Oooh, yes!

Please take note of the progress on the Harry Potter Sock Swap bar. Woot! One sock down and another a few inches in. I just cracked open the third ball and I'm about 4" into the second sock, so I'm pretty sure I'll have enough left over for another pair - another pair that will be tucked into the back of my mind to marinate for awhile, since I shall be heartily sick of Slytherin green by the time I bind off my pal's second toe. I've been slowly collecting cute things to add to the package, and I'm excited to finish the socks so I can send the whole thing off. No sock pictures until the package is in the Owl Post, though!

I also got my invitation to Ravelry today! Hurrah! All I want to do is go home and start entering things in, but alas I'm at work until 6. I also decided to head up to Mountain View to go to Bobaknit tonight, so the internet fun will have to wait.

Yesterday I caved, and caved hard. I joined a Fair Isle knit-a-long at my LYS and bought yarn for what is likely going to be the most expensive piece of clothing I will own, ever. A Fair Isle sweater made of Blue Sky Alpaca's Alpaca/Silk... good lord, it will be gorgeous and I'll want to wear it every day. I'm excited for Saturday morning to come! The girl who works at my LYS is so nice; I like her a lot. Maybe I'll start going in there just to hang out so we can become friends.

In penance for spending more than I should have, I spent the evening boiling pots of yarn and winding 100g skeins of the superwash sock yarn from the innocuous little box. Four skeins of blue/yellow that are probably going to go for another dip to even things out, and one skein that was supposed to be brown and red but instead became copper and pink. Hmmm... we'll see what it looks like when it's dry.

I had a look at my stash the other day when I re-arranged my room. It's growing much faster than I'm going through it, so I've decided it's time for a Yarn Diet, starting at 4pm on Sunday. And for this one, sock yarns WILL count as stash. The terms are: I cannot buy any yarn that isn't for Dye Trying (coming sooner rather than later, I promise!) until I have completed both of my sock swaps and all of my UFO's. The only exception will be the rest of the alpaca/silk for the Fair Isle sweater, since I'm a couple of skeins shy at the moment.

So that's it! No pictures (did I mention I'm at work?) , but soon there will be Ravelry. And what Ravelry there will be!

Oh... I feel I should mention, for those in the area: Sunday from noon-4pm at Full Thread Ahead there is a 40% off of everything you can carry sale. No baskets, no bags; if it fits in your hands you can buy it. Therefore, the Yarn Diet begins after I've hit up the sale - if there are Addi's included in the sale, this will be a good time to flesh out the collection.

One of Those Days

Have you ever had a day you couldn't completely categorize as "shitty" even though you sort of wanted to? My day has been like that. This morning at 8:15 my cell phone decided to automatically turn off my alarm so I was this close to being late for work after rushing about like a mad chicken. Around 1:30, I discovered that the way I told my 2nd graders to address a business letter is not, in fact, the proper way to address a business letter and got spoken to sternly by my boss (who is very sweet and I don't think would ever yell, but made my be-sandaled feet quake all the same). At 2:30 I left to give a final exam to the kids at the Satellite Center, only to make a U-turn at 2:33 because I had forgotten the Prize Box. By 2:40, I was on my way until I hit deadlocked traffic at 2:45. It seems that roughly 300 yards in front of where I was stuck, the median between Megahighways 1 and 2 was on fire, so I sat in my un-air conditioned car dressed in polyester pants in the California sun for an hour, which of course made me late to the final and had me fuming because if I hadn't forgotten the Prize Box... well, you know the rest.

Needless to say, by 6:30 I was more than ready for the day to be over. I came home, grabbed the mail and walked in the door to find this: An innocuous, much-anticipated little box!

And this:

An amusing Art History shirt! (Translation: This is not a pipe.)

But best of all, this:

A clipping from The Oregonian

A present from my favorite Coffeebean, who is obviously still thinking of me and loves me enough to send me newspaper clippings about the Harlot even though I am a horrible friend and never call her. Although the day is waning, it suddenly became much brighter.

During the week, I also got four cones of this:

2/15nm raw silk laceweight

It's some pretty potent stuff, that raw silk. Just reached out of the monitor and grabbed me! But I'm going to experiment with a bit of dyeing (more on that later) and should be able to - shall we say - recoup my investment. I also got some lovely sock yarn from 1870 Pearl, who is a dear and deserves all of the little bits and pieces I've been squirrelling away to send her once she arrives in her New State of Choice.

A lot has been happening over the last couple of weeks. The Boy was here for a week for an interview, and was subsequently re-named ManCandy by Elizabeth. So say we all! Then, he got the job. Then, Jer and Elizabeth (who hates "Liz" but isn't opposed to "Zab," according to her man) got an apartment in The City. ManCandy will be moving into my apartment in early July, just in time to use his man-candiness to help Jer and Zab move out. Then it's just the two of us, and we'll make it if we try, with a little help from Mr. Will Smith.

P.S.: I just nearly posted all of this to the Hogwart's Sock Swap page. I think it's time for beer and Scrubs, and maybe to open the innocuous little box. With a bit of luck I won't kill myself with the box knife... AND the sizing for this post is f'ed up but I'm getting a beer and leaving it be. Today is officially Not My Day!

Not Again!

I ripped them. Again. Stupid Slytherin socks (although my pal is definitely not stupid; in fact she is completely sweet and that is probably why I'm struggling to make her socks *perfect* which is difficult to do considering she lives in... well, not in my hometown). The problem was that her leg is smaller than mine, and when I put on the sock it wasn't quite tight enough for my taste so it would have been too big for her. Completely unacceptable. So a week's worth of work was undone tonight in about.... 2.5 seconds. Maybe 45 seconds, but definitely not more than a minute including the mourning period between deciding to rip the sock and actually taking out the needles. It's sort of like ripping off a Band-Aid, isn't it?

I must say, that 4-ply Rowan I bought has taken all this beating and ripping and re-knitting with amazing aplomb. It's still springy and lovely after 5 (FIVE!) ripped beginnings. Tonight I'm trying to get through the ribbing for the last time (I swear!) so I can be back to starting the actual sock tomorrow. I'm annoyed that it's taken this long to get it right, but I also feel better for having started over. The sizing issue would have bothered me forEVer.

In celebration of starting the Slytherin Socks (yet) again, I allowed myself to wind the Passionfruit yarn I got from the Knittery into 2 50-gram balls. It will become a pair of Baudelaire socks for Nadia's fabulous and adorable ammi. I printed the pattern, but haven't started them yet because I am exercising great restraint. I also unwound all of the yarn that was languishing in my stash back into skeins using my nifty new swift. Apparently leaving yarn wound in a ball make it stretch weirdly - who knew?

Back to the Slytherin Socks. I'm nearly 3/4 through the first Harry Potter book with all this re-knitting. Woo!