Misadventures in Knitting

I'd like to show you a picture of Jaime's socks and how tiny their little stitches out and how manly the greens and tawny brown plies look, all knitted up... Unfortunately, the socks are in time out and do not deserve to have their picture taken.

Let me explain... Thursday I went to my fiber arts guild meeting where we had a guest giving us a lecture on bobbin lace. I originally thought we were going to have a hands on bobbin lace experience but it was more of an informative speech on the history and materials necessary. Now, due to my obsessive / addictive personality, I have to sort of limit what I allow myself to get interested in (See: my three spinning wheels and metric arseload of fiber). It didn't take me long to realize that for the sake of my sanity, storage space, and eyesight... I absolutely can not get into bobbin lace.

Still it was a lovely evening. I like spending time with other fiber folk - there's something very relaxing about being surrounded by other people with a shared passion for something the rest of the world thinks is a bit quirky. And I'd taken my socks along so I sat back in my comfy chair and commenced to enjoy an hour of devoted knitting time in excellent company. I finished the heel flaps. I began turning the heel cups. I finished the heels and started my decreasing instep rows, complimenting myself on my speedy mastery of two-at-a-time DPN socks. Once I've finished the heels and picked up the stitches, I feel like the whole sock is a home stretch from there. I was definitely feel confident about those socks when the meeting ended.

So, uh. Imagine my surprise when I pulled them on later to check the length and found them feeling... really odd. After some squinting, poking, and fussing... it turns out, I screwed them up. I mussed up the heel somehow - apparently I was distracted enough to turn them off center - both the same way. So I have to frog and start over but I'm just not feeling up to it right now, so the socks are in time out. That didn't stop me from dragging them all over this weekend, but they're still in time out.

But that's alright because progress was made on other fronts. I took the alpaca to Jaime's place, measured his head, and cast on a beanie. 

Ignore my messy work desk. 

It's just flying along. Spend enough time working 2.25mm needles and 3.75 will feel HUGE!

I also started plying all that sweater stuff for my February Lady. I filled one giant bobbin and now I'm chewing on my fingers over whether I'll wind up with enough yardage for the whole shebang.

So far I've plied, washed, and dried about 530 yards. It's a 3-ply, light blue, dark blue, and a dark brown. I've yet to take a picture that does the colour justice but I love it. Love it, love it, love it. If I don't have enough I'm not totally sure what I'll do... sob hysterically for awhile, probably.

I was a little worried my yarn would be too busy for the lacey part of the pattern so I knit up a few repeats to test - again, terrible lighting but so pretty!