I guess he liked them.

Thing Two has already worn through his socks. He wore them for the first time on December 24, and already there are huge holes in the balls of the feet, and in the heel on one sock. He wore them almost every day, and had been putting together his old floor puzzles and sliding across them. He was very impressed with how much more slippery they were than his store-bought socks. Yeah, great. He wore through them in about as much time as it took me to make them. Boys. I have enough of the yarn that I’ll probably try to repair them. I mean, really big holes.

I finished the socks for Thing One today, and she has promised not to wear through them so quickly.

I started socks for Little Cat Z, using the Universal Toe-Up Formula. I decided I don’t really need to do another basic cuff-down sock right now. I think I’ve got that down. I don’t know if it’s just that I’m unaccustomed to this cast on, but I’m using the same yarn and needles as I did for Thing One’s socks (the blue, obviously, since there’s almost no pink left), and so far the fabric seems very loose. If it doesn’t tighten up appreciably in a few rows, I think I’ll take it out and do the crochet chain with a smaller hook. Maybe that will help. If not, I’ll do another gauge swatch and see if I’m doing something different. Maybe I need to drop another size.

Luckily, she’s a little odd herself.

I am pretty sure I do not have enough yarn to do both socks for Thing One the same. Of course, she’s the one who used to always wear odd socks, on purpose. I told her the second sock wouldn’t be the same, and she was completely okay with it.

Thankfully, I realized the problem with doing the sole in blue before I actually finished the heel flap. I would have felt really stupid if I’d gotten a row of the foot proper done and then realized it. I could have done the foot flat (ha!), but I really don’t want to do any seams, especially on socks.

I’m getting very impatient to finish these socks, and then a pair for Little Cat Z so that I can finally start on my legwarmers! I looked through the comments and forum posts and blog posts about them on Ravelry, and it sounds like people with larger legs aren’t happy with the way they fit, but my legs have always been slender, no matter what the rest of me may be like, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

And another pair of socks

I finished Thing Two’s socks and started on Thing One’s. I’m afraid I don’t have enough of the yarn she wanted for the main color. It’s an old one I took out of my mom’s stash. So old my mom can’t remember what she might have made with it, which probably means she doesn’t have more. So, I’m doing a stripe at the top, the toes, and probably the heel in a different color. I’m thinking about doing all of the sole in the other color. That’s how little of this yarn I have.

I will wait to decide for certain until I’m done with the heel. I should have a better idea of just how much yarn I have left then.

It’s two inches of pink, one and a half of blue, then back to the pink on the smaller needles.

Stuff and bother.

I’m almost finished with Thing Two’s socks. I didn’t have any problems with picking up the stitches along the heelflap this time. I’m glad I figured that out.

I can’t really start on my legwarmers yet. I have to make socks for Thing One, and then probably for Little Cat Z, too.

The yarn for Thing One’s socks is, I think, Plymouth Encore, but I’m not certain. I took a bunch of yarn from my mom’s stash, intending to teach Thing One how to crochet granny squares. She’s never seemed interested in doing more than chain stitch, so we haven’t done that yet. One or more of the cats found the yarn, however, and turned several of the skeins into kitty toys, AKA complete messes. It took me over half an hour to wind the yarn for Thing One’s socks into a workable ball. It was so bad, I couldn’t even tell what the original shape of the skein had been, and I have no idea what happened to the ball band. I’m pretty sure I know which cat was the main culprit, at least. Miss Orchid is the one I’ve found carrying the GCUC around — all two pounds of it. I’m not saying the other two didn’t join in the fun, but she’s the one who seems to like playing with full skeins the most.

My fingers are itching!

I don’t know if my KnitPicks order came yet because I had to leave for work before the window at the Post Office opened this morning! It’s not fair!

I’m trying to decide if I should rip out the blue stripe on the second sock for Thing Two. I’m not sure if the stitches are tight enough, and I don’t know if I can get them pulled tighter. Now that I’ve done five rows, it looks like it might be okay, but I’d hate to change my mind after I’ve turned the heel.

