Jaywalcaholics Anonymous

Yeah, I'm joining the group. Dang, what is UP with this pattern? I don't know what it is.

Anyway, so uh... I got to go out-and-about the other afternoon, Caz stayed home with the kids. Was really nice. Went out to lunch with a friend, then did a bit of wandering on my own. Wound up finally getting inside an elusive LYS that I've only been searching for for like, a year. The irony there being that it used to be located about two blocks from where I used to work, back before I picked up knitting. Walked past the place dozens of times, never gave it a second thought. Then once I learned how to knit and thought, "Hey, I'll go to that place near the hospital!" Well, it was no longer there. And the new address listed for it is misleading - I don't doubt its address is what it is, but it's not actually visible from that street. I found it by accident about a month ago while driving the kids around for a car-nap, and finally made it inside the other day.

Pretty nice place. Some fun yarns I've never gotten to fondle before (OMG Lorna's Laces is delicious! I knew people liked it and all, but DAYAMN!), a nice woman working there who seemed pretty happy to have some company (I don't think I'm the only one who has trouble finding this place).

Turned out they were having a (diabolical) 20% off sale. I kept reminding myself that I didn't want to have to try to get my boys to stay put when we slept in boxes under a bridge, so I was well behaved. However, they did have thick-ish sock yarn, so... I went for that. And then yesterday, I cast on for my FINAL attempt at Jaywalker. If this doesn't work... I'm out. I give up. I will admit defeat. but not just yet....


And just for you, Meg, here's the Sockotta sock I'm working on:

That's a 3x1 seed stitch rib with an extra repeat in the heel flap, just because I think I'll like the little bit of extra length there. Just finished the gusset.

Crap! Crap! Dammit! Sonuva....!

Well, that's it. I'm not playing games with this any more. Jaywalker? You're not on my Buddy List. I'm going to give you one more chance once I find some nice near-sport-weight sock yarn to use, but since all I've got in my stash currently is fingering weight? Jaywalker, you're off The Island. I love you, I do-y-do, but you. Just. Won't. FIT. Yer makin' me nuts.

Also? Adding to the general Grrr-ishness of my mood tonight - I watched Lost (tape recorded so I could watch Bones "live", since Fox hates me and puts all my favorite Fox shows opposite other really great shows that will trounce them to paste in the ratings) while I frogged my latest stab at Jaywalker.

Man. I haven't been so teed off at a show since Season 7 of Buffy, when Buffy got all high-and-mighty at Faith about "That's because, Faith, you're a murderer!" As if by that point the Summers Homestead hadn't turned into a halfway house for reformed and semi-reformed murderers anyway. I mean seriously, by the end, who hadn't killed someone else in that house? Dawn and Xander are all I can think of. The big difference between Faith and, say, Willow (flayed Warren then burned him alive), Anya (ex-vengeance demon), Spike (ex-vampire), Andrew (killed Jonathan), Giles (killed Ben, the poor med student who was the unwitting other half of Glory), and Buffy herself (killed how many vampires and demons - unless somehow they don't "count" at all, which would kinda mark Buffy a big fat hypocrite after her going off on Riley for "being a bigot" in Season 4, plus she killed Angel at the end of Season 2, even though he had his soul back and so was once again "good") was that Faith was actually trying to repay her "debt to society" for her crime. Which, also? Is the only one of those I can think of which was actually an accident.

Yeah. Anyway. Don't want to spoil Lost for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, hence the ranting about three-year-old episodes of Buffy, but man... I hate when a show gets all carried away with its own sanctimonious pissiness and forgets the characters it's actually dealing with.

And that, I think, is enough italics for one night. At least, let's hope.

Now I will go spritz down my frogged Jaywalker which Caz so thoughtfully hanked up for me, so that it can de-kink, and then I will contemplate the fractious Jaywalker again tomorrow. Also will contemplate frogging the other Jaywalker, which never did fit quite right, and which I've been loathe to frog because, well... look how pretty it is! It's so pretty!! Gnnngggg.

(Note to FemiKnit Mafia: I'm fishin', lady, can you tell? grin.)

