Forward Motion

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.

Catching Up

I think the thing to do here is to just start blogging all the stuff I want to blog and not really try and be all chronological or even logical.  Whenever I've got a moment, I'll try and write a paragraph or two or I will get so far behind I'll have to rename the blog "Reverse Motion".  Basically, I'm lowering abandoning my already low posting standards.

Okay, remember when I lived in Georgia?  Was that really less than 2 weeks ago?

Well, Denise had mentioned in a comment that she'd be coming to my area for a quick trip and too bad I'd be packing and we wouldn't be able to meet up.  I was like, "Pack?  Pshaw!  I can pack later!" and we managed to meet up for Diet Coke/coffee at the food court.  Of course, I went off without my camera, but Denise's husband took a great photo of us.

She's got a Ravelry t-shirt!  jealous (1).

This is the first time I've ever met another knit blogger on purpose.  I mean, I met knitters who blog at things like the Yarn Harlot signing, but that doesn't really count.  Denise used to be in the Army and she seemed so nice and I didn't get all nervous and hopefully I didn't say anything embarrassing.  We knit socks and I finished one of Alex's socks (that I started so very long ago and have gone from quick-easy-project to pain-in-my-rear.)  She also brought me the cutest pins for my knitting bag with the doggies from Mutts on them.  It was a fun morning and a good break from the packing.  Denise, if you ever get to El Paso, we'll have to get together again!

This morning, I went to Big Lots, Kmart, Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, and Walmart.  I bought a new microwave (the one I bought last week broke!), a new alarm clock, 2 knitting magazines, and 2 new bikes for the kids.  DH & Grace went for a ride this evening and came home with 4 flat tires.  The thorns in El Paso are no joke!  DH is going to be playing bike mechanic quite a lot.

The kids have been playing with some neighbors, so they are not depressed so much now.  These neighbors are moving next week, but we'll have new ones on every side very soon.  We also found the on post swimming pool, which has a big water slide.

Yesterday, I found the LYS.  It's called The Knitting Basket and it's about 10 minutes from my house!!!  I've never been so close to yarn before!  It's small, but has a nice selection of yarns like Cascade 220 and Panda sock yarn.  The owner seemed very friendly, but didn't follow me around telling me about every single skein for sale.  The kids were with me and although she had some comfy chairs for them, I couldn't enjoy fondling the yarn with the waves of impatience radiating from them.  I can't wait to go back without the kids, which I can totally do because it's only 10 minutes away!

I finally unpacked the towels today.  I was getting tired of rotating the 6 that I'd brought with me.  My packers were sadists.  They put all the unimportant crap that I don't know what to do with on the tops of all the boxes and the stuff I need way at the bottom.

One Moving to El Paso sock is done, the other is past the heel on and onto the cuff.  And now I'm going to go sit and knit for a little while before shoving all the unpacked junk off my bed and going to sleep.

So much and so many

I have so much to blog about.  (I have half a post written about our awesome trip to Las Cruces, NM on Saturday and a photo of my first sock yarn bought in the southwest.  I haven't even blogged about the Dream in Color sweater that I finished before I left or my first real life meetup with another knitblogger.)

I have so many Bloglines to catch up on.  (Everyday I try and beat back the number of unread posts to under 200, but the next time I check it's over again.  Sadly, I'm keep putting off reading my favorites so I'll have time to pay attention to them and leave comments.  I'm sorry!)

I have so many boxes to unpack.  (The movers came yesterday.  I don't know what happened to "Wednesday, maybe Thursday", but we've got our stuff.  The house is a certified wreck.  I love sleeping in my own bed again.)

I have so much to organize.  (I'm trying not to get caught up in putting things away perfectly.  The point is to get the boxes unloaded, then deal with the organizing.  But I hate that.  But I can't organize with all the boxes in the way, so I have no choice.)

I have so many places I want to go.  (The outlet mall is 15 minutes from my house!  DH could only take an hour or so of shopping and I could have stayed alllll day.  I wanted to go to the library and the LYS today, but ended up taking the kids to the pool.  My on-their-way-out neighbors have told me of places to go and I just want to hop in the van and drive around going to these neat new places.)

I have so much sleep I need.  (The sun comes up at 5:45.  Need curtains.)

I have such a crush on El Paso.  (Every morning is beautiful.  The mountains are gorgeous.  Maybe when I get to know it better, the crush will fade, but for right now....I love El Paso and I can't wait to see more.)

The Pictures

Here's a brief selection of moments from our move.

Boxes at the old house.  I love how he marked them "Wools".  Darn right that's not acrylic.  That stuff is out in the garage.

Windmills somewhere in mid-Texas.  Alex & I were fascinated by them.  You really can't get the perspective on how huge they are.  A tractor trailer went by carrying one blade and it was a very long, long trailer.

