Not Quite As Clever As I Thought I Was

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I've been knitting lots of socks lately. So when I pulled out the clown yarn, I thought to myself, "Myself, you've been knitting lots of socks lately. Let's see if you can just knit this one up without a lot of fuss and pattern reading."

Heh.

What's that they say about a group of lions and a precipitous decline?

I cast on my 68 stitches and chugged right down the leg. Got to the six inch mark and took the 34 stitches on the back needle and did my heel flap. Yesterday, while sitting at The Black Sheep and bathing my soul in fibery vibes and wooly goodness and friendly chat, I turned the heel, with a little help from a copy of the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Rules. Picked up the first set of gusset stitches and then knit across half of the instep stitches...let's see, half of 68 is 34...half of 34 is 17. Knit across 17 stitches, switch needles and knit across the second 17...wait a minute...I only seem to have 13 stitches here on the second half. I must have miscounted.....ummmmm, no.

Huh.

I seem to have 34 stitches on the back needle and 30 stitches on the front needle. Well, that's weird!

I counted my cast-on three times....let me repeat that....THREE times! But somehow I seem to have only cast on 64 stitches, not 68. I am mindboggled.

But Tracy, up at The Black Sheep, encouraged me not to rip the whole thing out. I'm just going to keep going on it. And try to remember to do the second one the same way.

What an idiot.

But here's a picture anyway.


I came home from The Black Sheep with a few skeins of yarn...how could I not? Some Claudia's in the Walk in the Woods colorway and some Aracaunia Ranco in the most scrumptious shades of red and rose and pink and coral. And this book: Little Sweet Peas. It has some adorable sweaters in it, and the sizes go up to 7. Cute, cute, cute.

Current Reading

Mostly I'm reading snatches of this and that. Mr. Pointy Sticks and I are trying to cut down on the number of books in the house and I am trying to be ruthless about getting rid of books I don't think I'll ever read or that I've read once and won't want to read again. So far, we've taken 7 or 8 cartons of books to the library as donations. And there'll be more to follow. So I am trying some of the books that I think I might want to read before we get rid of them. Mostly, they are going into the donation boxes.

But...I am reading one book I like a lot. Winter Wood, by Stephen Augarde. It's the third in a series that started with The Various and continued in Celandine. Good English fantasy. Reminds me of William Mayne or early Alan Garner.

That Old Rachel 2

A month or so before Rachel's second birthday she and I were watching Sesame Street one morning. For the first few minutes of the show the transmission was screwed up and the colors were all wrong...green kids running on purple grass...orange sky.... And then there was a close-up of a little boy and he was all blue. "Look!" I said, "that kid's all blue! Why do you supposed he's blue?"

And Rachel looked at me and said, "Because he's a boy!"

Poor dumb mother.

Guilt Works!!

Look at all those nice comments! I love you all and thank you from the bottom of my crabby little heart for taking the time to comment.

The bathroom, save for the faulty shower door and the magnetic latch on the medicine cabinet, is (I think) all done. The door is back on the hinges, significantly increasing the room's utility. Mr. Pointy Sticks was in there a bit ago and, from behind the door, came the following: "I'd forgotten how small this room is." It really is tiny. But now it's nice and tiny instead of God-this-is-gross and tiny.

It's pouring rain and Mr. Pointy Sticks is out running...but it's Friday night. I want to do something! I don't know what...chances are I'll just opt for a beer.

I am on the heel flap of the first clown sock...and you know, in this morning's gray, misty, sort of autumnal light??....well, it was sort of cheering and nice. I may learn to love these socks.

Someone's Happy It's Fall!

(Rachel sent me this from her cell phone. Thanks, toots!)

Sigh. It's so depressing to hear your email beep and see you got a comment on your blog and then see that it's a spammer. That's all I get these days. Are y'all not commenting because you have to wait for me to okay the comment? Notice that I am not offering up the option that you're just ignoring me.)

Some Things Are Working Out

Our new Pella window is in...the one with the blinds in it. It's so spiffy. It's so neat. And the medicine cabinet is in and the light fixture. And the exhaust fan. There are still some little fixes that need to be made...there's some paint touch-up and some paint clean up. We need a hot air vent cover.

And the toilet paper holder was put on the wrong way, even though I left a stickie on the wall with a note and a big arrow pointing in the direction I wanted it to point. (It is similar to this one...with no annoying springy thing.) The worker fastened it to the wall with the opening open toward the toilet which means when you're sitting there and pull on the paper it tries to slide right off the holder. So now I have to decide if I want to fuss about that. I hate fussing about things. But I think I am.

We've come to an agreement with the contractor about the shower door. We will eat one third of the cost, he'll eat two-thirds and he can take the door away and use it elsewhere. Or sell it. He was actually okay about it. I don't think he was particularly happy, but he said his goal is to have a happy customer...that's the only thing that matters. Frankly, I don't think we should have to pay anything...but we will. I did tell him that I thought he had dropped the ball a little.

So...onward and upward.

I love my window.

Oh, in sock news...it's surprising how quickly a sock can grow when it's all stockinette. To wit:


Have I mentioned that I love my window?