Knit-along Little Doggie!!

it is with deep regret that i inform you...

my most beautiful pair of socks have been FELTED and are now too small to even fit my son's feet.  my DH threw them into the wash and they came out oven mitts.  There was a matter of a small panic attack, and then i started to think about how much i really wanted to knit these from a different yarn anyway.  the Heilo really wasn't very soft and it was 100% wool so it didn't have much in the way of memory either.  it stretched out really fast.  so this is a good excuse for me to make another pair.
my friend at work had her baby this week and the hat they gave him in the hospital wasn't good enough for a baby as cute as he was, so i went home and pulled out my copy of Last Minute Knitted Gifts and whipped out a baby hat in less than 3 hours.  it was really sweet, and looks great on him.  my friend Heather has a photo on her camera of the baby in the hat so i'll post it as soon as i can.  meanwhile, here's the hat to hold you over.
and now, i'm going back to the tabi socks that i'm making for Carolyn and hopefully i'll finally get around to finishing my Central Park Hoodie.

Back to blogging/knitting/reading

Tonight, I submitted the final draft of my term paper for my Leadership and Management class, with 9 minutes to spare and now my time is my own again!  I did enroll in another class that starts tomorrow, but I'm going to drop it and take a break over the summer.  I need time to play with my boys and watch scary movies, and knit, and stuff.  I started a pair of Petty Coat socks that need some adjusting on the pattern so that they will fit my large feet, and a pair of "footlets" from the Favorite Socks book for a coworker's girlfriend's birthday.  That book really is my favorite for socks so far.  I'm on my 3rd or 4th pair from this book since I picked it up. 
I also still need to finish my Central Park Hoodie for work.  I think it's going back to my "knit at home project" and the socks are my "knit in public project".  I'll bring the socks to my friend Rebeca's on Monday nights and work on the sweater at home.  Rebeca lives near by in a small and adorable basement apartment that is cool, and quiet, and perfect for hanging out and knitting while watching Bones.  I'm really looking forward to relaxing some, and just knitting on some of this sock yarn i've been stashing.
On a side note, I've been watching the Saw movies now that i realize there's a plot behind all that killing, and i started to read Cell by Steven King after hearing about it in my Horror Knits group in Ravelry.  I'm also recently into my son's Nintendo DS thanks to some coworkers and the game Big Brain Academy, and i'm trying to potty train the baby.  lots of stuff to do!

Socks for Seeley, done!

I am so excited to have these ready to go.  Honestly, i'm a little sad to see them done and off the needles.  these have been with me for a month, working on them at work while waiting for customers/businesses to answer the phone, and while sitting in Relief Society meetings on Sunday.  they were the perfect "take anywhere" project and now i need to find another pair to take to work.  they are blocking right now, and i hope that they'll be dry enough to go on their way tomorrow.  soon they'll be in the office of David's agent and on their way to the set of Bones where they will wait hoping to be chosen for their 15 minutes of fame on the feet of Seeley Booth.  one can only hope.

in other news, i went down to peter patchus on thursday and got a flat out steal on some lace weight yarn that i have great plans for.  some Jagger Spun 2/20 100% wool, and some olive green St Regis 100% wool, 3lbs worth total for $18.00!  literally THOUSANDS of yards of wool lace weight for under 20 bucks.  i can't wait to start a huge big epic shawl.

summer's here

well, its been a while again.  i feel sort of like this blog has become my red-headed step-child, what with school, work and my boys.  and the heat has come to New England so it's been too hot to do much of anything.  i have one more week left of my Leadership and Management class, and then i'm back to an easy class.
knitting is happening, just slower that i'd like.  i've been working on my Central Park Hoodie at home, and my Retro Rib socks for Bones at work.  both are in the home stretch and i hope to have a new sweater that i can wear at work.  i really hope this is a success.  i used the suggested seam from Vogue Knits to seam the shoulders but due to the cable, it didn't come out as perfect as i really wanted.  however, it is better than the seam for my Scarlet, which i still plan to reknit one day in wool. 
i bought some much needed wanted sock yarn for i-don't-even-know-what and the last minute knitted gifts book to knit my hourglass sweater.  i hope that my husband will not notice the new yarn (he has a knack for that) and that i actually use this before i get something new.  that's going to be hard but at todays gas prices, i'll have to manage.  i did, however, pick up a flat from Flat Feet and seriously look forward to knitting with it.

it's been quite some time since i had time to post, and since then i've made progress on my socks for Seeley for the Bones group.  i'm working them toe up in trekking XXL (orange color-way) in the retro rib pattern from the book Favorite Socks, and i'm on the leg of the 2nd sock now.  i hope to be done by the end of the week.  i've been working these at work and working on my central park hoodie at home, when i'm not reading and doing homework for my Leadership and Management course.  I got an A on my mid-term so i'm doing well and i just have a rather large term paper to work on, all while working a full time job and being a mom.  Busy, busy.
Speaking of being rather busy, if you have a STOP & SHOP market in your area, take advantage of their CHOOSE AND COOK selections in the deli area.  i got to try it for free yesterday thanks to Buzz Agent, and it was so great.  there's an entrees, a side, a veggie, and a sauce.  i chose the sweet chili chicken and it was really fast and everyone agreed that it was really good.  they have them color coded so you can try a meal that they put together, or you can mix and match them.  you can also shop ala cart if you want.  the whole meal works out to 4.00 a person (19.99 total if you get all 4 parts) and everything is already prepared.  it took me all of 20 minutes to have a healthy and tasty meal on the table for my family.  i think i'll be using these again really soon.  if anyone is interested in trying this, i have coupons for 7.00 off the meal and i'd be happy to snail-mail one out.  there's a limited number of coupons so first come, first served.
and now i'm off to head to work and start my day all over again.