I wish I'd gotten a photo of the camel farm we passed.  Anyone know what the deal is with the camels on the side of I-20 somewhere west of Dallas?

The highest temperature while we were driving on Monday.  It seemed picture worthy.

Clearly I was getting bored at seeing this all the way from Georgia to Texas.  Hubby pulling the UHaul.

Our new house.  That part with the 3 small windows is our 2 car garage.  Which I need more practice pulling in and out of.

Our view as seen from our front sidewalk.  Not very pretty, but we like it better than being surrounded by houses on every side.  See that paved path?  It's a trail that goes all around the neighborhood and since I was again wide awake at 6:30 this morning, I went for a walk and saw some bunnies.

Our back yard.  We need more rocks to cover the plastic.  Guess what they didn't tell us?  We have a sprinkler system.  And it scared the crap out of me last night, rhythmically tapping at my window.

Terri, here is a glimpse of your El Paso mountains.  It's late afternoon and the dust is making them a little hazy.  They are really beautiful in the mornings.  Apparently there's a whole nother part of El Paso on the other side of the mountains.  The big white tent-like thing is an access control point.  I don't know why so many years after 9-11 they don't have permanent control point structures yet.

My (cluttered) Texas sized kitchen.  So many cabinets!  On post housing is not known for their generous floor plans, so I was pleasantly shocked at seeing this.

 

I realized today that I am enjoying camping out in the house.  When the moving truck arrives, I'll have my head in boxes for weeks.  For now, I have very little to clean and keep up with.  I will be glad to be done sleeping on an air mattress though.

Tomorrow, we're going to venture into Las Cruces, NM to check out a yarn store and anything else interesting.

Some random thoughts on El Paso & Ft. Bliss

Our house is very nice.  It's probably about the same square footage as our last house, but laid out completely differently.  My kitchen is gigantic and the master bedroom is teeeeensy.  I have no idea where I will sit and knit, or where my knitting bookshelf will go.  Everything feels awkward right now.

Windy.  So windy.  35 mph gusts yesterday.  Our little doggie nearly gets knocked over and we couldn't sleep for the sound of the blowing last night.

Mountains!  Right there!  Except when the dust blows so much you can't see them.  I like the mountains.  Especially in the morning.

All our neighbors are moving.  We are likely the first people of the new class to arrive in the neighborhood.  There are moving vans everywhere.

I have to walk easily a quarter of a mile to get my mail.  Good for exercise.  The postal person won't drop packages at the house, so I'll have to go to the main post office on post to get my yarn.  The guy at the main post office did not have a key to give us for our mail box and not only did not care, but seemed proud of it.  He said maybe Friday.  The mail situation is probably the worst thing I can say about our new place.

Traffic.  I'm scared of the traffic.  Going places using the highway seems to involve a lot of lane changes in a short distance and I almost creamed some Nissan yesterday.  We found the Walmart, which was icky, then the Target, which was lovely, and then a different Walmart which was fine.

It's hot.  In the high 90s and 100s.  But we don't mind it.  Because while I have definitely felt hot, I have not once been hot and sweaty.  This morning at 7,  I was actually chilly outside.  Humidity is about 18% and I'm loving how un-sticky I feel.

The kids are depressed about not having any friends, although we've only lived here for 2 days.  I think all the kids here are getting ready to move away and aren't intersted in meeting new friends.  In a few weeks, I told them they can welcome the new kids.  Please send prayers/good thoughts that they'll find nice, new friends and not be so bummed out about this.  It's breaking my heart.

Palm trees.  This reminds me of Florida and makes me feel better.

The El Paso airport is just behind our neighborhood.  We can watch the jets come and go.  Oddly, we don't have a lot of airplane noise.  Maybe the wind is drowning it out.

Rocks.  Much of the landscaping is rocks.  I appreciate the practicality of it.

This a border town, and in parking lots we see lots of cars with Mexican license plates.  Grace was amused that there were so many Chihuahua lovers that had put this on their license plates until I told her that Chihuahua is the Mexican province/county/region that is just over the border.

Also, I gotta learn Spanish.  I've been meaning to for the last 15 years, since my husband and his family are all native speakers.  So far, everyone I need to talk to has spoken English, but I would just like to be able to feel like I am not missing out on so much.

Every single person we have met has been ridiculously nice and helpful.  Even the cashiers at the store seem like maybe they don't hate every minute of their day.  People have gone out of their way to be friendly and give us directions and advice.  (Well, except for that &*$# at the post office.)  And they say the south has hospitality.  Not like El Paso, it doesn't.

I had planned to put lots of pictures in this post, but we just got internet going today and then I had to go the the PX and they didn't have a microwave (I assumed our house would have a microwave and I was wrong.) and then I had to go to the commissary (better than our old one!) and then to the nicer Walmart to get the microwave, then fix our first dinner here, then to the laudrette to do 5 loads of laundry.  So maybe tomorrow I will take photos.