, though, I wanted to see how I like WP. Convenient that there’s this free service here to let me do that!

So, I finished my Branching Out and it’s blocking:

Click for larger image

Doesn’t it just look like it goes on forever? Pinned out, it’s 86″ long. That’s 35 repeats. Wow. Just — wow.

I did, while I was pinning it out, find a mistake in one of the repeats. It’s almost like I forgot half of a row or something. It’s not immediately obvious when you look at it, but I’m still just not really sure how I missed it while I was knitting. Usually I’m very good at catching my mistakes before I get far at all in my knitting.

Anyway, we’ll see how it comes out when it gets unpinned. I have high hopes.