Because that's how rumours get started...

As a matter of fact, the Mind-on-Holiday socks were stuffed in the previous photo - with sock yarn: This was a trick I picked up from Anna's blog. It makes it way easier to keep the 2 balls of yarn from getting tangled up. BTW - do you get one of those optical illusion effects when you look at the yarn inside the sock? Like you are seeing the inner walls of the sock heading away from you rather than the ball of yarn heading towards you? Or maybe it's just me.

The Big Reveal!!!

May I present to you...The INSPIREred Socks!!! Here's what they look like in action... And a closeup of the cat hair stitch pattern. Knit with just under 2 full skeins of Regia Silk Shine (those are sparkly bits on the closeup, not kitty dandruff). Cast on Jauary 25, Cast off February 5th. Both socks knit at the same time using 2.5 mm addi circs. I'm going to write this pattern up; because the stitch pattern is 50%knit and 50% purl, it's fairly forgiving in terms of foot width. And if it's too big around the ankle, it forms folds rather than slouching down completely.

Knit a pair of socks in just over a minute

Janis's socks are en route. Photos will be posted once she recieves them; but for your viewing pleasure, here's a slideshow of the "mystery socks in progress" images.

Done!!!

I finished the socks yesterday afternoon, and wove the ends in last night while waiting for tension swatches to dry. I am swatching yarns for Poppy, and was disappointed to realize that the skein of purple Cascade 220 that I picked up in Chicago is too blue to coordinate with the Black Purl Colorway. So the hunt is on for either more Black Purl, or an alternate worsted yarn that I can use in this sweater.

If I could knit when I sleep I'd be set

I overestimated the amount of knitting I could get done last night before bedtime, so I only finished knitting one toe. That sock is now on some DPNs, waiting to be grafted. I started the short rows on the second sock this morning. Currently, I am debating whether or not to go downhill skiing today. It's not just that I am eager to finish the socks that makes me hesitate, but the fact that my car is parked at the bottom of our access road, because it was too slippery for me to make it all the way up last night when I came back from cross country skiing. If I go downhill skiing, I will have to schlep all my downhill gear down the road. If I go cross country skiing instead, all of my stuff is already in the car. And it's an hour's drive to the ski hill, rather than the 25 minute drive to the cross country club...man but I am spoiled, aren't I?

Tonight the toes...

Tomorrow the world! Because I'm pretty sure that these socks are going to be a bit wide on Janis, I am knitting them a bit shorter than her foot measurement. That's why there's the purple thread right at the end - in case they are too short and the toes need to be reknit. In retrospect, this stitch pattern is 50%knit 50% purl, so I should have doublechecked the tension in pattern.

Yay for knitting!

I flew home today. Because it was a morning flight, I ended up getting to the airport early because there was minimal traffic. So I sat down with the mystery socks and got to work. We subsequently boarded the plane, but after about 10 minutes, we had to deplane because there was something wrong with the hydraulics. So we waited for another plane. I knitted. Then it turned out that we needed to wait for a new pilot, because the long flight would lead to the piot flying over his max shift length. I knitted some more. Finally departed (about 2.5 hours late). More than half of the people on the plane were starting ski holidays, so it took forever to get my suitcase (they unloaded suitcases last). So I knitted some more. So after all that, I am now less than 2 inches from starting the toe. It's entirely possible that I could finish these socks this weekend. Of course, now that I am home, there are a few projects that I want to get on the needles...

In the home stretch!

I did the heels yesterday!! And I have to say that I am now a short row heel convert. The method used in Simple Socks Plain and Fancy is brilliant! And the best part is that I don't have to pick up any stitches, which is something I hate doing. I ended up doing one heel at a time. Unfortunately, because I am knitting the 2 socks on one circ, there's goig to be a bit of a hole on one side (sorry Janis)because I couldn't k2tog one of the stitches on the heel needle to one of the stitches on the instep needle for each sock. I think in future I will just transfer one sock to a second circ temporarily when I knit this type of heel.

Decision time

I am 2 rows away from starting the heels on Janis's socks. I will probably do short row heels, if only becase the sock knitting book that I brought with me (Simple Socks, Plain and Fancy) gives instructions for short rowsI attended a Wednesday Night Knitting Meetup yesterday, and 38 people were in attendance!! The numbers were higher than usual, probably because it was a "Swap your Stash" night. I had given some thought to having Kyle bring some of my unlikely to be used yarn along with him for me to foist off on give to another knitter, but it occured to me that the yarn I'd have him bring is in the storage bag that is under the couch, the existence of which he is blissfully unaware. So I will have to wait until I finally do move here. Despite the fact that I didn't bring anything with me, I ended up bringing a bagful of stuff home with me. I did, however, facilitate someone else getting rid of their hot pink boucle yarn (the girl who sat beside me last night is going to have her first baby in June; I asked if she knew the sex. When she replied that it is a girl, I told her she had to take the pink yarn). It's going to be so great to live in a city with an active knitting community! Unforunatley, the latest wrinkle in our move is that we might not be able to arrange bridge financing until we have an accepted offer on our current house, which could push our actual move date into late spring, or possibly as late as June!!! Which would mean that I would stay in a hotel the weeks that I'd work in the hospital, and then fly back "home" between work weeks. I now have to see if we can arrange for some fancy financial footwork like taking out a temporary second mortgage. I swear by all things holy, that I will never move again! Well, at least not in the next 5 years...

