Hee!

A few days ago I checked on the mail status of the gifted "halloween" socks. After an hour or so of "What do you mean the package is being returned? What happened??" My sister-in-law heard back from the recipient who said:

Anyways, I did received a super, yummy, delicious pair of socks in the mail from ya today! Maybe the post office screwed up and didn't update correctly??? So thank you soooooooo much!!! Did you make these??? WOW!!!! They fit perfectly and you can see them on my tootsies in the swap thread!!! Feel great on my feet....I had to go to my podiatrist this morning and had another rather painful shot in my foot for a bunion/neuroma and it was great to have these to slip into when I came home!!!!!! I think they are about the prettiest pair of socks I've seen in a long time and with great autumn colors, too!!!!! Fabulous stalking!!!!

Thank YOU!!!!!

Boy did I turn red! I could've heated the office with my cheeks.

Her picture (probably the best representation of the color yet):



#33. Knitting rules.

Block, baby, block!

Knitter Inferno!



Well, thank god that's over. Now I can work on projects for me! Like mom's mittens!

...wait...

In other news, here is first sock:



I'm working the gusset decreases on sock: the two.

#22. The more projects you have going at once the longer it takes to finish any of them.

I had a free weekend for the first time in a long time (and for the last time for a while), so I made some fierce kind of progress.

Let's explore!

I finished the first halloween/camo/mess of concerns sock. For some reason I neglected to take a picture of it. It looks like a sock. And the color... is okay. It's not so much "HEY, HALLOWEEN-STYLE!" as "Oh, you say this is halloween-themed? ...Okay, okay, I could see that."

I'm still a little concerned about the size. I didn't like the information about foot size I found on the internet, so I thought I'd find a size 7 and get a measurement. I asked a bunch of friends what size feet they had, and since I hadn't talked to most of them in ages it was a little awkward.

Me: Hi! How've you been for the past three years? Um! What size feet do you have?
My friends: ....?

But I got a decent estimate for sock length. However, look at the unfinished sock as compared to the sock for me (remember: camo sock = size 7, purple sock = size 9):



Yeah... Oh dear. Well, it's a little too small for me, length-wise, so it'll be okay, right? ...right?

I have to wonder, though, after all this work and worry, will the receiver of socks even appreciate a hand-knitted item? Will I even find out? Does it matter?

I cast on for the second sock at Scott's house last night, and it took me all of The Royal Tenenbaums (including the credits) to knit up just the picot edge (which included making a crochet chain by hand and praying that it was long enough). Still, though, I thought for sure I'd make it to the heel.

Don't have a picture of that either. Heh.

Hanyway. Because I am Single-Minded and Noble in the Gifting of Socks I definitely did not work on other projects, because I am Totally Unselfish and Need Not the Garments for Self. My only concern is the Woolifying of Others! Noble. Yes.

So you should realize that all the following pictures are hypothetical progress. You know, as if I were so Rude as to work on something other than the Socks this weekend. These are all Photoshopped. Yes, that's it. I am a master of Photoshop.

First up, a blur-tastic shot of my re-working of the hideous grafting start/end point:



It took me all of an episode of "Sex and the City" to figure that one out. It looks like I'm decreasing two stitches, not just one. And while it looks like a proper decrease now (without holes! This is a serious victory) it's still a decrease in the middle of stockinette and stands out like a black person at a republican convention (zing!). (Joke survey: Tasteless? Hilarious? Discuss).

So it's still ugly. I think what I'll do is drop the stitches all the way down to the ribbing, do the decrease there, and then chain all the way back up. I'm a little worried that the new, chained stitches will be loose, though. And that it'll pull the ribbing in a weird way. Well, only one way to find out.

I also wove a large number of ends in. It's possible I got a little lazy at the end and started wondering if anyone was really going to check the inside of my sweater for unwoven-in ends. I mean, I don't care if there are loose ends. And none of my real friends will care either. Ahem.

In similar news, here's how it looks these days:



(It was incredibly tilted on the hanger, so I tilted the camera. It's artistic. Shut up).

I also definitely did not work a few (and I mean a few -- like 2) rows on my purple sock, but if I had, it might look like this:



My first pair of socks (which are less "mistake rib" and more just "mistake;" see Thing I've Learned #12) got a hole in one of them, and now I'm desperate -- desperate! -- for socks.

I also didn't do more work on my mom's mittens.



But if I had, I might note that holy hell I love this texture:



(I found the super-macro button on my camera! Hellooo, super close-ups!)

And the last thing I would do, because this would be too slimy for words, is swatch with some scraps of Classic Elite Princess for the Rebecca Wrap With Sleeves.

.

Really, I would never do such a thing.



(Extreme close-up! Whoooooaaaaaa! Whoooooaaaaaaa!).

My grandparents sent me a very nice check for my birthday, and so while I am an Adult who does Mature, Responsible, Adult Things and plan to put some of it towards one of those Funds that will become Important Later, I also feel it's my duty to spend some of it on me towards awesome self-related things. Maybe to an Amazon gifting, or to a sweater's worth of Classic Elite Princess, because I love that yarn so hard it hurts. I don't know if it's Rebecca Wrap Sweater material, though. Hence, theoretical swatch.

Theoretical.

#19: When making socks, only measure feet when sock-receiver is standing. There's a giant difference between sitting feet and standing feet. Trust me.

The yarn for Karen's comissioned halloween socks showed up. She'd requested orange and black stripey socks in a size seven, and I said sure!

Because I am delusional.

TURNS OUT, orange and black stripey sock yarn? Seriously hard to find. At all. Ever.

But I found this:


It seemed halloween...ish, and I sent the link to Karen, and she liked it, so I ordered a skein and waited.

I was finally able to pick up the yarn the other day, and set about casting on the picot edge and went for a while and... oh... there are some problems.

1. It's less "halloween" and more "autumn-ish." Karen was okay with this, so oaky.
2. It's not really "autumn-ish" so much as "hunter's camo colored." Lots of dark olive green which I'd thought was yellow.
3. It's only got 270 yards. The website says that'll give you a pair of socks on size 3 needles. I'm using size 1.
4. Size 1 needles gives a firmer fabric than I thought it would. I tried 2s, but it seemed a little loose.
5. I can only hope they fit. They fit ME, but I wear a size 9 and the swap buddy wears a 7. How much do ankle/heel sizes vary? Not much, right? Right?
6. Even though I'm getting refunded, it was kind of expensive.

But hey! On the plus side,
1. It's lovely yarn. Not so much the color, but the yarn itself is nice.
2. It's going pretty quickly.



It's more vibrant and there's more orange in it than this... But not much more.

Hoo boy. I think I'll just tell Karen that if she thinks they're too ugly for words she doesn't have to buy them.

And here's the progress on the purple picot socks for me, which are on hold until the camo halloween socks are done.



Oof.