Sock and Squirrel

I'm over the blahs! After frogging twice, I've made some progress on my sock pal socks. I'm using the CTH yarn because you couldn't see the cables in the LL. This is a crummy picture, but the sock is beautiful, if I say so myself!


At first, I wasn't sure about ML, but I'm getting the hang of it. and I love it.

And now, look what I saw through my kitchen window yesterday morning: this cute squirrel sitting on our neighbor's back porch. He would sit there, then stretch his little body all the way, with his feet on the porch and his little hands on the feeder, which would swing back and stretch him even further. I had a hard time taking pictures because he'd stretch, grab, sit back, stuff his face, then stretch again. Fast.


Here is the little guy in action. He stretched much further than this!

Frog Pond

This is so depressing. I was almost done with one sock pal sock when I realized the following facts:
1. I'd dropped part of a cable near the cuff.
2. In the Amethyst Stripe yarn, the cables are pretty much invisible.

So I frogged. The socks are 'due' soon, but I just couldn't see myself sending out something I wouldn't be happy to receive in the mail. Tonight, I'll rest, tomorrow, I'll swatch in the other purple to evaluate how things will look, then make up my mind. Ugh!

I got Valentine's Day!

In a box, from Libi! She sent me a wonderful box of chocolates, and this:


A hand-knit lace scarf! I'm simply blown away. The picture isn't the best because I took it myself, with only the bathroom mirror for reference. But it's lovely. In an orange that actually looks good on me (unlike the overgrown bangs...). It's soft. It's long. It's cushy. I can't stop petting it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I feel loved. A lot.

A Mystery Package

The mystery: Who is BlueHen?

I have no idea, but she sends awesome packages! She's my upstream knitty SP for round 8 of, and... look at all that yarn! I was floored when I saw the sheer amount of yarnyness. That's a beautiful skein of deep brown Alpaca, 2 skeins of wonderful blue yarn, and karaoke, which I've always wanted to try but never got around to buying. The colors are so vivid, exactly the kind of thing I would have picked out for myself!


Also in the picture: some chocolate-covered toffees that probably won't make it through the night, some tea with cardamon (yum!), and heart-shaped pasta for Valentine's Day.

Thanks for the amazing package, BlueHen -- whoever you may be!

The ML Experience

I'm using Magic Loop to knit my sock pal's socks -- one at a time, because it's my first time using this technique. My impressions so far:
It's easy. If you really know how a sock works, you don't have any trouble figuring out which needle to use when or which needle to pull out.
It's handy because you only have one long needle, not 5 out of which 1 invariably gets lost.
It's supposedly better for the join because you don't have gaps between needles. So far, I'm still getting gaps between needles, and worse than with DPNs. But maybe that'll get better with experience.
Once I figured out how to make the cable hang down instead of sticking up and getting in the way, things got a lot easier.
This is still a bit slow for me, but the longer I do it, the faster I'll get. Practice, practice, practice!
Next up: pictures of socks. I really need to hurry up to get them done in time for the deadline!

Blah

I've been feeling too blah to knit much of anything. This is making me feel particularly bad because I should be working on the socks for my sock pal. She deserves wonderful socks, and it isn't her fault that I'm feeling blah.
On the bright side, I got gauge! Don't know what happened, but I've gone from being a tight knitter to being a loose knitter. At least some of the time. With these socks, I had to go down a needle size. Now I'm using size 0 Addi Turbos. Yes, I'm doing Magic Loop! This is exciting. Not only are these my very first 'real' size 0 needle socks, they are also my very first ML project ever. I guess I'm ambitious.

The other interesting thing I have discovered is that when I feel too blah to do any knitting, I get the urge to spin. For some reason, spinning is even more soothing than knitting. Perhaps because it doesn't require me to concentrate on a pattern. All I have to do is sit there, spin the spindle, and let the yarn slip through my fingers. It's very restful.

Now I want a wheel.