Red Sox

Hooray! This is as good a time as any to show off these:



Pattern: My own
Yarn: Cascade Fixation, 2 balls 3678 and 1 ball 8176
Needle: Addi Turbo 32" #4, magic loop style

The pattern:

• Cast on 60 stitches with Red
• Join white and work K2red, k2white for 1 round
• Work in 2x2 corrugated rib (knit red, purl white) for 10 rounds
• Switch to 4x2 rib in red only for leg
• After 5", work 1/2 stitches onto smooth waste yarn to hold for heel
• Go back to the beginning of the waste yarn stitches back onto needle and continue working in 4x2 rib for another 4.5"
• Switch to white and alternate decrease round (K1, ssk, knit to 3 sts from end, k2tog, K1 on both sides of needle) with K round until 28 stitches remain
• Work decrease round until 16 stitches remain
• Kitchener live stitches
• Return to heel and remove waste yarn, putting 30 stitches on each side of needle
• Using white, work as for toe, only stop decreasing and Kitchener when there are 20 stitches remaining

But the important thing here is that my boys are the champs!

"We'll Never Find Another Sandy"*

Or, these are a few of my favorite things. Yes, there's knitting content here, really.
My iPod shuffle, in lime green, of course. Working in a bunker in the ground with one other person who does an entirely separate job means that sometimes I need some stimulation. What I love about the shuffle is that I can load it with podcasts, audiobooks, and a whole ton of music. Set on shuffle, it just plays my music randomly; turn off the shuffle, and I can listen to pocasts and audiobooks at lunch or while doing the more mundane daily tasks. It is my best friend at work.

No, it's not a Pandora. We did a lot of research before buying this, perhaps more than either of us did for our current cars ("It's nice; I liked the last one I owned; I'll take it -- do you have it in silver?"). And our research showed us that there are a lot of Troll beads which we really liked, and, while Pandora beads fit on Troll bracelets, the opposite is not the case.

So, it's a silver Troll bracelet with a fish clasp, and just two beads to start (but, there's a wishlist). I think of it as my "thank you for moving to Tucson" gift. Faith, hope, and love for the elements which support the adventure we've embarked upon, and a cactus (that should be obvious).

And now for some knitting content:
Actually, it's only the first of the Red Sox -- the other is still just a ribbed band.

Pattern: My own, perhaps I'll write it up
Yarn: Cascade Fixation, 2 balls 3678 and 1 ball 8176
Needle: Addi Turbo 32" #4, magic loop style

I love the Red Sox, and I am so excited about this sock. And they will work great for Christmas, too.

* [Second title explanation in a row.] This is a direct quote from a member of the Advisory Group which oversees the Depository where I work. He is also a member of the search committee charged with finding my replacement and the person who will train my replacement. He made this comment to the chair of the search committee (who is also my boss) while they were going over resumes.

One of my very favoritest things right now is this job, and the appreciation which this comment shows for me and my efforts here. This is so very, very gratifying after what seems like ages (it was really less than 2 1/2 years) of working for people who, well, let's just say they most decidedly DIDN'T appreciate me. I have loved my time here, and it pains me to leave, though I am excited about the adventure ahead. I tell myself every day how lucky I was to find this job and these people to wash the bad taste away after my previous experience and remind me that working outside the home can be a very good thing.

First Monkeys

I know they're the first because I absolutely love the pattern.

Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A. from Knitty
Yarn: One of Gail's first attempts at striping sock yarn, gifted months ago (color fairly true in the photo above)
Needle: Inox 40" circular #1 (2.5mm), magic loop style
Mods: Didn't purl in the lace pattern (as a combination knitter, I can be averse to purling in the round); slip-stitch heel; and I'm sure there are other differences, because I admit to ignoring the pattern after I had memorized the lace pattern (after 2 repeats on the first sock). In the future, I would not do the twisted rib -- it's a little tight going over my foot. Maybe a regular 1x1 rib, or a 3x1 even. We'll see.

Like I said, I really love this pattern. Perhaps in future I will even make some with the intended purl stitches, but I do like the gentle texture obtained by leaving them out.
These socks are destined likely as a Christmas gift for my sister-in-law. A similar fate awaits most of the socks I will knit from our stash of wool sock yarns over the next few months. I suspect we will have little need for wool socks in Tucson, at least until we start realizing that it does get cold there in the winter (they tell us this usually takes 3 years).

Next up on the needles:

Red Sox! I've wanted to make myself a pair for a while, and I finally just bought the yarn. Trust me, the color in this photo is just all wrong. That really is red and white.

I'm kinda making the pattern up as I go along, but it's pretty basic. The yarn is Cascade Fixation; I cast on 60 stitches, knit 10 rows of corrugated ribbing (as my niece, I apparently love the Red Sox more than I hate corrugated ribbing), then a 4x2 rib for the leg and foot (Fixation and stockinette, not the best of friends); toe will be white, as will the afterthought heel. I have already done all of the corrugated ribbing and have the start of the second sock waiting on stitch holders -- it is a trick to keep the hatred of the ribbing from causing second sock syndrome.

And one more project that I hope to have done before we leave. I/we need to turn a whole lot of this:

"pies", each containing something a little less than a full ball of each of four different colors of Plymouth Encore -- into this:

usable balls of yarn.

What? Well, the pies are from back when WEBS used to sample yarns featured in their catalogs. This is one of the methods used to make than sampling a little easier. Why? M and I do a lot of charity knitting (what a former co-worker used to refer to in a tone usually reserved for those drowning kittens as "knitting things for poor children"). The separated colors are destined to be scarves, hats, mittens, etc. Okay, except perhaps for one of the greys, which is likely to become one of these.