The lengths that I had to go to...

Yesterday at work I was freezing to death and I had on my Crocs with out any socks.  I don't know what I was thinking because I need to keep my feet warm to keep the rest of me warm.  So anyway, there I was freezing under several layers of hand knits and I thought about how much I really needed a pair of socks and that I have a pair under my cube that I've been knitting on for the better part of a year, and I was so desperate to be warm that I broke down and cast off my mostly knit sock, and put them on.  Yes...I wore a partially finished pair of socks...and I was WARM! 

It's what I've been reduced to.

Finally!

I got my last packages over the last 2 days and now i have my lace weight bare merino from Knit Picks for my shawl, my blocking wires, my ball winder and my umbrella swift!  I set them right up and wound up a couple cakes of my Cascade 220 to work on the Central Park Hoodie.  As soon as I get a chance, I'm going to take apart 3 sweaters that no longer fit well, or are just worn out, and wind them into cakes too.  I think there's still enough life in the yarn to recycle it, and it's in the theme of Earth Day so that works too! 
I also got this in the mail:
Socks That Rock lightweight sock yarn in Pond  Scum for my Ghostbuster's inspired socks.  I wound it up into a cake today and it's ready to go.  I also got this:
Socks That Rock lace weight Silky Thread in Tlingit (from the Raven series) for another Ghostbuster's inspired project that I have yet to design.  I've never used silk yarn, let alone 100% silk so this should be a real treat.
I'm making good progress on the Central Park Hoodie.  Working the shoulder decreases now and hope to be on the fronts very soon, as my current work sweater blew a hole in the elbow and now is among the pile to be recycled. 

I'm alive.

I've just been trying to study for my final in this class, deal with an almost 2 year old (not fun) and waiting for my yarn to arrive.  The socks that rock order should be here in the next few says so I'm really looking forward to that.  i need to knit the sample for the "slimer" socks and then get the pattern out to the Ghostbusters group.  today I'm heading to the library to pick up the copy of Barbara Walker's treasury of knitting books that i had on order and I'll see what i can do about the Zuul shawl.  (My hubby got me a action figure of Gozer on Monday... too cool!)

On the knitting front, i cast on for the Central Park Hoodie and have reached the first section of shaping the armpit.  the fabric is coming out really nicely and i have high hopes for this sweater.  right now I'm working on the work vest again because I'm just too lazy to roll another skein into a ball without my ball winder.  maybe I'll get over it and my yearning for the sweater will overcome my laziness.

More sock progress:

so i worked out the written directions only to discover that i had the decreases incorrect.  (i may have mentioned this already...)  the chart helped me to see where i had made the mistakes.  so after correcting the chart, and copying it into paint to draw in the pattern repeat, i cast on for the sock and started knitting. i've worked out how many rows of ribbing i like for this pattern, and then started the pattern only to discover that the chart is basically upside down.  i need to either knit this pattern toe-up as written, or flip the chart to be knit from the top down.  personally, i prefer to knit toe up, but i'm not really comfortable explaining that in pattern form so i'm going to flip the chart and try again.  in the meantime, i ordered the yarn yesterday so hopefully i'll be done playing around with the details by the time it arrives and i can just get right to it.

Boy!  Designing is really tough and a whole lot of work.  I'm working on a pair of socks for my Ghostbusters group on Ravelry and it's not as easy as it seemed.  After some searching, I found a pattern that I thought would be perfect.  I wrote down the pattern to take home and play with, only to find that the pattern was written to be knit flat.  that meant that i needed to tweak it a bit so that it could be knit in the round.  i worked on that part yesterday and emailed the final results to myself at work to be printed down.  later today after i finished my work, i sat down with excel to see how it would chart out.  good thing that i did, because i found that my "in the round" directions were not exactly correct.  i had to adjust some of the decreases so that they formed the shape i was going for.  then i took that info and input it into the MSPaint program so that i could crop it and draw in the pattern repeat.  i saved that and printed it out to take home.
after doing homework and some other stuff, i finally sat down with some left over Socks That Rock (as i'm going to knit the pattern from their light weight yarn) and knit a swatch with the flat directions to get an idea of the gauge in the pattern, and also knit in strait stitch to gauge that as well.  so far i'm hitting 7 stitches per inch on 2.5mm needles.  tomorrow, i'm going to cast on with some other yarn that i get the same gauge with to see if my in the round directions will work and if they make sense.