Forward Motion

I hope Roy & Mark would approve.

In February, I started a pair of socks for Alex.  After knitting him the Opal Tree Frog socks on size 0s that took for-stinkin-ever (and probably don't fit him now, but I don't want to think about that), I thought it would make more sense to knit him socks out of DK weight yarn.  After all, he doesn't really wear them with shoes.  He wears them to sleep in and around the house on cold days.

I bought 2 skeins of Knit Picks Swish Superwash DK in olive green.  I knit two socks at a time and when I finished the heels, I noticed there was only a small amount of yarn left.  Like a tiny wad of yarn.  The skeins were 50 grams and I just figured that would be enough for a pair of socks.  I was incorrect.

Fortunately, I had some Swish DK in a brownish color.  Alex is not a stripey sock wearing kid, so I wanted to do something with the brown yarn that would give me a cuff, but not be stripey or boring.  He's a creative kid and so funny.  He's been working all year on a comic called "The Ninja Adventures of Roy & Mark".  Drawn on a large sketch pad using mostly stick figures, it's clever, detailed, and cute and we all look forward to the next issue.  Thus, this cuff seemed suitable:

Do not look too closely.  Just notice that they are stranded stick figures and then look away.  Because this photo shows the 4th time that I knit these suckers.  First time, my stranded knitting looked lovely and even and that sock did not fit over Bigfoot's my son's heel.  I went up a needle size and added a few stitches to the motif.  Still did not fit.  I went up two more needle sizes and added a whack more stitches and finally we got them on his foot.  And I was thoroughly sick of knitting little stick dudes.  By that point, neat stranding was abandoned in favor of just finishing a sock that would fit.

These were supposed to be a quick and simple project, one to take with me and knit on the go.  Ha and ha.  I did kind of create more of a fit problem by doing a slip stitch heel.  I thought it looked neat, but it did take away some stretch that we could have used.  I believe he's wearing a size 11 1/2 shoe now.  At age 12.

Note the rather floppy cuffs.  That's from increasing and increasing and increasing because by cracky, these socks will fit over those feet!  I'm not proud of these cuffs.  They are not my finest knitting.  I may run a bit of elastic thread through them later if they fall down too much.

Although this pair was a total headache, Alex likes them and is happy to have more warm socks that his mom knit for him.  Even though it's July in El Paso.  He is such a great kid.

Have a seat.

This weekend was supposed to be kind of a lay around, catch up on a few things, relaxing kind of weekend.  It's DH's last weekend on leave, although it's not like he really has to do any work or school for a few more weeks.  But he'll have to sign in and put on his uniform and stuff like that.  So we really wanted to just chill out this weekend. 

Then I went and checked Craiglist yesterday afternoon, like I've been doing several times a day ever since the movers unloaded our living room furniture off that truck.  They put it in our new living room and I thought, "Gah, I hate that furniture so much!"  I didn't realize how much I disliked it until I saw it in a new room.

The old sectional, (prettied up for selling on Craiglist):

Let me give you a brief history of our living room furniture.

First there was the dusty rose sofa set that DH had from his first marriage.  Dusty rose and ex-wife juju? That had to go and quick.

So I found the blue flowered sofa and loveseat that a co-worker of mine was selling.  She lived in the barracks and was getting out of the army.  She'd bought it from one of our other co-workers, so I have no idea how old it really was.

The loveseat went to the kids rooms when they were babies so I could snooze while they nursed at night.  My mom gave us a futon for the living room that had been my grandparents.  That was comfy to sleep on, but not so much to sit on.

We replaced the futon with a used sofa bed bought for $100.  It was quite firm.  Like something the Flintstones would have sat on.

For some reason, we traded that sofa bed for a different one that some guy DH knew had in his garage.  It was as attractive and well maintained as you would expect a garage sofa to be.  Every time we had someone over I felt like apologizing.  I used a variety of blankets as slipcovers, but at least we didn't worry about the kids eating on them.

We had the blue flowered love seat and the garage sofa for about 6 years until my mom gave us the sectional sofa that is pictured above.  They bought the neighbor's house after he died and it still had a lot of furniture in it and we are well known for our "accept all free furniture" policy.

The dead neighbor sectional wasn't so bad.  At least the pieces matched and it didn't look like it belonged in a garage.  But it was very green.  And the pieces would slide apart and holy crap I hated fixing those stupid pillows!  11 of them and they were always scattered all over. 

