sock madness 1

The first sock madness sock is done as of 12:30 p.m. today.

The pattern was emailed early early Saturday morning. I made my final yarn selections (cth fall foliage variegated and cth somewhat solid purple) and cast-on. I intended to go to the farm at about 9 but somehow found it to be 9:30 and called dh. He said we had 10 cars and I made him repeat it and asked why he hadn't called me. I think he knew I was knitting and was giving me my time. So I rushed out there and sold trees with dh and Roy intending to leave at 2. There were a couple of lulls when I was able to knit a couple of rows but for the most part we were very busy. Sometimes I sell and sometimes I entertain customers until one of the guys is available. I only do the easy trees. The front area of nice big labeled Japanese maples, and Shantung maples, including the new Fire Dragon, also labeled. Sometimes I do traffic control. It's a one-car wide driveway with 3 official parking spaces, 4 if the cars are small (which we hope they are not as most trees do not fit well in small cars) and if the drivers part carefully. Otherwise, I send them to the back and hope there's a place left back there. This Saturday set a new sales record for March, tying a previous all-time record. So my time was well spent. I do like it when I ask dh, do you have any money? Wanting some pocket money, you know, and he says yes, pulling out his wallet, and I empty my pockets of several big bills into his hand. Actually, I wanted a couple twenties as I do not like to carry around the bigger bills.

Anyway, on with the knitting. Angeluna, one of my knitting friends, and also participating in sock madness had invited several of us over to knit our mad socks, so home for a quick clean up and change of clothes and a quick drive and there were four of us madly knitting socks. From time to time, Angeluna would sneak off to the computer and call us back for a look and who had knitted what and to catch up on the pattern questions.

I knit these first sock madness socks toe up (we had a choice). And with a short row heel with wraps. I had done this heel format before but not for a while. It went fine except for some reason that I do not recall, at some point after just finishing the heel I tinked back some. For some good reason, I'm sure, but I think I tinked some wrapped heel stitches and the wraps evaporated, so when I reknit, I ended up with some loose places. I'm thinking I may over-stitch this area to fill it in some and strengthen it. On the second sock the heel is better, but has one odd hole where the gap was between the front stitches that rested and the heel stitches. I've leaves how to cinch that up from Lucy Neatby's sock 2 dvd.

The only other snag was today. At lunch, I took a short drive to a close-by park and started knitting. After a couple of needles full, I noticed a two inch long length of yarn. I had started knitting on a dpn which was not next in line . So about 40 painful tinked stitches later, I was ribbing and on my way to finishing.

I had taken my camera with me to work. In case I was able to finish. But I don't normally use a cord to download the pics. My home computer has slots for camera discies so we just pull out the disc from the camera and plug it into the computer and the computer figures out it's there and downloads. Anyway, I asked dh for a cable and he gave me the one from his new camera. Which fit my work computer's usb port fine but unfortunately did not fit my camera's cable plugging place. So I found a co-worker who almost always has a camera with me and he took my sock picture and emailed it to me. Thanks k-bob. So here you have my first sock madness socks:



Just for the record: the yarn is CTH fall foliage (birthday gift last fall from dd) with CTH semi-solid purple ( thanks again Grace ). The needles were Knitpicks 32" circ size 1us (2.5mm) primarily, with some dpn action on the heel. With the ribbing knit on size 1us (2.25 mm) dpns. Cast-on was 52 (for any sock madness participants who know this is a lesser number than the pattern, I knit two extra repeats on the leg to compensate for the fewer number of stitches per row. This was ok'd by the organizers). With a small rib at the top, per the pattern. Now if you look closely you will see a bit of lifeline. And my calf is not bulge-ey like the picture might make you think. That's about 10 yards of purple tucked into the back of the sock. My intention is to uncast-off and pick up those life-lined stitches and knit the ribbing up a bit more. But today I needed to cast-off after the prescribed ribbing and throw my picture up on flickr and do the "I'm done" email and advance to round 2 of sock madness.