I’m willing to bet “Long Time, No Post” is a fairly popular
post header for blogs… One month+ since I last posted. Occasionally, I go
through periods of insomnia. I’ve been in denial about this most recent bout,
which has apparently elongated this particular cycle. My typical “fix” is to
pull an all-nighter to get myself back on track and reset my internal clock. In
lieu of that, I’ve been spending literally hours in bed wide awake hoping I
could get to sleep and get up at a reasonable time. When I don’t fall asleep
until after 2am or later, my wake-up time is half-way through the day. That all
inevitably leads to feeling ‘blue’, because I’m wired to believe that spending “half
the day” in bed means I’m unproductive and therefore less than useful. Then I
feel bad that I feel bad and wind up sleeping 10+ hours a day and really do
sleep away half the day sometimes, since I prefer to sleep over feeling bad about sleeping. I’ve had about enough of feeling depressed
for no good reason. The kids want to go to the beach tomorrow/today and I know
if I go to sleep anytime soon, I won’t be up until sometime between 10am and
noon. That does not make for happy kids. Or a happy husband. Or a happy me. So,
the greatest chance of us making it to the beach (weather-permitting) is for me
to pull a much-needed all-nighter. I’ve got some knitting to keep my hands busy
and some binge-TV I can watch (nearly at the end of the Arrested Development
series).
Updates
The laptop is back on track. I got spooked by the coffee
spill and urged the hubby to pick up an external hard drive for all the gigs of
photos I’ve been meaning to back up over the lifespan of this laptop – lets call
it about 5+ years now. Lucked out there. Photos and documents are now safely
living in the external, as well as here on the laptop… I’m too nervous to
delete them from the laptop, mostly. I’m a little too lazy to delete them from
the laptop, since I may have to drag out the external to transfer whatever photo
I think I need… Ok, so I’m mostly lazy and just a little nervous.
The baby blanket: I’m about to cast-off. I’ve been at this
point since the second weekend in May when I put it down to go camping for
Mother’s Day. I cast on for a pair of socks on the drive to the
campground/resort. And the baby blanket still sits next to me on the couch,
slowly growing to become a part of the couch as other things have started to
pile on top of it.
That pair of socks I started on the way to the campground?
Finished, washed/dried, and living happily in my sock drawer. Did I then finish
the baby blanket? Of course not. I agreed to knit the hubby his own pair of
socks now that all the other residents of this house have their own pair(s).
Felt bad for the guy.
I should note: he never asked for socks. I asked if he
wanted a pair. He said he wanted “funky striped socks”. After discussing
colors, I’ve determined his definition of “funky” and my definition differ
greatly. I was thinking some toxic green for some reason paired with maybe
electric blue. Definitely funky, per my understanding of the word. What he
really meant was black and grey. Yawn. Okey dokey. I ordered the yarn (Valley
Yarns, Huntington – 75% fine superwash merino wool/25% nylon) and was delighted
to see I could snag something for myself while I was at it (Wisdom Yarns, Poems
Socks – 75% superwash wool/25% nylon in a gorgeous colorway Aurora Borealis).
Yarn was purchased from WEBS’s website. Upon arrival, I immediately noticed how
buttery soft HIS yarn was, while I’m afraid I should’ve ordered the fine
merino, too. Oh well. Lesson learned. At least they’re both mostly natural and
not purchased here in town at Michael’s or Hobby Lobby. (Tho the socks I
started while camping are incredibly soft and are Debora Norville Serenity bought
at Hobby Lobby 50% superwash merino/25% bamboo/25% nylon – plus they can go in
the dryer. Bonus for forgetful/lazy me. Hubby's socks and my next pair are both of the lay-flat-to-dry variety.)
Back to the socks for hubby. I’d messed around slightly with
“manually” striping socks using leftovers from previous socks that turned
into an anklet (which, btw, exists only as one sock as I predicted in the last post… the remnants of the
remnants still exist and will probably not transform into the mate by magic,
tho I can always hope.) When I say “manually”, I mean I’m using two different
colorways of the same yarn and not the self-striping stuff on its own. In messing with my
striping technique, I found out I didn’t like it at all. I gave the hubby the
option of having his own pair like the Opposocks in gray and black, but he didn’t
like that idea. One mostly-gray sock and one mostly-black sock is funky, right?
