SockTart

Piss me off.

I booked two days off work this week.  I was going to do such various things as sit around and knit, or get some cleaning done.  Instead, I wind up fighting off The Summer Cold from Hell.  Came home from work on Tuesday after fighting a sore throat all day, and now?  Sinus headache.  Spent part of today in the bath, trying to relax my neck muscles and being generally “amphibious”.
The Dayquil seems to have kicked in, though. This is a good thing.

Speaking of knitting, Hedera is coming along fine.  I tried working with it on Size 2 circs, but they look rather…uh…loose.  I’ve since started the “second” sock with the ribbing on size 2, and the body on size 1.  I’ve turned the heel on that sock and am working on the gusset.  If it fits, then Sock 1 will be frogged back, and done the same way.

If I didn’t mention it, Robin’s socks are done.  He’s happy about that.

Pictures soon

That was my question last night upon looking at the bar tab from FATS (apparently “crown float” is how they classify a drink such as a “Black & Tan”.  I’m still a little disturbed that my Guinness came from a can.  Heathens).

We’d been invited out by Dale & Morgan, and so spent the evening having yummy food, drinking yummy drinks, and screaming at each other over the speakers.  Bars are definitely not conducive to the one thing that is their purpose: Socializing.  The only other downfall we seemed to see?  Tyler has pointed out that here in Canada, a Pint is not a Pint.  He’s looking for his standard UK Pint, that he gets in the pub.  We don’t have that.  Maybe our favourite Microbiologist (at least the one in The Family) needs to start his own pub?  Pints with a PhD.  There ya go.  He can tell you all about the bacteria in your glass, and why it’s important not to use antibacterials while you’re chugging it all down.

A point in favour for FATS?  I requested the Mushroom Swiss burger without the bun…and the waitress didn’t even blink.  They even gave me extra salad.  Booyeah.

The Sock also made it to the pub, at least until they turned down the lights.  Morgan snatched it out of my hands to inspect it, then tried to start knitting away merrily in her tipsiness.  I practically screeched at her to stop, I’m afraid.  I was in the middle of turning the heel.  Thank goodness I was able to frog back and repair because it threw me off balance to the point that I mucked up a little farther down.  It’s all good now.  The first Hedera is getting closer to done.  It’s very pretty too. There’s just one part of the heel flap/gusset that I don’t like, and will need to find a way to tighten up.  Hrmf.

Robin’s socks are also done.  I decided to get that right out of the way on Thursday/Friday.  By the time he woke up on Friday afternoon, he had new socks.  He’s happy they’re done…but sad that it’s too hot to wear them.  I’m sure that come the Fall he will be begging for more socks

No Karazhan raid this weekend due to the aformentioned trip to the bar.  I’ve been told that I need to appear online more often.  While fun, this may impede my sock progress (grin).  We’ll see what happens :)  I think that our guild leadership just wants a little Shadow Priestie lovin’.  Mana battery my left buttock

Allrighty.  Last night was Night #1 of our new Karazhan group.  For those who are not partaking of the Crack that is World of Warcraft, Karazhan is a 10-man dungeon (aka “instance” or “raid”) that you can only go to if you’ve maxed your character’s level.  Clicky the link if you want to learn more about it.  It is filled with many things to kill, most of which take the effort of you and your 9 buddies.  Last night we managed to kill five bosses and do the Opera House event.

One of the bosses is called “The Shade of Aran”.  The first time someone killed him, Guild Chat was filled with “Aran down!  We killed Aran!  Yay!’

I wanted to know why they were killing a sweater.  And how.  Did they unravel it?  What colour was it? Did they repurpose the yarn?

Right.  Two fandoms clash…WoW and Knitting….hm.  Unfortunately, unlike the Molten Core dungeon, I can’t spend my evening knitting between pulls in Karazhan.  In the 40-man raids, you have more tardlings going AFK…so when this would happen, I’d knit.  I got a good portion of some socks done around Christmas that way!

Anyhow.  We made progress last night.  Much better progress for a “new” run than many established runs have had.  It’s all good

In other news, I have turned the heels on Robin’s socks and have about an inch on the legs.  I find that working both socks at the same time is working well for me.  I’d like to see if I can do the same sort of thing for some of the Way Cool Patterns on the net right now (mainly Cookie A.’s patterns), but we’ll see.  I’m also grooving on all the yarn out there.  Two of the folks on my Ravelry “friend list” are yarnies….they dye and/or sell this yarn.  It is all verrah verrah yummy.  Very Apple Macintosh for the lick-factor.  I may have to save up the sheckles and get permission from He Of The Accountancy Family Background to use my Visa card and make a couple of orders.

