Socks!

I've been making socks for my mom for about four years, at the rate of not very many per year. Her feet are a whole two sizes smaller than mine, so I was assuming that her socks should be a bit shorter than mine. That's not crazy, right? Shorter feet, shorter shoes, shorter socks.

So when I made her a pair that ended up fitting me pretty comfortably, and she still insisted that they fit her well, I chalked it up to Mom not wanting to tell me that they were too big and kept right on aiming for socks that were a little too short for my feet.

So, over the summer, I'm at home, and she asserts (yet AGAIN) that all the socks I've made her fit (and I'm like THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE THEY ARE DIFFERENT SIZES). She says No, Really, Listen to Me, They Fit, so I went up stairs, got a Regia cotton sock that I had knit for myself and made her try it on. And of course it fit.

So, making socks for my mom just got a lot easier.

This is her latest pair, which is RPM in Mini Mochi, colorway Whatever Number the Blue/Green/Purple one is. Here is an awful picture of them being modeled by me on our balcony, which gets absolutely no sunlight like ever:



I must say, usually I'll put up with a lot from a sock yarn, but I do not love Mini Mochi.



I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture, but there were a ton of stray fibers that stuck out at crazy angles from the yarn. They were very much like guard hairs in alpaca, which tend to drive me mad with itchiness, so for a while I was pretty convinced that there was secret alpaca in Mini Mochi. Later (like... awhile later), it occurred to me that those fibers were probably nylon. If these socks wear well, I would give credit to the nylon, but I'm not convinced that several inches of nylon sticking out every three centimeters will do the trick. Also, I pulled a lot of them out as I went along, so those fibers will not be helping them wear well at all.

However, the colors are nice and the yarn is very soft.

Secret, Secret

Holiday knitting is coming along. I've finished two gifts already - and one I finished twice. I'll tell that story in a few months. (Hint: my personal knitting motto is "gauge, schmage!") (Another hint: frogging fun fur is bad enough, but frogging fun fur held together with a strand of mohair is damn near impossible.) (That one was for you, mom!)

There's not much going on that's not gift-related. My Dippers are as stalled as ever -- the last two or three times I've taken them out to work on them, I've started in the wrong place on the chart and spent the entire time working on them knitting the wrong rows and then tinking them back. Not very productive. So those are aside for right now. I also sometimes get into these phases with socks where I feel like figuring out how to turn the heel is going to be a huge ordeal, so I avoid them until I can dredge up the energy to figure them out. Not once has the heel or whichever part actually been as bad as I was anticipating, but that doesn't stop me from letting it hang over my head.


Here's my pet ferret, Daisy:



Daisy did get put aside for a while, but I've found myself needing an occasional break from wrestling with the concentration-intensive gift knitting, and a row or two of double crochet breaks it up nicely. It's also quite warm already, so it's nice to hold in my lap while I'm working on other stuff. I've been trying to alternate light and dark colors, but at this point it's clear that this is going to be an object of more practical value than aesthetic.

Let's see what else is on my camera, shall we? Oh yes, here is a blanket I threw together recently:

Once upon a time, I got a new comforter for my bed. Along with it, I got the most beautiful comforter cover and sheets and pillowcases in the world. Time passed, the various parts of the bed set declined in health, and the new dog adopted a balled-up sheet that had come out of the laundry quite ripped.

I'm not big on throwing things away, and the dog seemed happy to rearrange this big ball of sheet and sleep on it every day, so aside from the occasional trip through the laundry, it stayed in this state for several years. Then, finally, I got around to washing it, cutting it up, and sewing it into a blanket. It's probably about 5'x4', and I did it envelope-style, sewing two equal pieces down on three and most of the fourth sides to a large piece of batting, then turning it inside-out and sewing the turning hole closed. Although I was able to get pretty big whole pieces out of the material, there were several places that already had holes or were about to, so I cut out simple patches from the remaining material, turned the edges under, and sewed those through all three layers. Voila! Quilting! I sewed 1/4" in from the edges, quilted some square shapes in random places, and then quilted some straight lines down the entire length of the blanket. All told it probably took about 6 hours, and I'm really happy with it. The dog still crumples it up and rearranges it, but it has a bit more of a backbone now.

Okay, I think that's it. I have grandiose plans to get my gifts finished wellllll before Christmas this year, so maybe I'll have some actual knitting to show before then.