I am...

...a bad knitblogger.

The socks I'm knitting for Sockapal000za are the Retro Rib Socks from the Winter 04 issue of Interweave Knits, which I think I mentioned last week. I'm knitting them in Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn in the Buck's Bar colorway (I'd link to a picture of the yarn, but I think the colors are misrepresented by the three different pictures I've looked at. It's actually a lot prettier in person than online - really Spring-y).

I haven't yet finished the second Jaywalker sock. I don't remember how far along I am. I think that I've turned the heel, but I'm not sure. It's just sitting looking sad on top of the filing cabinet. Poor sock.

After I finish that I'm seriously considering starting on the Torino sweater. Or not. I have to frog and reknit the mostly completed silk sweater I started for my mom ages ago. It's made of silk and when I swatched it I got the right gauge, which is good, but it was before I knew that silk grows after washing/blocking. Oops. Fortunately it's mostly stockingette stitch, so it'll go quickly. Plus, I won't mind redoing the knot motif thing, because I've gotten better with cabling since I knit it. I don't have the enormous ladders between the purls and the cabled knit stitches like I used to. (They're still there... just much smaller. Which is ok. It doesn't have to be perfect. Really.) So after that, then, I'll cast on for the Torino sweater. I'm not thrilled about knitting with wool in the summer, but I'm hoping that if I work on it here and there and don't give up on it, I should have it done by the end of the year, i.e. winter. Which would be awesome. Because seriously, if it doesn't come out looking like soft boiled ass (which hopefully, it won't. I've done the two handed stranding colorwork knitting thing before and was fairly proficient at it) I am planning on wearing the hell out of that sweater. That's why I got the dark blue men's colorway as opposed to the white women's colorway. If I'm going to put that much money/time/effort into something, I'm getting my money/time/effort's worth... dammit.

So yeah. That's what's going on.

schecki♥

Sock One, sock one.

Sock one is very nearly completed. I've just got to kitchener the toe closed, which I should have done immediately upon finishing the knitting. Because the only time I've had to knit since finishing it on Sunday night is:

• standing on a crowded train
• sitting on a bus with a full cuppa hot tea
• loud, crowded Dollar Burger/NTN trivia night

And it's not like I need complete silence or to lock myself in a room anymore, but I do need 2 free hands and to be sitting down. I'm going to sew that bad boy up tonight though, and get cast onned... casted on? ... I shall sew that bad boy up and cast on for sock two. Grammar, yay!

Not knitting anything else currently... which isn't to say there aren't approximately fifty WIPs sitting there taunting me, but I'm restricting myself to these socks, and these socks only until they're finished. It's kind of motivation in a way. Not that I need loads of motivation to finish them, because the thought of a few hundred pairs of socks flying around via the post cracks me up and is awesome and that's why I got involved in the first place. I just get a kick out of it. The fact that I'll be receiving a pair of socks is icing on the cake.

Anyway, back to work.

schecki♥

Update, yay!

So.

I haven't posted here much because I haven't been knitting much. Once Dames rehearsals started I pretty much stopped knitting.

But I'm back and with a vengeance because I've got to get those Sockapal000za socks all knitted up. I had bought yarn and started knitting with it, but discovered that instead of being fingering weight it was sport weight and I just could NOT get behind it. It wasn't knitting up in a way I liked at all. So I frogged that and finally bought new yarn a week ago and I've just turned the heel of sock one. I'm about three quarters of the way through the instep/gusset decreases. I picked the Retro Rib pattern out of an old Interweave Knits. I think Winter '04. It's a fairly simple pattern; just eight stitches and four rounds per pattern reapeat. What's nice about it is that it's easy to memorize the pattern and it's just challenging enough to keep me from getting bored (though "challenging" is probably not the right word), but remaining simple enough that I can while on the bus/watching tv/half asleep/mildy inebriated without screwing it up. So yay. I'll probably have it finished by the end of tomorrow, or Monday night at the latest, so that's good. I'd really planned on having the socks finished by now, but oh well. So long as they get done by May 2. That's the important thing.

Anyway, it's dinner time and there's a serious rumbly in my tumbly. I'll check in later. Bye!