I Hate Self-knowledge - or - Sad About Sockapaloooza

So all day yesterday, the hard-workin' Alison was taking signups for Sockapaloooza.

And all day yesterday, I hemmed and hawed, hawed and hemmed. I kept going back to her blog, staring at it for a bit, then going away. Once I even clicked on the link to the signup form, stared at it a long while, then went away again. Finally, with about 38 minutes to spare, I talked to a friend of mine, who told me what I knew already, but just needed to hear from another person to affirm that it was true.

So I didn't sign up.

Yeah, that's right. I didn't sign up.

Man, I wanted to. I mean, I saw Alison's initial post about signups coming up and was all, "ooh ooh ooh!" about it. And I've seen all the cool socks people have knitted for and received from their sock pals. I'd even started to think about some other coo little gifties I could chuck in the package for my sock pal. Dudes, I was Ex.Cit.Ed.

But then when it came time to sign up, and I looked at Alison's understandably stern reminder that signing up meant making a serious commitment to knitting a pair of socks, and keeping Alison updated on your progress and I realized that this... this was a situation spectacularly ideal for turning me into a raging butthead. And I've been trying to cut back on turning into a butthead these days.

See, the problem is, I do fine doing stuff when nobody knows I'm going to do it. But when I commit to something - when there's someone out there, even a very dear friend or a beloved nephew (to name two people suffering from my jackassery on this stuff right now), who is expecting something from me... oh, I just turn into a schmuck. For reasons unknown and undiscovered despite a decade of off-and-on therapy, I dig my heels in and refuse to come through. Why? No clue. It's just this idiotic, self-sabotaging thing I do. I've actually managed to get better, over the years - I used to just be completely awful about it, now I'm just really really bad.

Regardless, though - the fact that my nephew is still waiting for his Christmas hat and my best friend is still waiting for her Christmas present proves to me that I'm in no way ready to start participating in things like Sockapaloooza, no matter how much it's going to break my heart for the next three months to see all the other Cool Kids knitting away for their sock pals, all excited about yarn choices and patterns and all that good stuff. Even though when everyone else is receiving their sock pal socks in the mail, I'm going to be all, "Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms" because there won't be a pair of socks arriving in the mail for me.

It's just tough nuts for me, because I'm not going to set myself up to disappoint yet another person - this time a perfect stranger.

But man... I wish I didn't know myself this well, you know? Like... I wish I could just sign up, all excited and carefree, and then be all shocked and unaware when I go all WereJackass on the subject. Or even better, if I didn't even /know/ I'd turned into a WereJackass. If I could just go along, make the usual excuses as to how the world got in my way and it really "wasn't my fault!" and yadda yadda horsehockey.

But I can't. I do know myself this well, and so... sigh. No Sockapaloooza for me. I'll just have to enjoy it vicariously through everyone else's blogs. So, you know, take lots of pics for me, will ya? Thanks.

Pics and rumination

First, the pics:

If you'll recall, this is the yarn I'm using - dyed myself using Kool-Aid.



And here is the swatch I did, making sure I liked the fabric I got and see how pretty it is? I dunno - maybe it marks me a Child Of The '80s, but I really like it.


And here is a progress shot in the early days of Sock #1, when I first started to think, "Hmm. Maybe... maybe I should do this on US1s after all. This fabric really stretches out funny when I try to put it on."


And here.... here my friends is my testament to "You know, I bet if I just keep knitting it'll all turn out fine."

That's right. That's a completely finished sock. Lovely, isn't it?


In fact, if you wanna see some lovely, look at that half of the heel flap - isn't that the most absurdly gorgeous bit of heel flap you've ever seen?

I forgot to take a picture of the other half of the heel flap, which is entirely green. It's amazing. I'll have to take another picture of it before I frog it.

Yeah, you heard me. Frog it. Because while I love the sock, love the ridiculously gorgeous half-heel-flap, and really groove on how it turned out... when I put the damn thing on, I feel like The Hulk. Like one wrong move and I'm going to burst right out of the thing. I know I'm not, but... I just don't like it. It's not even that it feels all that tight - it's just that the fabric is too loose and stretches out too weird and all my lovely pooling goes kaput, and well... what's the point of that. Even with the gorgeous heel-flap. sigh.


