One! One Sock! Ha-Ha-Ha!

Here are photos of my Ugliest Sock Evar. Soon, I shall have a second sock, which I started on tonight, to give me the Ugliest Pair of Sox Evar. :)

Still, it's a sock, and more than I'd previously been able to do. I'm hopeful that I will be able to more successfully complete sock #2 of this pair, so that I do the socks for Sean justice, when I get to them. Sean provided easy access to his photo studio & lighting setup for me to take these photos (we set up a 2nd mini-photo studio/lighting setup in my office, too, which is nice!). That's his hand modeling the sock in the first one. And he's holding the sock in the second one. :) Helpful boy are helpful. I am a lucky girl.


I'm likely to not work on the second sock for a bit though. I'd like to see how much of the FIL Scarf I can get through by this weekend. My stepdaughter, Ann, will be arriving here on Friday for her spring break, and we're going to see her grandparents this weekend. So, the more I can complete on the FIL scarf, the closer I'll be to giving that to him soon! I'm really looking forward to seeing Ann.

She's a good kid, but really struggling with being 15, and I think she'll benefit from spending a week with her dad. Sean's a good listener, and a good advice-giver. I think he'll be able to provide some needed perspective. And they're going to look at colleges, since she's almost done with her freshman year of high school, and it's never too soon to start the process. We'd love to have her relatively close by, so that we could provide laundry service or make dinner for her once in a while. I know her mom will appreciate the week-long break, too. And we're going to see Rent at the Orpheum next Thursday!

I am working my way through a beer right now, in honor of St. Patrick's Day (I love St. Patrick's Day - my name's Kelly Ann, and my husband's Sean Patrick. We're a little Irish. (I'm also English, Welsh, Scottish, and Native American, but I've always identified with my Irish roots more than the others). )

It's time for bed soon, though. I've been feeling a little better today, but could use some quality sleep tonight. We've had the windows open since yesterday - love this weather. I appreciate a preview of spring, but I live in Minnesota, so I know the next snowstorm could be right around the corner! I don't take 40s and 50s for granted! Lola and I had fun driving with the sunroof and windows down, though. Whee!

Mumble...

Ugh.

There has been some half-hearted knitting, but I spent all weekend, plus yesterday, pretty dragged down by this not-feeling-well. I had hoped to be most of the way done with my Ugliest Sock Evar, and it's not too far off, but I didn't get to the toe shaping like I wanted to, and class is tonight. I figure I'll just start on the toe shaping/finishing to see how it's done, and worry about knitting myself a pair of socks that fits me later. :) I'd rather see how it's done, and then start a new pair at this point. I measured Sean's feet, so now I have measurements to make him a pair of socks. yay!

Frustrated by not feeling well, especially since it's felt like a low-level Something-Not-A-Cold. I probably should go to the doctor, but have such a non-specific list of symptoms (sinus issues, feeling nauseous yesterday (no, it's definitely not *that*), being utterly exhausted and not sleeping well) that it feels like it would be a waste of their time and effort because I'm not able to really point to anything really wrong, just a low-level not-feeling-well. Still, I guess can't see if there is something specific going on if I don't go in. I could wait till next week and get my annual physical at the same time, so that would be a good thing.

Was supposed to start my crochet class last night at Crafty Planet, but that was sidetracked by how I felt. Fortunately, I can try crochet again another time. It's probably for the best - with the sewing and sock knitting, I feel like I'm trying to tackle enough new crafts to learn. :)

I'll work on a photo of whatever the sock looks like later, after I get home. Have to have a beer when I do finally get home - it's St. Patrick's Day! And I'm Irish.

To close this entry:

Sean got a haricut on Saturday (he once typoed the word "haircut" in an email to me, so now I call them "haricut"s) and while he was at the salon, I was at home knitting a few rows on the FIL Scarf. Yertle felt the need to supervise (that's my laptop, with the knitting splashed across the keyboard, and Yertle inspecting the scarf):

Halfway Point!

I didn't make it to DKN tonight. I wasn't sure if I was going to go, given the week I've had at work, and the fact that I've been fighting... whatever this is. I'm not sure it's a cold, and I should probably hit the doctor's office next week to figure out what's going on.