Monty Python Post*

If Somerset stopped shedding... Would she look like this? Meet Kara; she and her partner Smokey are letting me stay with them while their slaves owners are in Cuba. I fear that I may have blown their pea-sized minds; there seems to be a complicated arrangement of dishes for their cat food, and I think that I may have put the wrong food in the wrong dish. However, as much as I love animals, I do not believe in catering to feeding whims. (Which is interesting, because in other domains, the cats have me wrapped around their cute little paws. I have felt actual guilt about the fact that they probably won't have a balcony to sit on once we move) This is the opposite of my parents, who have a Lab that will not eat his dinner unless there's gravy on it, and it's warmed up, and the pawprints on his bowl are facing forward or some such nonsense. My personal theory is that if you left him with nothing but the cold dry dog food, after a few days, he'd learn to like it. I have made significant progress on the socks since my last post. Sandi organized a pub knit yesterday evening which was loads of fun. I got to hang out with a bevy of cool T.O. knitters, like Lisa,Jacquie, Sophie, and other people who's blogs I cannot track down. One wee little problem was that it was in "the Vault", which had pretty dim lighting. Surprisingly, I managed to avoid making significant mistakes, until I got to the last row before I do some rounds of straight knit or purl. But by then it was time to leave, so no big loss. And I managed to knit off and on today at the hospital I'll be starting at in March when I went in for the day to babysit supervise patients during the transfer of the ICU from its dingy old location to its shiny new location. Now I just need to figure out how long to make the calf before I start on the heel (and what type of heel to do!) *And now for something else completely different: Valley cloud: When you have a large body of water at the bottom of a mountain valley, you get cold air inversions sitting on top of the moist air, leading to low lying cloud cover. Those are the Monashee Mountains poking through the cloud cover.

You can't keep a good naan down...

Is there some kind of conspiracy out there that involves eliminating the yogurt from naan bread?? I went out for Indian food tonight (since I am on my own in Toronto until Kyle arrives on Tuesday), and was once again disappointed by the naan. No slightly sweet taste; it just tasted bready. If I wanted an oversized pita, I'd ask for one. This has happened at different Indian restaurants in 3 or 4 cities; in fact, I'm hard pressed to say where or when I last had a good naan. Memo to our national airline and my local airport: If ALL of Saturday's flights from our airport to Canada's largest city are cancelled, and you know that everyone has to be home from their ski holiday by Monday morning, might you consider taking this into account, and getting extra staff in on Sunday? Also, if you see that there is a 45 minute lineup just to drop off your bags, and dozens of people are still waiting in line 5 minutes after their plane is supposed to board, would it be so difficult to have a) a separate line through security for the people on the soon to depart flight so that they don't have to wait in line behind the senior citizens who showed up 3 hours early for their flight, and b) a person announcing that because of the huge lineups/dealys, that the flight would be taking off late, thus lowering the ambient anxiety level significantly? Oh yeah, and to the guy who monopolized one of the 2 baggage drop persons for 15 minutes rather than wait in the appropriate line to see the ticketing agent: I hope they sent your shiny new downhill skis to Kuala Lumpur. Good thing I had my knitting to keep me calm: I am now far enough along on the socks to see how the stitch pattern is looking. It isn't what I had expected - probably because it is based on a colourwork pattern. The textural effect is pretty cool, however. One minor concern that I have is that I am able to slip the socks over my own ankles at this point. I'm hoping that doesn't mean that they will be too loose on Janis.

Back on the Saturday Sky track

7 AM this morning. Some groovy cloud action as I was flamingo hunting this afternoon : The clouds looked like they were etched on a flat surface. Another WIP sighting - antifreeze. I was knitting it when we flew to Vancouver to see The Painted Veil, and I ended up doing an extra few rounds; I completed it, but the extra rounds and some other alterations I made to the pattern didn't work out. So I ripped it back; should be able to finish it in an evening - I think I'll do it next Saturday (the day I return home from Toronto) And, here's what you have all been waiting for - the mystery sock update:I managed to untangle the unholy intermingling of skeins. Ribbing is done. The pattern is different on each sock, which is why one of the socks has a piece of waste yarn tied to it. You may also notice that the skeins don't have such a strong resemblance to kidneys (See, your feedback really is important to me!). I'm hoping to get a decent amount of knitting done on these socks during my 4+ hour flight tomorrow.

Screaming along at a snail's pace...

If I come across a blackboard I will write "knitting 2 socks at once only seems to go really slowly"on it 100 times. Yes, there is a miniscule increase in the size of the socks; at least it's at the point where the ribbing is recognizable. The tangle in the yarn is because I decided to knit in the car as we drove to Peachland to have dinner. The sun had already set, so it was pretty dark, and although I was able to knit by feel, I wasn't able to keep the 2 skeins properly oriented, so they decided to make macrame. Here's another WIP that I started in...um...November, or was it late October? Another Maryella for another Secret Pal. Plus a gratiutous sleeping cat shot. I actually completed and cast off the bracelet last night, but I still need to sew the snaps on. I had hoped to have my last 2 Secret Pal packages ready to be mailed tomorrow, but it's not looking good.