LouLa went on a walk with her Daddy, so I have some time to myself. I’m very independent (selfishly so, at times), and there are times that I desperately need my space. In a small house, with an (almost!) 3 year old who is going through a clingy phase, this is hard to come by. That’s been the hardest thing about motherhood for me; totally giving of myself when I may not want to. The good far out weighs the bad and it’s gotten better. The bright spring morning has made it easy for me to have some time to myself today. She’ll go outside at the drop of a hat and doesn’t care who goes with her, just as long as she gets to go.

Knitting:

I haven’t made lots of progress on the socks, but I thought I’d show you a picture or two. I must say, my Kodak EasyShare camera isn’t into close ups, so just pretend everything is perfectly focused.

Please pretend my feet are manicured, too. Thanks.

I’ve picked up for the gussets on the other sock. It took me some time to figure that out. The way the heel turn works out, you end up on the left side of the gusset. The pattern says to cut the yarn and then rejoin to pick up on the right side. I wasn’t sure why it didn’t just have you knit across the heel to the right side and then begin picking up as usual. Far be it from me to question a published pattern. I’ve done it before, with bad results. So, I put the sock down, watched the movie (The Holiday-very cute), and thought about it. I went back and reread the pattern to see if there might be a reason further on in the pattern. There are few things I hate worse than frogging and I didn’t want to screw myself. But, there didn’t seem to be any real reason that I could just knit across and do my normal picking up. So, I did. I’ve only done the first round and all seems to be well. It’s written for dpns, which complicated things a little, since I had to remember where needle 1, 2, 3, and 4 were on a sock. I don’t think there will be any problems.

I do love that this pattern has a garter stitch border on the heel. I do much better picking up with a garter stitch border. And, I even picked up the same number of stitches on both sides. In addition, I even picked up exactly what the pattern called for. I hardly ever do that. My left side tends to have 3-4 more stitches picked up than the right. It’s just more decreasing, but I feel like I’m a naughty sock knitter for not following the pattern exactly.

Responding to comments from yesterday:

Liz, you are so right! I am very glad that I’ve moved on to garments! I looked through my non-sock yarn stash yesterday, hoping that I had enough of something to make a sweater for LouLa. No such luck. Not unless I wanted to do stripes, and I didn’t. My regular stash is mostly from my early days of knitting and I just bought yarn with nothing in mind. That would be fine, except I would only buy a skein or two or any particular color.

lucillelane, I don’t consider myself much more than a novice, really. My advice is to just go for it, whatever “it” is. I stayed away from sweaters for so long because it just seemed too complicated. I wish I had gotten into it sooner. I’ve only been seriously knitting for a little over a year. I’ve never done any colorwork, except for one stripe on a hat. I’ve just barely seamed. But, most things aren’t that hard, it just takes patience and confidence.

Beverly, I’m so with you on the m1s! But, it was my first sweater, and I didn’t think it was a good time to question the pattern. I was lucky it worked out. Next time, I’ll kf&b, though.

Reading:

Finished the Dornstein book yesterday afternoon. What a good read. I highly recommend it.

I started messenger by Lois Lowry last night and finished it this morning. It’s a children’s/young adult novel. Lowry also wrote The Giver, which won the Newbury Award. messenger is the third book in a semi-trilogy that started with The Giver. It was very good.

I’ve started Educating Alice by Alice Steinbach. It’s a memoir about a woman who travels all over the world and learns new things. I’m at the beginning and she’s in Paris, taking a cooking class at the Ritz. She also goes to Scotland and learns how to train Border collies, goes to Japan to learn traditional art, etc. It’s well-written, though this lady has got to have quite a bit of cash to be able to do this. She’s also written Without Reservations, about her “European journey of self-discovery” that I haven’t read.

Yes, I read quite a bit when I can, and I tend to read fast. The weekend is my productive time for knitting and reading. During the week I get far less done.

Speaking of being busy…I won’t have time to post again until later this week. LouLa turns 3 on Tuesday, and I’m running a 5K on Saturday at 9:00. We’re having a small family party on Saturday in the park (no rain!) at 12:00. I’m supposed to pick up her cake at 11:00, and then I’m going to get a bucket of chicken or something. I think I’m crazy for planning so much on Saturday, but I’d just as soon get it done with. I’m not into planning big parties.