I went to Freewheel with Panda and DanRay and one of their friends, where we figured out that a road bike Just Isn't For Me. I'll be going back there, possibly this weekend, to test drive some hybrid and/or commuter bikes. And I need to throw my current road bike up on Craigslist and sell it.

I came home and worked on the FIL Scarf. And, lo, I just hit the 50% completion mark! 2 skeins used, 300 rows knitted.

I'm thrilled to be halfway done, and I am optimistic that it won't take me another month to knit the second half. I'm having a blast with this scarf.

Of course, I can see that the sock knitting has the potential to take over my knitting life, and I'm starting my beginning crochet class this coming Monday, so I'll be trying to learn that too. Still, I hope that I can finish this scarf in a reasonable amount of time.

If I can concentrate enough, I should have time to work on the scarf more this weekend.


I'm excited though - I get to leave in a few minutes to pick Sean up from the airport. It's been a long week, and it'll be really nice to see him. And Yertle the Turtle! :)

So glad it's almost Friday!

I'm stealing Random Thursday from Becca.

There are no photos of knitting in today's post. The camera's here, but my photographic muse up and quit the other day, and hasn't come back yet.

I have a slight cold, and feel cranky, partially because of that and partially because it's been a rough week at work. I'm hoping I feel well enough to hoist a pint and get some knitting done tomorrow night.

Sean's scheduled now on a flight getting in from California at midnight, and I've offered to go pick him up at the airport. I'm looking forward to seeing him. It's been a long week, and I need a hug.

Also, in what's a strange, long story, Sean calls me "squishy girl" as a term of endearment (I think it's adorable), and a derivative is "squishy pants." Today, in an email, he referred to me as "mcsquishy" . . . and I instantly figured out that "MCSQSHY" would fit Minnesota's license plate requirements. :P I still like "AUDIBLE", and I haven't decided what I want to go with yet. I have time.

I don't, though, have time with the Civic. That has to get registered in MN, and soon. I should go in on Saturday and get that done. I think we want "CANHAS" or "LOLCAR". We love the lolcats Chez Berry. We speak in lolspeak all the time. It's pretty funny.

Becca and I had fun running around. She got yarn and we had way too much fun ogling beads. I got a bracelet kit, and will post photos once I have made the bracelet for myself. And we had great Indian food @ Best of India (where Sean and I went the night we first saw Lola).

I will put a photo in this post. Just not a knitting-related one. See, at dinner, Becca and I mentioned Chichen Itza, and then I came home, and the show "Warriors" was just starting on History International, about Mayan warriors. So, here's a photo I took of Chicken Pizza, as we've taken to calling it, thanks to our tour guide, who referred to it that way on our tour:



Also, apropos of nothing, I'm completely addicted to the new album by the group The Killers, called Day and Age.

Okay, I need to get some sleep, because tomorrow's not going to be an easy day at work either.

Socks: It's like learning a new dialect of the knitting language!

Okay, so I went to night 2 of my 3 night sock knitting class. This has got to be the ugliest sock evar. In fact, I might go so far as to rename this sock on Ravelry to The Ugliest First Sock Evar.

But. I'm making a sock, and the only way to get better at it is to do it, and we have to start somewhere. I turned the heel last night, which involved a lot of swearing on my part, because, as it turned out, the pattern was doing it rong. The pattern left out a K1 on my first row of decreases on the heel flap. That K1 was pretty important.

With the help of Joan, my teacher, we ripped out the sequence 3 times before she noticed what was missing in the pattern. But as an instructive device, I'll always remember that section with the K1 at the end before turning to start the next row of decreases. I think it'll click more when working on the second sock of the Ugliest Socks Evar, on my own.

I'm going to try to get all the way through the foot and the toe shaping to the last bit of the sock by next week, so that I can get help if I need it, and then I can start on my second sock if I have extra time.

I had plans to make my sewing machine cover this week, but it's been a week filled with activity. I got home at 9 from class last night, will get home around 9 from Knittin' Kitten tonight, and tomorrow night, Becca and I are going out to Bead Monkey. The 50th & France shops are having a ladies' night out, and we can make a free pair of earrings @ Bead Monkey, and I want to buy stuff for another beading project, so that I don't forget what I learned in my Elements class.

Friday night, Sean will be home from San Diego, and maybe I can at least get the pattern pieces cut out before he gets home, and work on the cover over the weekend.