So I've been looking for new furniture.  But not new-new.  'Cause brand new furniture is stupidly expensive and then I'd be too afraid to actually sit on it.  For the last month, all people have been posting on the local Craigslist is super ugly or overpriced furniture.  Until yesterday.

Here's our new-but-not-new sectional:

DH is embarrassed that I took a photo of him napping, but I think it shows perfectly how comfortable the new sofa is.  That's the Soleil tank in progress in the bag on the ottoman.  (That's also the sum of the knitting content for this post.) 

I just love this furniture.  It looks grown-up, like furniture that real adults own.  But since it wasn't bought new for a small fortune, I won't freak out too greatly over normal use.  See, my son is eating ice cream on the sofa.  I better not catch any of them wiping their greasy popcorn fingers on it, though.

Hot enough?

Planning on any outdoor 4th of July activities in the sweltering heat?  The folks at ShoeboxBlog offer this:

Possible Responses to “Is It Hot Enough for You?”

by Mark

* Yes, but you’re not.

* This is nothing compared to what Hell will be like. You’ll see.

* It’s not as hot as it was in 'Nam. Let me tell you about it.

* Not now that your gelatinous body is blocking the sun.

* I just retreat to my heart where it’s always cold and lonely.

* It kind of reminds me of my native planet Volcanador.

* As an amateur arsonist, I’m used to it.

* It’s still not as bad as solitary confinement.

I love the ShoeboxBlog.

My family is laughing so loudly while watching Wipeout that I cannot think of a title.

I kind of want to share this really long story about how I'm trying to get a part to get our old junky Dell computer online wirelessly.  But not only would I bore you with the details, but I would also get myself all worked up with indignation and frustration again.  So I'll summarize by saying - USPS can find my house.  UPS can find my house.  FedEx can find my house.  Independent unnamed local couriers used by both Office Depot.com and Staples.com cannot find my house. 

Today, though, I have been promised by more than one person that TODAY is the DAY I'll get my package.  We'll see.

Edited this afternoon to add - package arrived today!  They weren't kidding about the local courier.  It was a grey pickup truck with no markings or anything, just some dude they handed my box to and told him to deliver it.  And...of course...it's the wrong part for the computer.

DH was looking at the Harbor Freight website last week and said to me, "Oh, here's something you need." 

And because I'm just such a sweet, nice wife, I snottily said, "I'm sure I don't."  I figured it was something expensive HE wanted.  Then I felt a little bad and possibly curious and went over to look at what was on his laptop.

"OH!"  I said.  "You're right!  I do need that!"

Then Harbor Freight didn't have one, so he found one on eBay and bought it for me.

A photo tent!  To take lovely pictures of yarn and knitting and stuff!

Don't squint, you'll get wrinkles.  I need a lot more practice taking pictures with the photo tent.  That's the start of my mom's Snake River socks in Cherry Tree Hill. 

We've been gone from Georgia for a month now.  I'm sure of this because last night I was up until quite late working on the end of the month accrual reports.  And I remembered doing last month's reports from the La Quinta in Midland, TX and hey, that's a month now since we began our new chapter.  Also, next time I move, I am absolutely taking a 2 week vacation from work.

Happily, on Sunday we drove by the swimming pool to see if there was an update on the broken water line.  The gate was lifted and it was open!  So of course it rained yesterday.  But I assured the kids we're going today even if it's chilly and they turn blue and shiver.  I'm looking forward to working on my mom's socks and Soleil and my tan while they swim.

The Shrrd. Rb. Sks.

As you can see, these socks have been abbreviated.

I fell out of love with this pair.  So much so that I looked at them a few days ago and thought, "I would rather garrotte myself with this yarn than make the cuffs for these."  I called them anklets and bound off.  I thought that the pattern rib would make a decent cuff, but doing some regular ribbing for even a few rows would have been better.  They look sort of sawed off there at the bind off.

Pattern - Shirred Rib Socks from More Sensational Knitted Socks

Needles - size 0, 2.00 mm circulars

Yarn - Perchance to Knit, colorway Pale Spring Rose

Method - toe up, two at a time, heel flap, magic loop

The reasons why I do not love these:

1.  The yarn looked prettier in the skein to me.  I thought it was beautiful when I first saw it, but knitted up it lost some appeal.

2.  They are awfully pastel. 

3.  I have no idea when I'd wear them or what I'd wear them with.  All my shoes are brown or black.

4.  They are a little too snug around the top of the foot.  Although this pattern has Ribbing right in the name, it's not particularly stretchy.  The P3togs and the M1 through the back loops pull taut the fabric.  It's kind of faux ribbing.  It's fibbing.

