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.

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):