Sock #2 nearing completion

Had a nice weekend with some time to knit! There was no threat to my knitting by other things I should have been doing, like going through things in preparation for our move, and that's because my husband and I spent a weekend away at a wedding of one of his good friends. A very lovely wedding! And since we went for the rehearsal on Friday and the wedding wasn't until 3pm on Saturday, we had some relaxing time in the morning and so I had some nice time to knit.

I'd taken along the socks I'm working on, and I made some good headway on the second one. I turned the heel and did all of the picking up of stitches and then the gussets, and now I'm in the home stretch part of the foot.

I have decided that I really want to finish off some things I have going. So on the list of things I want to finish soon are:

• the almost complete striped socks
  
• the fun but a-little-too-warm-for-summer-knitting fuzzy blue/sparkly scarf
  
• the somewhat-boring-not-thrilled-with-it-but-want-to-finish sideways striped scarf
  

So that's my plan. I want to get these little things out of my way so I can concentrate on other stuff, like the sparkly black Sitcom Chic sweater.

I have also decided to try and keep my WIPs down to a minimum (every now and then I get this urge) and really make the effort to try and keep just a few on the needles, including one more involved project, and one "mindless" project that's good for travel, etc., like a scarf or socks. In this case, once I finish the socks, then the wavy scarf will become that project. A little part of me has always been bothered by having little, slightly boring projects going, but now I have a new way of looking at it, which is, there is nothing wrong with having a nice travel project around that I can just grab and go! So that's my plan.

A little bit of fear

That's how I feel about this pattern...Rogue. It is just SO beautiful. I love the cables, and the hood, and the pocket... I am thinking about investing in the pattern because really it's not that much of an investment, and maybe one day I'll be brave enough to try it. See, I am afraid of the charts. The website says that the cables are written in chart form, which I have never used. And clearly it's a rather complicated pattern. I do have confidence in myself that I could do it...I do, I really do...but still a little scary. At least there are vast amounts of stockinette so I could do most of it just fine, and only get stuck on smaller parts...right?

Oh how I love that sweater...

Not much knitting

I have been very remiss in writing here lately. And I have been so busy that I haven't even had time for any knitting (gasp!). This whole impending move thing is taking up a lot of time, going through stuff and trying to be brutal and get rid of stuff. (I am a saver, a.k.a. pack rat, and I come by it naturally since my dad is one too!)

As mentioned before, I did take the black sweater along on our camping trip...but then got so completely sucked into my book, Maeve Binchy's "Nights of Rain and Stars" that I didn't even pick up my needles once! That's what happens with me when I read her books. I love them, and become very anti-social when I am into one.

So I have a weekend trip to a wedding coming up and I was going to take along the black sweater, but really it's not a project very well-suited to travel. It's not that big yet but rather than the issue of volume I am more concerned with protecting the yarn. I'd like to keep the snags to a minimum, and that's better done from the relative safety of my own home.

Therefore I am taking my sock. The one that has a mate that's already done. So conceivably, depending on how much free time I have, I could have an entire pair of socks done soon. I am at the point where I am about to turn the heel, such a magical thing. Yes, I definitely think this is the best plan for travel. I have some other yarn for socks waiting in the wings (some fun self-striping yarn in red and gray and some pink that's plain but I just couldn't resist, cuz, well, it's pink...kind of matches this page, come to think of it) and when I am done with this sock, I might consider starting one of those others because as I keep seeing people on the knitting parts of the web point out, socks really are a great on-the-go project. I could even keep them all ready to grab, self-contained in their own little tote (seeing as I have more bags than you could shake a stick at, to borrow a phrase I've heard my parents use more than once). That or a scarf. In fact, now that I think about it, for a travel project I should probably finish up one of the scarves I have going before I start any more socks...