Because, y’know, a girl can never have enough sock yarn.  Never.  Despite what he may think…

(I also signed up for secret pal 11.  which will raise some eyebrows around here when I start putting together care packages for a person I’ve never met.  The trick will actually be MAILING the darned things.  I know that I am postally challenged.  I accept this, and am willing to confront the Evil Postperson.  I shall start by anxiously awaiting my pre-ordered copy of The Last Freakin’ Harry Potter Book in a couple of weeks.  The Training is so strenuous ) 

That was Robin’s advice to me this evening, after he got up and moving.  It’s wickedly hot outside, even now that the sun has gone down.  I’m sure the house will start getting chilly somewhere around 5am (isn’t that always the case?) but until then, the upstairs is sweltering.

Who needs AC when you have a finished basement, right?  I parked my butt on the futon and prepared to finish turning the second heel on his socks.  Yes.  You heard right.  The second heel on his socks.  Both are done now.  I managed to get half the first heel done before work this morning, the other half done during lunch break.  I worked on the second heel after work this evening.  Now it’s just a matter of getting the legs and cuffs done.  Yay!

In the meantime, the kitty is sacked out on the end of the futon, and looks so comfy that I may join her.   At very least turn off the lights, turn on a movie (or watch the tube) and veg in the cool.

Stay frosty, folks.  It’s a scorcher o.O

It’s a good thing that the Palace of Yarn Crack is currently renovating.

Because I’ve been having this itch to knit yellow socks for about 2 months. I’d also like to start on one of the pairs of non-toe-up socks that everyone else has been doing and I’ve been too chicken to try (Heel flap? Huh?). So right now the idea of banana-yellow socks in Pomatomus or Hedera or Monkey sounds really cool.

Besides. There’s no guarantee that my local Crackelicious Yarn Haven actually has any banana-yellow in stock. Which would further make me safe from cheating on my husband’s socks.

Yes. Cheating on my husband’s socks. For I am a fickle critter. If not for the Man in my Life, I would have cut my waist-length hair into a bob this past week. He is the one who gives me a reality check (and then goes out and buys me hair doodads so that I can actually do something with the Rat’s Nest).

Many thanks to the man who curbs my impusiveness. If only for the time being.

Smooches!

(and before someone else mentions that there is more than ONE yarn store in Calgary…don’t. Because as I mentioned, I am a fickle critter and will get a wild hair to go there and buy yarn, and then we’re ALL in trouble…)

“Did you wake me up by attacking me with a sock?”

Yeah. I paraphrase. It was something similar. Robin, who seemed very confused, was watching me playing on Ravelry, and it reminded him that somehow, somewhere….a sock played a part of his wakeup process.

Robin works graves. Sometimes he’s awake when I get home from work, sometimes not. I thought he was fairly lucid this evening, and decided to get an idea how much more of the foot I need to do before turning the heel. Approximately 1/2 an inch to an inch. Apparently he wasn’t as awake as I thought.
I’m forcibly keeping myself from digging out the Regia stashed downstairs, and a couple more pairs of needles. If that happens, these socks are never getting finished…and I distinctly remember hearing a sleepy “Yay…I get socks…” as I was leaving the bedroom with the pair presently on the needles. I admit it. I get ADD when I knit. Bad enough that one of my co-workers has decided to prompt me about Robin’s socks when she sees me…I don’t need to try and justify a distinctive lack of Project Monogamy. Particularly with another pair of socks. People can understand wanting to “switch it up” with a quick scarf, or pair of hand warmers…they aren’t quite so forgiving when it comes to a second pair of socks.

Luckily enough, Warcrack has been a little slow the past couple of days, otherwise I’d be feeling bad for not working on my character. Oooh yeah. I could be grinding faction rep, bay-bee! I’ve never been the best at grinding (uh…not as in “bump and…” for those of you not familiar with the term. It basically means working on a particular task for long periods of time, like killing a certain kind of enemy, or working on a quest chain, etc. Thus ends your gamer slang lesson of the day). I’ve been a good little gamer for the past couple of months. For those (admittedly 3 people) who will understand: I now have my Heroic Keys for Keepers of Time and The Sha’tar. Do I deserve a break? Damn skippy!