Anyway. So now I'm working on the sock again, using 84 sts on US1 needles. So far it seems like it will fit just fine, and the fabric will annoy me less than the first sock does. I have, in case you're concerned, decided that if I'm iffy on the fabric again, I'm not going anywhere past the gusset. Not one bit. In which case, I'll probably start all over again, using 92 sts on US0s. Heaven help me.


And now... some pondering.

Have been contemplating my status in the blogiverse for a while now, and Cara's discussion of her blog really has me going.

See, I've got another blog out there on LiveJournal, which has primarily been "life" stuff, and then when I thought enough of my readers were getting tired of the knitting content, I figured I'd start a knit-blog. Except it hasn't really taken off. Like, I'm not posting to it nearly as much as I thought I would. And part of that is technical difficulties - getting pics from my camera to the computer is not as easy a process as I would like, though Caz is going to try to fix that for me sometime.

But the other part of it is, well... how do you compartmentalize your life?

This morning, we were having one of "those" mornings around here, and after Ben yanked the hallway gate down for the fourth time in a row, I decided it was time for a movie. So we chucked in "Finding Nemo", and the boys got distracted by that enough to stop trying to ransack the rest of the house, and so Caz laid down on the couch to nap a bit and I put my feet up in the recliner to knit a bit. (Toldja it was one of "those" mornings.)

Well, I'm sitting there knitting, and Henry decides to clamber onto the footrest and climb up to me. At first I was thinking he wanted to nurse, but no, he just wanted to sit by me. So I sat there in the chair, Henry happily sitting between my legs, and knitted. It was just a perfect lovely moment, and one of the first times I've been able to actually continue knitting with one of the kids in proximity - usually they're busy trying to grab the yarn or the fabric or poke at the needles or something.

So which blog do I put that in? It was a great moment, but well... it was knitting related, but it also had a lot to do with my "life" (as if knitting isn't life, but that's a ponder for another time).

I dunno. I think I need to figure out if I'm gonna fish or cut bait here. I even think I know which way it's gonna go (seeing as I just put a couple buttons up on the sidebar there - didja see? Huh? Huh? Didja?!), but... you know how it is.

Long time no update

Crap! The camera is in the kids' room and they're... not quite napping yet. Gnnngggg! In about another half-hour, if they still aren't asleep, I'm giving up. But until then... I gotta try. And I've only been meaning to put together an update for ages and well... yeah. Things happen.

So Jaywalker.

Yeah. Um... how come I never noticed that Cara's preferred yarn for Jaywalker, the really lovely Socks That Rock, is a whole shload thicker than the sock yarn I've been using? It wasn't until I Margene mentioned it that I really thought to take a look at it.

Gnnngggg. No wonder I've had gauge problems up the wazoo.

My yarn weighs about 3.5 ounces and measures 440 yds. STR weighs about 4.25 ounces and measures 325 yds.

I have not yet given up. I REFUSE to give up. However, I am regrouping. Which is too bad, because I really enjoy knitting the pattern. It's just the sock I've completed? Doesn't quite fit. And the second sock I started in another (even thinner) yarn? Really isn't going to fit.

In other news... I've decided I'm going to join Stephanie's 2006 Knitting Olympics! I'm going to try to break out of my self-imposed issue with knitting actual, you know, garments. I've done all kinds of increasingly complex accessories, and I'm feeling pretty darn confident on socks, but for some reason, the whole thing where a sweater is supposed to actually, you know, FIT it's intended recipient? Has had me on the ropes for ages.

So now I'm going to go for it. I figure the Knitting Olympics are an awesome chance for me to get so caught up in the promise of the thrill of victory that I just don't think about it too much. Still have not chosen a pattern or a yarn (have a few in stash which I hope will do nicely), but I know it will be a baby/toddler sweater. Either for one of my boys or for someone else's child, I don't know yet. But I'm working on it, and will get it figured out soon.

Otherwise, am continuing to knit along like crazy, I'm just not chronicling it well. Need to work on that. And get the pictures I've taken actually OFF the camera and onto the computer so I might share them with y'all.