Today was a Bad Knitting Day. So much so that tonight will be a No Knitting Night. Ugh. First disaster:

Last night I was all pleased with myself for finishing this week’s socks ahead of schedule, and spending a little time working on this baby blanket. It’s Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sport, soft as can be, and the feather and fan is not a complicated stitch pattern.

Then suddenly I noticed…this…horrifying little mess. How did I do this? How did I miss it for so long?

First thing this morning I frogged it and put it down for a few days so it can consider behaving better next time around. I do have until June to do this one.

Disaster the second – was more of an annoyance. Again, yesterday I tried the pinwheel blanket with my handpainted cotton yarn. I was really liking it in a psychedelic hippy chick kind of way until I got off count some how and it got all wonky. So I bound it off to use as a washcloth, and started over. (I have enough of this cotton for at least two blankets. Good thing.)

Well, this evening, some 26 rows into my second pinwheel, I seem to have another couple of glaring (to me) issues that I probably won’t be able to live with, and will start that one all over again as well.

So tonight, I am not going to knit. I am curling up on the couch with a pad of postits and these books that came in the mail today, just in time to save me from myself.

Yeah, more socks. Pair 4 out of the 52 pair plunge.

I tried an experiment of acting like a one project knitter with these – cast them on and worked on nothing else until they were finished. No more of that silliness. Ick.

Now I’m going to go work on the lace baby blanket. Or maybe just put all the knitting away and go to sleep. Mmmmm sleep…

Three weeks, three pairs of socks. So far, so good. The plan is to average a pair a week, but I think getting behind would send me into some kind of freak out. Yes, these are the ugliest socks ever made.

I can’t decide which pair of socks to get done next, but I know they will at least be made out of pretty yarn. These were kind of torture. But I did learn a bunch of new things (aka I screwed up some stuff pretty bad, but fixed it…mostly) about sock construction. This site has so much information, go bookmark it. Now. I’ll wait.

Ok, a box of yarn arrived in the mail, always a joyous occasion. This was from the big sale on sock yarn (what else) at Little Knits my new favorite online yarn store.

Mock my tiger print yarn if you must, I adore it. Look, more needles means more socks OTN at all times! Yay!

Did I mention I’m also doing a feather and fan baby blanket and a pinwheel baby blanket…ack.

A post mostly not about socks. First is that bell sleeved shrug. Done. So very, very done. I love it.

The little flecks of color really made this yarn knit up pretty.

Today I learned about reskeining my hand dyed stuff. Tried it and had to immediately reskein every bit of it I could find. The purple/green stuff needs to be knit up. It is crying out to me to see how it knits. Good thing this is all sock yarn. Heh.

No, haven’t forgotten about that 52 pairs of socks in one year thing. I’m staying on track. These will probably be the next pair done. They are my first toe-up and I’m not entirely sure when to start the heel. Better figure that out pretty quickly.

Two down, fifty pair to go!

If I had blocked them, you could see the cute heart pattern on the leg bit of these.

They should also be my last pair with wonky heels, and after mastering the magic cast on for toe up socks, I’ll be avoiding this whole top down thing as much as possible as well.

I’m not falling behind! Week one of the 52 pair plunge and I have my first pair finished. So the short row heels are a little…wonky. They are soft and wonderful and fit perfectly. These are my first pair of socks for myself, and I am really addicted now.

This will probably be the second pair to be finished, since they are huge bulky worsted things, and now that the heels are done, it will be nothing to get them done. Short row heels still not perfect, but I’m really getting the hang of what is wrong, so maybe just maybe I can figure out how to fix it.

Meanwhile forcing myself to do a row or two on that shrug is sheer torture. I want it to be done and I want it done now. Never, ever again will I knit a long sleeved thing for my self. I have freakishly long arms and they require way too much knitting.

Day 1 of the 52 pair sock KAL and I am fully freaked out already. This is going to go well, isn’t it?

First, some non-sockish stuff. Made myself a Born to Ipod cloth, because without my ipod, I am lost. How I ever knit without it I do not know. Podcasts, audiobooks, and music, all in my pocket. Ahhh.

Then I set about getting my knitting bag completely organized for this sock…insanity. Yeah, I could have done that before today, but there was other stuff to do. Kids, house, life, crazy stuff like that.

the feather and fan socks were frogged a while back, because for one thing I messed up the 2 circ method (again) and for another I came to hate, hate, hate the yarn.

So currently on the needles, for the sock project, I have:

Basic top down socks, almost ready for toe decrease. I had delusions of finishing these today to kick off the year of socks, but got a little distracted. Shocking, I know.

Top down, heart motif socks knit in worsted – another candidate for early finishing if I could just figure out how I am doing my backward yarn over incorrectly some of the time. Just enough to mess up my short row heels. Short row heels are vital to the plan of one pair of socks per week. I’ve googled and studied videos and should be brave enough to get the heels on these already any day now. Yeah.

The two at once, toe up socks on two circulars, third attempt. First attempt started with 6 stitches according to the pattern, and I found them very witchypoo-ish. Restarted them with 12 stitches, they were much better, and then I did whatever it is I always do to mess up the 2 circ thing, and had to frog them. This time I believe I cast on 10 stitches to start, and these circs will not get the best of me, I can do this. Dammit.

That’s it! I have two other pair ready to cast on to their needles – one using 2 circulars and one using magic loop. My shorter circular is still waiting for the baby sock yarn to arrive, so I’m making a quick ipod holder/sock/thingy for it.

In a wild display of really bad sewing, I threw together (not just an expression here) a couple of sock bags to keep all of my projects separate in the Big Tote. No measuring, no pressing, no nothing. These both came from the same pattern pieces, as you can see they didn’t exactly come out identical. Also, that sloppy buttonhole type thing for threading the ribbon? I sewed that through all of the layers. Didn’t clue into how stupid I had been until I actually sat down to thread the ribbon through. Uh. Who needs ribbon anyway.

Ok well I have some socks to be knitting. Goodnight!