I still have Thrallmar, Cenarion Expedition, and Lower City rep to grind out.

It’s probably a blessing in disguise that my local YarnSmack Dealer is renovating right now…

Allrighty.

So I’d pretty well forgotten all about Summer of Socks. Then I got my beta invite for Ravelry (whee!!!)….and it all came rushing back to me. The socks. I’d meant to be finished Robin’s Socks by now, but there are only so many meetings at work that you can knit through. Seriously…the last big “meeting” I went to, I’m sure I got another inch put on the socks. I’ll have to get him to try them on.

But yeah. I haven’t even turned the heel yet. And that makes me a very sad girl. Because how am I supposed to know what I’m doing in regards to 2 socks on 2 circs if I don’t even turn the heels?

Guess it could be worse. I could be stuck at turning the heel on ONE sock instead of TWO.

So yeah. I’ll have to get back to that. Been too hung up on WoW to do much knitwork lately. I guess that instead of browsing the web from the Slow As Hell Public Computer at work, I should be going back to work on my knitting at lunch. Yeah…that’d do it. And my feet wouldn’t hurt as much from standing at the terminal.

Thought I’d go through some of my older photos and stuff earlier today to see if there was anything I should be adding to Ravelry, Flickr, or Facebook…and finally said “Nyah”. We’ll see what new stuff I come up with in the future.

Oh…and Chelsea…I have changed your user privileges back down to “subscriber”. Since you haven’t been posting, I figured I’d just use the blog on my own & reactivate the crossposter. Because I’m silly like that (I actually came close to just nuking everything, tell the truth. Think I’ll just go back to this being a general-purpose blog with mirrors at Livejournal. The LJ will have the uber-private stuff as usual. If you can’t see it…there’s a reason why, heh heh )

IMG_1142Originally uploaded by macgrrlx.

One more inch on Robin’s Socks and I can start turning the heel. Actually, it might be a little less than that. I’m kinda winging it. Haven’t had a lot of time to knit recently, so The Socks have been suffering. Thank goodness that the two-socks-on-two-circs method seems to take so little time. If I was doing my usual bit of procrastination, I’d be 1 inch away from the heel on only ONE sock by now. This is what I call progress.

Other than that, I’m looking forward to digging into some of my other sock yarn. It’s not that I’m bored with the yarn for Robin’s socks…not at all. I just have this kind of ADD when it comes to knitting.

Oh…one other thing. I mentioned that my co-worker’s wife spins, right? Well, I came back from lunch the next day and he had brought me some lovely handspun silk/merino blend sock weight yarn. Holy Mother of Pearl. Apparently, if I went “WOW”, I would know the cost of such a yarn, and it would be a gift from her to me. Yowza!!!! I am currently trying to figure out just what, exactly, I want to do with it. Because, y’know, whoever gets these socks are getting Very Special Socks, Indeed.

At any rate, Cassandra (the same co-worker’s wife) has offered me (though communication with her hubby) a small loom. A LOOM. She has no interest in weaving, and was given the loom by a friend, who was wishing to pass it on. I will re-iterate (for the sake of my own dear Significant Other, who may read this) that it is small. But a LOOM. My mama didn’t raise no fool…No, she raised a material artist. Verily I say Yea! to the loom!

What can I say….other than “I better get that sewing/crafting room finished soon”….

My hand is doing a lot better today. They let me use some banked time at work yesterday, so I came home and watched some TV and read the ‘net for awhile, until most of the stinging subsided. Today, it’s just tender when the burn/scald is actually touched with some sort of pressure. This means I can knit again! The float of yarn against that hand isn’t enough to hurt me unless I have absolutely NO slack.

So Robin’s socks are growing again. If they were MY socks, I’d be thinking of turning the heel, but as they need to fit a size 11 man’s foot, this isn’t happening for another inch or two. I’m really quite appreciating the two-socks on two-circs method.

This afternoon we’re apparently doing a little shopping, and at some point this weekend we’re doing some spring cleaning. It’s rather grey outside, so I’m not sure whether I’ll get to do any gardening. It’s such a drab day, in fact, that I’ve been yearning for some sunny, banana-yellow yarn…and I’m SO not a fan of yellow! I guess we’ll see how the day shapes up.