Two socks for two feet

Woo hoo! Another project completed. I am on a ROLL here!! It feels good to be lightening my load of WIPs. This is what I am trying to do with my entire life right now, preparing for The Move. I am, by nature, a pack rat. And naturally, I have collected many things over the years. So it is quite fortuitous right now that my dad was moving at the same time we are (extremely fortuitous considering we got to buy his beautiful house which is now our beautiful house) so this has given me/forced upon me the perfect opportunity to go through every last thing I own, not only what's in my house in preparation for moving, but also what was stored in my dad's attic.

Back to knitting. Here they are...two whole socks. I finished the Striped Socks from this pattern. This project used less than one ball of Lion Brand Magic Stripes yarn in the "Purple Pattern" color. Here are some pix:

Now on to other projects, in between going through crap stuff in the house. I am plugging away at the fuzzy sparkly scarf at the moment, though that is fun to knit and might be nice to save for when it gets cold out (which it is not right now as we have a "tropical air mass" over us at the moment that is making things very damp and sticky. Isn't it September?? September in southeastern PA is normally very nice. Not like this. Sigh. And I've already resigned myself to the fact that we're not going to have a gorgeous fall because of the lack of rain we've had all summer. Oh well. That's what family trips to Vermont are for!)

Ready for Fall

Well, it is finally done. Whew. That pesky longways-striped scarf. And know what? I actually like it now. Finished casting off, put it around my neck (I was pleased to see that my calculations for its length worked well, as it is plenty long enough to go around my neck with enough length for holding it in place) and decided it is rather nice and cozy after all. The stripes going that direction are quite fun.

So without further ado...here is the Sideways Striped Scarf:

I had made that double layer gray hat out of the same gray as the darker gray in the scarf. So actually this will be a nice set. Now for some mittens. Truth be told, I tried making a pair of mittens for this set but was rather unsatisfied, as mitten #1 came out WAY too small, even though I used my usual pattern and same weight of yarn as other successful mittens from my past. The only thing I can think of that might have gone wrong is that I might have changed the gauge when I pulled my color changes tight (I didn't have any jogs though!) Oh well. That design I really ended up not liking so perhaps I'll just pick one of those other colors and make some solid color mittens to go. There's a plan.

aaaaarrgh.

Well, it would appear that apparently I do not in fact know how to pick up a dropped stitch in garter. Even when (or perhaps especially when) every row is a different color.

argh.

So I was knitting away this weekend on this scarf when as I was moving my stitches around the needles, my hand slipped and off went one of them, and because I'd pulled it a bit, it went down a couple of rows right away. Curses. So I dutifully got out my crochet hook and tried my best at picking up that stitch. But I was totally mystified. I got out my books...I went online seeking instruction...and I still couldn't get it. And I consider myself a competent knitter? Sheesh. So after a very frustrating half-hour or so (during which time I hollered at my poor husband who happened to say something at just the wrong time--sorry sweetie!) I decided to run a "life line" through a few rows down (which actually ended up being quite a few rows down since I'd managed to make the dumb thing "run" a bit) and pulled out the knitting. This was after I threw it across the room.

The second-to-worst part about this (the worst is the fact that I have discovered I can't pick up stitches) is that I don't even really like this scarf anymore, and I would have given up on it a while ago if it weren't for the fact that every row is its own length of yarn that could not have been saved if I decided to scrap the project. So I decided to soldier on and finish the thing, and then this happens. Hence the throwing it across the room.

But there's a happy ending. Even though I went back about 12 rows (and that's saying something considering there are I think over 200 stitches per row) during a rather bad movie we watched on Saturday night I got nearly all of it reknitted and am on the last row. Yay. Oh, I forgot the other painful part of this whole thing... I was on the next-to-last row when I dropped the stitch. ARGH. But it's all over now...if I can just get that last row knit and bound off, then I'll be a happy camper.