5.  I have had enough of P3tog and M1tbls for a while.  It's too much work for a less than spectacular effect.

6.  I was also using too long of a circular needle for the magic loop.  I was fighting the excess cord the whole time, continuing to annoy myself rather than go find a shorter one.

7.  Weirdly, this is another pair that did not pool quite the same on each sock.  See the darker pink stripes on the left sock?  And since they were done 2 at a time, I know it's not a tension thing.  I used one strand from the inside of the ball and one from the outside, so I suppose the colors were different at each end of the hank?  Mysterious.

These will go in the sock drawer and maybe Grace will grow into them.  Her feet have grown from a size 5 to a 7 1/2 in the last 2 months, so it might not take that long.  I'm not sorry I made them because they are sort of pretty and cute and the yarn was lovely to work with, but I'm glad they are done.

Mental Speed Bump

I've written several witty and entertaining posts in my head this week.  Oh, you'd have loved them.  It seems like the only time I have to sit down and transfer the posts from my head to the keyboard is after 10 p.m. and well, I guess my creativity shuts down around 8:15.

I also make drafts in Typepad, sometimes only with a few words or phrases to remind me of what I want to post.  So if you ever see a post that says something like "Toenails.  What I need from Harbor Freight.  Boxes.  7 pounds.", then you know I've accidently hit Post instead of Save as Draft.

I do need to share some disturbing news.  I have only unpacked one Ravalium sock.  The other is MIA.  I'm hoping I'll find it hidden away somewhere, but I've got a bad feeling about this pair.

To make matters worse, we went to the pool yesterday and found a notice:  "Pool Closed Due to Broken Water Line".  There goes several good hours of knitting time.  I wonder how long a broken water line takes to fix.  I can't even imagine the horror if it stays closed all summer.

And if bad things happen in threes, then hopefully I'm done.  Because my Christmas present is gone.  El Paso seems to have a fondness for some brutal speed bumps and they don't paint them so they take you by surprise as you rattle your teeth driving over them.  Apparently I hit one the wrong way and my beautiful trailer skein I was so proud of got whacked off.

But I started the Snake River socks for my mom in Cherry Tree Hill and that's a happy thing.

This weekend I'm planning to tirelessly dedicate myself to unpacking, organizing, and healthy eating.  We'll see how that goes.

Take one avocado and one spinning wheel....

Stick a chip in them, they're done!  And it's a good thing, too.  Here's how much yarn I have left.

As much as I appreciate being able to use every last bit of the skein, that was cutting it close.  I did end up undoing the bindoff of the 1st socks, ripping back 2 or 3 rows and using that bit of yarn to make the 2nd sock a tad longer.  That's why the bindoff looks a little loose on the right sock - because I was using the crinkly frogged yarn.

The Moving to El Paso Guacamole Socks.

Yarn - nummanumma Texas Toasty in colorway Guacamole

Needles - 2.75mm

Pattern - plain, soothing stockinette and a 3 x 2 rib

Method - toe up, magic loop, one at at time, heel flap

I love these socks.  They are comfy and squishy and green.  Did my tension change on the second sock?  The striping isn't exactly the same, even though I used the same needle.  Weird.

I also nearly burned myself to a crisp taking these photos outside today.  Wearing shorts and sitting on the pavement when it's 105 in El Paso?  Lesson learned, let me tell you.

I wish that the actual moving in was as done as these socks, but there are still boxes.  Every day or so I empty one, but it's usually because I've combined 2 half empty boxes and that's just fake progress.  Also, I cannot find the printer power cord.  This is aggravating, because it means I have to keep digging through boxes when I'd rather just leave them sealed and assume there's nothing important inside them.

And I'm just talking about the boxes the movers packed.  When we put the house up for sale, we packed up a dozen or so boxes of knick-knacks and whatever to make the house seem emptier.  Those boxes have been in storage for 3 months and are currently residing in the garage.  If I haven't needed them for the last 3 months, I'm not in any rush to unpack them now.

I plucked out a skein of Cherry Tree Hill that my mom likes to think about starting socks for a Christmas present for her.  The plan was to create something new for a pattern, but now I'm leaning toward using the Snake River pattern. 

I haven't decided what my next sock project for me will be.  The top choices right now are either a skein of drastically purple Duets, a vivid reddish Cider Moon, or the blindingly multicolored Wollmeise in Sultan.  I'm in the mood for something wildly colorful.  The Pale Spring Roses Shirred Rib socks are nearly done.  I just realized last night that I have issues with them, but I'll explain that in another post.

