Sweating It

I finished the Trekking socks with 7g of yarn remaining. As you recall, this skein weighed in a bit short, and toward the end, I kept eyeing the remainder, wondering if I would have to frog back a bit or switch to another sock yarn to finish the toes. But no, plenty of yarn leftover.



Once again, I worked from both ends of the skein.



Details:
Yarn: Zitron Trekking XXL in color 82
Needles: US1
Pattern: Six-stitch pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks using twin rib stitch

And finishing one pair of socks freed up the needles for another pair:



The yarn is the Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in "birches" (and I weighed the skein, just to see, and it is a generous 105g). The pattern is "Monkey" from Knitty. It seems like I am knitting it too tight but the gauge is right-on, at least as far as I can tell with this zigzag lace stitch, but we shall see. If the socks are too small for me, I am sure my daughter will give them a home. And then I can play with the pattern to make a pair big enough for my gigundo feet and calves.

One reason I have made such nice progress on Monkey in Birches is I have been ignoring everything else and I stayed home today (okay, that's two reasons). My on-again, off-again bug decided to turn into a sinus infection. So I actually (some would say finally) went to the doctor. I hate going to the doctor because you have to beg for an appointment, and then once you get the appointment and show up on time, you wait forever to see the doctor, and then frequently his nurse is on the verge of a meltdown, etc. But today it was different, maybe because he has a new nurse. And a new haircut. My stylist says it's "in" but it shouldn't be, at least not for men in their 40's. It would be like my wearing a mini skirt. Oh, well. At least I was in and out of there in 20 minutes, a new all-time record. But then I took my Rx to Walgreens, where there was a 40-minute wait. I waited at home.

P.S. Today my neighbor across the street ran his snow blower up and down my drive again. I have the best neighbors!

A Finished Object!

Yesterday, with the weather predictions being what they were, I decided it would be prudent to finish the Lopi mittens. As you may recall, they had turned out different sizes, so I actually reknit most of mitten #2, but they were still different. Well, so what? They are for me to use shoveling snow. End of story.



I wore them to walk the dog, and they were quite... airy. My hands were warm enough, but the breeze moved right through the fabric. Hmmm. Maybe they will felt up a bit with use.

Well, I got to use them today.



My neighbor across the street bought a new snow blower yesterday, and he could not resist my driveway, but I still got out there for a while with my back-saving snow shovel. And the mittens were perfect. Usually, my hands get hot and sweaty, but the mittens repel moisture while letting my hands breathe. Just right!

Now that I am inside, warm and dry, I am hoping to finish the Trekking socks today as well, because look what arrived in the mail the other day:

Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in "Birches"...



... Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in "Serengeti"...



... and Interlacements Toasty Toes in color 202.



I have a tendency to pick paint and yarn by their names, but what would you call that last one? Turkish Turban? Persian Carpet? Intense, is what I call it.

So, you see why I have to finish the Trekking socks, don't you? That, or buy more DPNs.

Hiberknition

I am not a native Hoosier but I grew up in the Midwest, so when I first arrived in Indiana, the almost constant gray of its winter was a bit of a surprise. I am not affected by SAD, but still. This weather is growing tiresome. If I could stay home and hibernate, it would not seem so bad, but I actually have to go out and drive to work while slush falls from the sky. Ick.

The missing stitch on the red-red-red (are you getting tired of that phrase yet?) sweater/hoodie magically reappeared, but now I have two extra stitches. There is nothing like the body of a 190-stitch-per-round sweater to make one lose one's attachment to perfectionism. No way am I ripping out 1900 stitches of stockinette (I think that is where the offending stitches multiplied - it's hard to tell because of the lace pattern crawling up the front). Jeeze - I never thought about just how many stitches a sweater takes. Hmmm... 190 stitches per round, 6 rounds per inch, tap-tap-tap on the calculator - that's 17,100 stitches just for the below-the-armpit section of the torso. Yikes! Some things are better left unknown.

The Blue Lagoon blanket is also loosening my grip on perfectionism, at least as far as slavishly following a pattern goes. I made some modifications to the Sweet Cherries pattern because I wanted to carry the yarn up the side but it was too difficult with odd numbers of rows for some colors. The Blue Lagoon does not suffer from this problem, but the pattern looks like water, so I'm going with a more random version of the pattern repeats. Just for fun. After all, it is all garter stitch, so I feel compelled to inject something different to stave off the boredom. And I am not carrying the yarn up the side; instead, I break off and knit the ends in as I go. This results in less yarn wrangling. The blues are very soothing, too, so this is an enjoyable diversion.

Unlike the Trekking socks. Yesterday at lunch, it took me nearly an hour to knit ten rounds on the sole. That's 780 stitches, 780 tiny stitches on 4 tiny needles. This is why we knitters work on multiple projects at one time. When one is driving us nuts, we can give it a time out and pick up its jealous sister for a while.