I signed up for a Sewing 1 class yesterday through Minneapolis Community Education. It's 5 Mondays, and I'm think it will be a good class.

I also want to make more progress on the FIL Scarf this weekend. I'll probably work on the 2nd FIL Scarf tonight @ the Kitten, since it's all knit stitches, so I have to worry less about messing up.

I really need to crank through the FIL scarves, since I can see that sock knitting is going to invade my knitting life very soon, and I want to make sure I don't have so many projects on needles that I'm not making progress. (ha!)

In an update from lovely San Diego, CA:

Sean and Yertle got up yesterday, and got ready for work. Yes, Sean is a goofy kind of guy. He's charming, so he gets away with a lot of stuff. It's part of why I fell for him. Sean went off to the client site, and...

... Yertle carefully guarded the bed until Sean finally arrived home after a long day of work and sushi.

Eureka!

I stopped by Crafty Planet & JoAnn on my way home and got the stuff to make my sewing machine cover. Hoping to get started on that tomorrow night. I'm not going to post progress photos because I want to surprise Sean, and while I don't think he has any idea how to get to this blog, I'd rather not chance it.

Then I went over to Borealis, where I got just the support I needed to pull 4 stitches off of the needle, unravel them, and pick up the strand that got missed along the way. I can tell I had to rework it, but no one else will know.

To celebrate my Ms. Fix-It success, I bought a great book on sock knitting and 2 skeins of Opal yarn. For Sean's second set of sox. Not that I have started his first set, with the Sisu yarn he gave me, yet, but I will, once I am finished with my sock class next week. He's got 11.5EEE feet, so I need to measure his feet to make sure I make sox that fit him. I have a guide in the book I bought, but I think it only covers a standard width 11.5, not the super-wide width.

It was a great feeling to get it fixed, and the beauty of it was that all I really needed was the support that I could fix it myself. And I did!

Second half of le weekend!

There's an absolutely gorgeous sunrise out there this morning! And I brought my camera to work with me! And completely forgot to grab the memory card for the camera out of my computer yesterday. Doh!

I took a look at the FIL Scarf yesterday, and I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to fix it that doesn't involve ripping out rows and rows of work. It may come to that, but I'm not necessarily confident in my ability to do that either. So, I brought the scarf with me, and I'm going to Borealis after work, in the hopes that someone there might have a moment to help me figure out what I did and how I can fix it. Because if I don't do that, I'll never learn how to fix my own mistakes, and starting all over again doesn't make sense - there has to be a way to fix it, and I intend to learn how. :)

I'm having fun with the Kindle app for the iPhone. Sean just got a Kindle2, and he adores it. It's a beautiful thing, but I can't quite justify one for myself. With Sean's travel schedule, a portable reading device makes sense for him, since it's more compact, easier, etc. But even though I haven't justified a Kindle, I did download the Kindle app to my ipod touch, and it's pretty awesome. It's not as nice a display as the Kindle, but it's definitely nice to have a portable reading device of my own, and this way I only have to justify the cost of books, not a machine + books.

The other night, when I stopped to stock up on supplies for a sick husband, I bought him a present. As I was walking by the floral section, I glanced at the stuffed animals, and this cute, fuzzy stuffed turtle smiled at me. I knew the turtle would be just the thing for Sean to snuggle up with while he rested. Yertle, as he has been named, traveled through Denver to San Diego with Sean yesterday. Here is a small photojournal of the trip thus far:

This is Yertle on the train to car rentals.

Yertle makes a fine dashboard turtle! Fortunately, they arrived in San Diego earlier than originally planned, so they had a chance to enjoy a nice afternoon in the southern California sunshine. Sean also got a fun BMW 330 as a rental car.

Yertle enjoyed the sunset in San Diego last night, especially with the later light in the evening, now that we're back on Standard Time.

Finally, Sean and Yertle wished me a good night from 1,988 miles west of home.

I think I would like to try to stop by Crafty Planet on my way to Borealis this evening... I'd like to get the fabric for the (likely overly ambitious) sewing machine cover I want to make. Since we're supposed to get a snowstorm tomorrow night, that would be a good time to hole up in the house & work on it, if my class gets cancelled.

Also, I drove Lola to work for the first time this morning. We found her just in time, given the snowstorm on the way. It's great fun to drive this car. Here she is (please excuse the crappy cell phone photos):