It's a darn good thing that there's a jogging track around our neighborhood.  El Paso has some awesome Mexican food.  DH brought home tamales this weekend.  Oh, they were soooo good.  It's going to take a lot of laps around that track if I want to eat those every Sunday.

Saturday Box Report

I'm at that point where it seems like everything is complicated.  In all my knitting projects, but also in the whole transition process.  I also feel like all I ever blog about is boxes.  But that's all I seeeeee. 

All the easy boxes have been unpacked.  The easy boxes are the ones where you know exactly where everything should go, or maybe there's only a few things in the box, or the contents have the same place they had in the last house.  And of course, I am positively furious that THIS box has followed me here:

The stupid "blinder" box.  Why?  Will I never get rid of this box?  And now I really have no idea what is in there.

All that's left are boxes full of stuff and crap.  I open them and think, "What is all this crap?  Where am I going to put it?"  We've filled 2 boxes for Goodwill and several trash bags.  There is nothing like moving to make you question your material possesions.  While part of me trembles at the idea of doing this all again in a year, part of me looks forward to getting rid of even more stuff with the next move.

I've decided I do love this house.  It's crazy with closets.  Now I just have to find new places for our things.  In the old house, DH had built shelves in each of the kids rooms for their many, many books, stuff, and treasures.  I had thought we'd get some of the cheapo, build-it-yourself shelves for each room like these:

DH grudgingly built one and hated it.  They're particle board, flimsy, bookshelves, but they are cheap and moveable.  We already have 2 of them that are easily 10 or 12 years old.  I don't know if he was just having withdrawal symptoms from being away from his powertools, but he decided that he'd make bookshelves in the kids rooms.

Awesome.  Umm...the shelves are awesome, too.  Now the kids can finish unpacking and putting away their things.

Unrelated mention:  I bought everyone their own bag of Hint of Lime Tostitos. 

There were mild accusations of certain family members bogarting the chips and others not getting their share.  The children are foolishly trusting us not to pinch out of their bags when they sleep.

On Thursday night, I drove over the mountains to the west side of El Paso and met Michelle at Starbucks for some knitting.  It was so great to sit with another knitter and get away from the boxes and the mess.  But that was when all my projects reached the complicated point. 

I reached the end of the Moving to El Paso Guacamole socks and have used every bit of the yarn.  However, I didn't split the skein evenly and one sock is shorter on the ribbing than the other.  That'll teach me to be all "whatever" when weighing the skein.  At least I didn't weave the end in of the first one so I can rip back a few rows and use some of that yarn for the second sock.  I don't need the socks to be all that long, but I WOULD like them to be the same length.

The Soleil tank is at the point where the pattern says to begin the separation for the Vneck.  But I remember that a common Ravelry complaint on this project is the neckline is too low, so I need to figure out how to modify it a little higher.  It seems like I don't want to split the neck before I begin the armholes, but that's more thinking than I can think these days.

I even worked on Alex's socks a little.  But now it's time to do the color work, which means finding the book and two strands of yarn right now sounds stressful.

Those Pale Spring Rose Shirred Rib socks?  I was working on them way back before we moved, the day that Indiana Jones opened.  Remember them?

Sitting in the theater waiting for the film to start (which, aliens?  C'mon, Indy.) I dropped one of the purl 3 together stitches.  I salvaged the stitches I could grab and stuffed the thing away, knowing that this was going to be a pain to fix.  Yesterday at the swimming pool, I took them along with a crochet hook and after some tinking and muttering, managed to get them going again.  I had to, because right now, they are the only project that doesn't require some sort of fixing or concentration.

That's why I did the best unpacking this afternoon.  I unpacked my sock yarn.  What a soothing task.  So many beautiful colors, so many soft skeins, so many possibilities.  Time to get new pair started.

Yarn Truth

Do you know what this is?

This is a pile of proof that the jerky guy at the post office, the one not-nice person we met our first week here, is a stinkin' liar.

He's the man who told me that no, they never deliver packages to the doorsteps.  I would get a notice in my box and have to come to the main office to pick up the package.

Well, of course, I wanted to test the system, so I placed an order with The Loopy Ewe.  What?  It's a new address!  I had to make sure that the yarn wouldn't get lost on the way to El Paso.  It's probably never been to this house before.

I was delighted to arrive home one day last week and see a Priority Mail box propped up next to my front door.  The sock yarn found me!  Yay!  In that pile you see starting from the left - Duets Skinny in Stormy Optimist (I love the name as much as the color), All Things Heather in Fig and Plum, Indie Dyer in Tex-Mex, and Malabrigo worsted in something Azul (it's amazingly blue). 