I went a little crazy with my Ravelry queue yesterday. I really, really like Giselle, but it looks like it’s huge swathes of stockinette stitch (a suspicion confirmed by some of the comments I saw about it on Ravelry), and I’m afraid that I’d get bored with it. It’s gorgeous to look at, though. Maybe, if I ever actually make it, I’ll make something more involved alongside it.

I am not going to panic.

My KnitPicks order was not at the Post Office this morning.

Breathe. Breathe.

This is not an insurmountable problem. I can, in fact, live until I get my yarn.

I got the e-mail saying it was shipped on Thursday. It’s only Tuesday, and I live in a little rural town.

I’ll just have to stop tomorrow, too. Then, if it isn’t there, I might panic.

In other news, I started the second sock. My mom has more of the Buttercup, so I don’t have to worry about running out. I should be finished by the weekend, I think. I’m pretty sure I figured out the problem I was having with the selvedge stitches on my first pair of socks. I think I wasn’t slipping stitches when I was supposed to. I wound up ripping out and re-knitting the heel on the first one in this pair and paying very close attention to make sure I didn’t screw it all up again, and it came out just right. I had Thing Two try on the finished sock last night, and it fits just fine. He seems quite pleased with it. If he wasn’t, that would just be too bad.

I’m sure I could fit another “just” in there somewhere.

In other other news, I need to put more neat scthuff* in my queue on Ravelry.

*If you aren’t from the Rockford, IL area, you won’t get the reference.

More socks

I am making another pair of socks from Ann Budd’s The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns. This time they’re for Thing Two. I am using Lion Brand Wool-Ease, worsted. They’re gonna be warm. The colors are discontinued, of course. Buttercup and Colonial Blue.

I did some updating on my Ravelry stuff, mostly my library. If you’re putting in magazines, I strongly recommend that you don’t search for a specific year, at least not with Vogue Knitting. There were several that I couldn’t find that way, but when I searched for “vogue knitting [season],” a lot more showed up, and I wound up getting almost all the magazines I have entered.

Tomorrow I might have my order from KnitPicks! Whoo-hoo!

Sock update #6 (Taking the plunge)

Okay. I’ve done the heel flap and turned the heel, and picked up my stitches.

I counted my rows on the heel flap as I did them this time, so there’d be no mixup. I got to fifteen (counting slipped stitch rows only), and compared it to the finished sock. They seemed to be the same length. so I tried counting the rows on the finished sock, and came up with fifteen, again and again. So I left the new one at fifteen and picked up my stitches.

I came up with sixteen on the one side and seventeen on the other. What the heck am I doing wrong? The only thing I can think of is if I’m picking up that little stitch at the start of the heel flap. I dunno.

The finished sock seems fine, so I’m ignoring the seventeenth stitch again, and I’ll just finish this one the same.

Sock update #5 (Taking the plunge)

I am almost finished with Thing One’s Hallowe’en costume. It’s close enough that I don’t want to take it outside and walk with it, because I’d probably be finished long before my walk was over, and then I’d be trying to cast on for something else while walking, and I’m sure that’d end in tears.

So, I’m starting the mate to the finished sock. I should have noted before that I’m working on size four needles, and that I used the “Old Norwegian Cast-On” from the book. I like this cast-on method, but I’m sure I’d have killed myself trying to do it while walking.

I just hope it doesn’t start raining before I finish my walk.

Sock update #4 (Taking the plunge)

I finished the first sock yesterday. I took some pictures while it was still on the needles, but our digital camera is a little cheap-o thing with no flash, and they didn’t turn out well.

I did have one problem with it. When I was doing the decreasing on one side (K2tog, k2, SSK), I apparently only knit one in between the decreases. I almost did that several other times, too, but I caught myself. I noticed it two rows later, and didn’t feel like ripping them out to fix it. I don’t think anyone will look that closely at my toes.

It fits quite well, but I wonder if I should have used a size smaller needles, or knit a smaller size . . . or both. It doesn’t exactly hug my foot. Of course, questions like this are why I picked a really basic sock pattern, and used the GCUC yarn.

Now I just have to knit the other one.