I think he’s afraid it will be seen as the onset of Alzheimer’s by his
coworkers… And since whichever of us displays the symptoms of the disease last
gets to make most of the decisions for the family, he’s not too keen to
voluntarily head in that direction. And unless a cure is found in the next
decade or two, we will both surely suffer from it. For joy…
Anyway, so we had a disagreement over how wide to make his
stripes. Turns out I thought he wanted 1.5-2” stripes or wider. At one point he said "wide", and that's what I took it to mean. Turns out I was
wrong. When he said “wide”, he meant .75” stripes, max. Ah, effective
communication. It can be wonderful. The worst part about these stupid socks is
that I don’t know if he’s going to enjoy them nearly as much as either of the
kids or I enjoy ours… Only time will tell. But he’s already been notified that
this is the last pair of “manually” striped socks I’m making. Ever. I told him
I was knitting them with love in almost every stitch. The remaining stitches
are knitted with curse words.
I’m carrying the unused color up each round by twisting it
with the live yarn. That ‘seam’ runs up the backs of the socks. If I had to do
it all over again, I’d probably put the ‘seam’ on one of the sides. But since I’m
never doing this again, I can forget that handy little tip right now. Also, I
was so focused on trying to get the yarn twists just right on the first sock
that I skipped the bit where I usually rotate the dpn intersections to avoid
laddering (by shifting stitches). I haven’t figured out how to knit in the
round without ladders without rotating the intersections yet. I’ll keep working
on it, because I’m sure it’s possible. In the meantime, I’ll continue to rotate
the stitches. The end result on the first sock is that it’s got four very clear
(to me) ladders and the stupid non-working yarn shows through in some places
(namely the heel) very badly.
Now that I’m getting close to the heel on the second sock, I
can report the laddering has disappeared with the shifting-stitches technique.
I took a leap of faith and hoped I could pay attention enough to keep up with
where the twist was supposed to occur while I was also shifting stitches. Turns
out it’s not all that hard and I wish I’d focused more on that than on the
twists on the first sock. Hindsight. Again, another lesson I can immediately
forget, since this is the last time I’ll do it. I’d much rather do color
changes with ends to weave in, but not on .75” stripes. And definitely not when
it means I’ll run out of yarn before the second sock is complete.
Oh, another thing I’ve learned and will actually carry with
me: my husband has huge feet. As he said to me the other night: You know what
they say about men with big feet? My answer: their wives spend way too much
time knitting their never-ending socks. So they better damn-well appreciate the
effort. (See that there? That’s part of the cursing that goes into any stitch
not knitted with love… And the cursing is way more colorful in my mind. I’m
betting that will be the part that itches, if this stuff itches at all. Which
it probably won’t, because it’s nicer than any yarn I’ve knitted for myself
thusfar… Go figure.)
Brocade pattern update: I ditched the brocade pattern idea
once I started that sock I took camping. The yarn was way too busy to see
much stitch detail. I’ll keep that one tucked away for the next set of solid
color socks I make.
Oh, I almost forgot. I’m also knitting some fru-fru scarves
for my aunt. She ordered four scarves in that ladder ribbon yarn (at least I
think the photo she emailed me was of ladder ribbon yarn) for Christmas gifts. I’m doing a simple,
random dropped-stitch pattern to get the most bang for the buck out of the
yarn. It’s basically this:
CO 16 st on US 13 needles
Row 1-whenever: k
Next row: k1, *yo, k1. Rep from * to end
Next row: k1, *drop yo, k1. Rep from * to end
Repeat row 1 – dropped yo row. Alter number of knit rows
randomly.
I’ve been knitting anywhere from 2-5 rows in between the yo
& dropped-yo rows. I tried to make it consistent, but it’s nearly
impossible for me to tell how many rows I’ve knit in garter stitch in between
the yo/dropped-yo rows. So it’s a random pattern. Drapes wonderfully. And is
purely for show.
So anyway, it’s after 2am my time. I have several hours to
go before anyone’s up and ready for the beach. I’ll keep working on hubby’s
second sock (while hoping I don’t run out of black yarn). I’ll also continue to
ignore the baby blanket until I get up enough motivation to figure out where I
was in the stitch pattern… I’m pretty sure I put it down in the middle of a
row, like a maroon… There’s also that other yarn I bought for my next pair of
socks that I could cast on. Decisions, decisions...