Guess what?  It was 110 today.  Really hot.  We went to the pool.  My routine is to get nice and soaked in the rather cold pool, then sit down and knit while I warm up and dry off.  The Soleil tank top is maybe half way done now and the Moving to El Paso socks are almost ready for the cuff ribbing.

This pile of yarn, however, was not the official first sock yarn to arrive at the new home.  Weekend before last, on Saturday morning we let Daniel the GPS lead us to Las Cruces, NM.  We were headed for a yarn shop named Unravel, but we found much more.  When we arrived, we were surprised to see the parking lot was packed.  We beat some senior citizens to a spot by a dumpster and went to see what was going on. 

Every Saturday and Wednesday, the downtown mall of Las Cruces is host to a craft fair, farmer's market, and general party.  There were many tables of beautiful handmade jewelry, so much to the point I couldn't choose anything because it was all too pretty.  Carrots recently pulled from the earth, fresh made bread, hand made soaps, etc.  Along the mall was also a huge used bookstore that I look forward to returning to and spending more time in.

Inside Unravel were comfy chairs for the family to relax in while I browsed.  They had a nice selection of standard yarns and it would be worth the 45 minute drive if I really wanted to see the colors in person and feel the yarn.  That's 2 LYSes within an hour of me!  I bought this:

Lonesome Stone Mountain Feat sock yarn in the colorway Wild Flowers Gone Wild.  It comes from Colorado and I couldn't resist a new, western yarn. 

Knitting in Public

Today was one of those days that make me think, "THIS is why one should always have a simple sock in one's purse." 

It was poor timing that found me at the commissary this morning.  Normally, I avoid the commissary around paydays and Saturdays and today was both.  But we needed food and I figured if I got there not long after they opened, perhaps I could minimize the hassle.    Arriving at 9:25 was not early enough, though, and when I took my filled shopping cart to check out, the line was stretching back into the freezer section.

This is only my second time in this commissary and I didn't realize that there was a system for the line that was set up with ropes and poles for the overflow line to bend around the corner.  Not that it mattered, because people had just stretched the line straight back, so I just got behind the person who was last and worked on my Moving to El Paso socks.  A few minutes later, there's young family in the proper part of the ropes and poles getting very upset with a commissary worker because they are in the CORRECT part of the line and other people are going AHEAD of them instead of standing in the RIGHT place and it's not THEIR job to direct people in line, etc. 

I happily told them, "Go in front of me.  I don't care.  There's 30 people ahead of me, what's one more?"  The commissary lady gave me a grateful look and they got in line, thanking me.  It's easy for me to be patient when I don't have the kids with me and they had 2 little ones getting cranky.  I kept knitting and finally got to the register, where there were 2 older ladies and 2 horribly behaving grandchildren in front of me. 

At this commissary, they not only bag your groceries, but they have someone take them out of the buggy and put them on the conveyer belt thing.  I try to help, but they have a system and I am totally in their way.  The top layer of my buggy was unloaded when the one older lady couldn't get her food stamp card to work.  I waited, seriously, 20 minutes while they puzzled over why it didn't work (She told the cashier it had $55 on it and there was only $53....gah!!)  and could they just try it again and call the manager, all the while this terrible grandchild is being terrible.  I kept knitting.

My buggy was already partially unloaded and I thought, "I will not make anyone's day more difficult.  I will be patient and put calm vibes out into the universe.  I am not in a hurry and I can be pleasant and wait and I will not be the cause of anyone's stress this morning."  It's a good thing they finally took the whole mess over to another register because my calm vibes were all gone after 20 minutes and I was afraid my ice cream would melt. 

It's called Dreyer's here, but I could only find a photo of the Edy's label.  It's ridiculously delicious.  I kind of want to eat the whole tub myself.

Later, going through the access control point, I got stopped for a random search.  Also, the bank put a hold on my credit card for fraud alert.  No, Suntrust, that was just me trying to buy groceries, but thank you.  And it was 108 today.

That afternoon, I took the kids to get some Father's Day stuff and no lie, got in a line at Target behind someone else with payment ISSUES.  I wasn't going to get stuck waiting so long again, but the people behind me wouldn't really move so I could get out and go to another register.  I dredged up more calming vibes and made more sock progress.  Fortunately, the cashier sent the people to the service desk after several minutes.

It was then that I realized today is World Wide Knit in Public Day.  The universe clearly must have wanted my participation.  Consider my contribution complete.